St Petersburg, Concert Hall

Tchaikovsky. Shostakovich


Marking 175 years since the birth of Pyotr Tchaikovsky

PERFORMERS:
Soloist: Pavel Milyukov (violin)
The Mariinsky Orchestra
Conductor: James Conlon


PROGRAMME:
Pyotr Tchaikovsky
Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35

Dmitry Shostakovich
Symphony No 5 in D Minor, Op. 47


Pyotr Tchaikovsky wrote his only Violin Concerto in 1878 when he was already an acclaimed composer having written his First Piano Concerto, four symphonies and operas (including Eugene Onegin). The Violin Concerto somewhat repeated the destiny of the First Piano Concerto as it was not immediately judged as it deserved to be. Today it is difficult to imagine that a work of such power, expressiveness and beauty did not immediately find an appreciative audience or performer. Initially Tchaikovsky had decided to write the Concerto for his friend and pupil Iosif Kotek, and then because of subsequent disagreements he offered it to the renowned violinist and teacher Leopold Auer. On seeing, however, that the latter “shelved” his work he dedicated the piece to Adolph Brodsky who was the first performer of the Concerto in Russia and abroad and who met with strong resistance from other musicians and sharply negative critical comments afterwards. For one and a half centuries the main difficulty for the performer has been the extremely virtuoso nature of the Concerto. Today the main problem lies rather in the interpretati on because offering a new treatment of such a famous and frequently performed work is a task that is definitely not for the fainthearted.
Svetlana Nikitina

The premiere of the Fifth Symphony in D minor at the Leningrad Philharmonic on 21 November 1937 under the young Yevgeny Mravinsky was a huge success. Mravinsky held the score of the symphony aloft. Boris Pasternak reflected “Just think, he said everything he wanted to, and nothing happened to him!” What did Shostakovich say about his Fifth Symphony? The first bars of the symphony are a unique epigraph that cast a glimmer of light on an unfolding tragedy. The philosophically deep, rhythmically tense main theme and the elegiac, light secondary theme are basically in the form of a sonata. As it develops the main theme transforms, acquiring characteristics of an evil, grotesque march. And only in the pathetique recapitulati on does it regain its initial image. A short animated sectioncedes to a sad coda: it is as if the music dies out in the cold rising gammas of the celesta.
The second movement, Allegretto, is a scherzo; its somewhat crude “village” humour sets off the emotional and philosophical intensity of the first movement. The crown of the symphonic cycle is the third movement, Largo. It opens to a concentrated and quiet chorus of strings. Among the sad and elevated melodies the lyrical oboe solo stands out: it reaches heights of tragic pathos in the tense declamati on of the cellos. Concluding the Largo, the theme of the oboe solo sounds conciliatory in the melting timbres of the harp and the celesta.
The Allegro n on troppo finale explodes to the boom of the kettledrums and the energy of the brass. As the development of the main theme reaches its peak, the proud secondary theme slips in – first in the noble tone of the trumpet then in the powerful hymn-like song of the strings and woodwind.
As the finale develops, the themes vary freely. The recapitulation, which leads smoothly into the coda, signals the start of a sharp upsurge. Tense, at times tortuously painful, the falling and rising ends in a blinding light: the jubilant D major, transformed by the main theme against the incessant, drummed A of the strings and woodwind. But the beat of the “naked” kettledrums in the last bars of the symphony, like nails hitting the lid of a coffin, reveal the “double bottom” of the finale. Behind the outward appearance of celebrati on there lies genuine tragedy, behind the notorious “coming-to-be of personality” lies a deadly resistance of personality to a cruel age.
Iosif Raiskin

Age category 6+

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