DSCH 21 Book Review - Dmitri Shostakovich: Pianist

Dmitri Shostakovich - Pianist
Sofia Moshevich
McGill-Queen's University Press (Montreal & Kingston, London, Ithaca) ISBN