Shostakovich's Music for Piano Solo , livre ebook

Shostakovich s Music for Piano Solo
RUSSIAN MUSIC STUDIES
Malcolm Hamrick Brown, founding editor
SOFIA MOSHEVICH
Shostakovich s Music for Piano Solo
Interpretation and Performance
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
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Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
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2015 by Sofia Moshevich
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No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
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Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Moshevich, Sofia.
Shostakovich s music for piano solo : interpretation and performance / Sofia Moshevich.
pages cm. - (Russian music studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-01422-1 (cl : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-01431-3 (eb) 1. Shostakovich, Dmitrii Dmitrievich, 1906-1975. Piano music. 2. Piano music-History and criticism. I. Title.
ML410.S53M68 2015
786.2092-dc23
2014044009
1 2 3 4 5 20 19 18 17 16 15
FOR ARIK
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Early Works
Five Preludes
Three Fantastic Dances, op. 5
Piano Sonata No. 1, op. 12
Aphorisms , op. 13
Polka , op. 22a, from the ballet The Golden Age
2. Mature Works
Twenty-Four Preludes, op. 34
Piano Sonata No. 2, op. 61
3. The Masterpiece
Twenty-Four Preludes and Fugues, op. 87
4. Works for Children
Children s Notebook , op. 69
Dances of the Dolls 198
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
I am extremely grateful to Malcolm Hamrick Brown, professor emeritus of music at Indiana University, who suggested the idea of this book and encouraged my work on it. Many thanks go to Irina Antonovna Shostakovich for her permission to use some fragments of Dmitri Shostakovich s autographs. Without the assistance of my friends Emmanuel Utwiller, his wife, Fran oise, and Tatiana Maximov of Association Internationale Dimitri Chostakovitch in Paris, many of the important documents and autographs would have been unavailable. Thank you all for your generous help!
In Toronto, Ruth Pincoe edited the manuscript and helped me to prepare it for submission to the publisher. I deeply value both her work and her friendship. Michael Mishra, professor of music at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, made a great contribution by reading the manuscript, correcting its style, and adding numerous valuable details. For his tireless work on many musical examples I thank Valentin Vetchinkin of Natali Products, Toronto. My sincere appreciation goes to David Farell of Metropolitan State University of Denver for his painstaking work as engraver.
Tilya, Arik, Tali, and Jonathan: you are my life s love and best reward.
Shostakovich s Music for Piano Solo
Introduction
The piano works of Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-75) are among the most precious musical treasures of the twentieth century. Diverse and exciting, they have become an indispensable part of the piano repertoire and are to be found in the repertoire lists of international piano competitions and the syllabi of music schools around the world. The present book is the first English-language publication to offer a comprehensive examination of Shostakovich s piano music from an interpretation and pedagogical standpoint.
A gifted pianist, Shostakovich wrote for the instrument from his earliest years. Though the style of his early piano works (Eight Preludes, op. 2, and Three Fantastic Dances) was somewhat traditionally romantic, his next compositions (the Piano Sonata No. 1 and Aphorisms ) attempted to fuse the contemporary language of modernist music with a more personal mode of expression. After a break in his performance career (from 1930 to 1933), Shostakovich returned to the concert platform with the Twenty-Four Preludes, op. 34, and the Piano Concerto No. 1, works in which his mature style-sharply individualistic and controversial-would begin to emerge.
Unlike other composer-pianists, Shostakovich wrote for the piano relatively sporadically. His next important work, the Piano Sonata No. 2, was completed in 1943, ten years after the concerto. His ultimate piano masterpiece, the Twenty-Four Preludes and Fugues, op. 87, was composed in 1950 and 1951. The last two piano works, the Concertino for Two Pianos and the Piano Concerto No. 2, were written in 1956 and 1958, respectively. Two wonderful contributions for children should not be forgotten: Children s Notebook , written in 1945, and Dances of the Dolls , a piano arrangement of some of Shostakovich s earlier stage music, made in 1952.
Shostakovich was an active pianist throughout his life. 1 He performed publicly as a soloist until 1958 and as an ensemble player until 1966, when disease incapacitated his hands. Fortunately for us, between 1946 and 1958, Shostakovich recorded a number of his own works, including the Three Fantastic Dances, the Polka from The Golden Age, Children s Notebook , both concertos, ten of the op. 34 Preludes, and seventeen of the op. 87 Preludes and Fugues. Some were recorded twice. Since Shostakovich disliked talking or writing about his music in general, let alone discussing specific problems of interpretation, these recordings remain the primary source of our understanding of Shostakovich s performance style.
It is important for performers to note Shostakovich s sometimes idiosyncratic usage of certain musical terms. For example, espressivo indicates not just a higher level of intensity but also, at times, a slightly louder dynamic, such as at the start of the Prelude in G Minor, op. 34, where piano espressivo in m. 9 contrasts with piano in m. 2. Where espressivo is marked for an individual voice, it usually indicates that this voice should assume a leading role (similar to Bach s solo marking). In the manuscript of the A-Major Prelude, op. 34, for example, the soprano is marked espr . in mm. 6, 10, and 13, the bass in mm. 1 and 17.
Shostakovich indicates marcato for a resolute non legato articulation (see the Prelude in B-flat Minor, op. 34, m. 2) and marcatissimo for a strong staccato (see the Prelude in D-flat Major, op. 87). His tenuto indications, such as in m. 2 of the Prelude in E-flat Minor, op. 87, imply a somewhat detached, often declamatory articulation, which is usually supported by the use of the damper pedal.
As I wrote in an earlier survey of Shostakovich s piano career, One criticism often leveled against Shostakovich s playing concerned his apparent penchant for swift, sometimes hectic, tempos. What the recordings show, however, is that this tendency was generally confined to music at the faster end of the tempo spectrum. By contrast, slower movements ( largo, adagio, lento, andante , or moderato ) tended to be played slower than marked. 2 Ritenutos often occur at the end of a section, for example, the Fugue in G Minor, op. 87, whereas accelerandos develop with the growing intensification toward a work s culmination, as is evident in the Fugue in D Minor, op. 87. Shostakovich s tempo fluctuations are generally not marked in the score, although occasionally a fluctuation will be made that appears in the manuscript but not in the published editions, for example, the Fugue in G Minor, op. 87.
Grigoriy Ginzburg makes an important observation: Performers who do not observe Shostakovich s pedal indications damage the composition no less than if they play wrong notes or different articulation. 3 Shostakovich s manuscripts testify that he tried to express his pedalings as accurately as possible. He sometimes changed and clarified initial pedal marks in the manuscript (see mm. 1, 4, and 7 of the Prelude in C-sharp Minor, op. 34), occasionally even changing the pedaling for the printed version (see the Prelude in E-flat Minor, op. 34, mm. 23-24). Unfortunately, not all of these markings have been preserved in the published editions. For example, although Shostakovich drew a circle around every release sign in the Piano Sonata No. 2, many of his indications were misplaced or missed altogether, particularly in the second and third movements. No wonder, in his next large piano work, the Twenty-Four Preludes and Fugues, op. 87, he marked a pedal only once-in m. 49 of the Prelude in C-sharp Minor!
In order to allow English-speaking readers access to important Russian sources, I have translated numerous excerpts from the writings of significant Russian pianists and pedagogues such as Tatiana Nikolayeva, Yevgeniy Liberman, Maria Greenberg, and Regina Horowitz. Comments by other well-known Western and Russian musicians, including Joseph Banowetz, Raymond Clarke, Viktor Delson, Robert Dumm, Grigoriy Ginzburg, Heinrich Neuhaus, Ronald Stevenson, Vsevolod Zaderatskiy, and Andr Watts, are also provided. I have also consulted facsimile copies of the manuscripts of the two piano sonatas, the Twenty-Four Preludes, op. 34, and the Twenty-Four Preludes and Fugues, op. 87, all housed at the Centre Chostakovitch in Paris, and have reported numerous discrepancies between the autographs of these works and the various published editions. There is still no urtext edition of Shostakovich s piano works. 4 Most of them were first published by Muzgiz. 5 The errors and misprints made in the first editions were usually reprinted in numerous subsequent editions without corrections. The Soviet Collected Works edition corrected many such mistakes but failed to achieve th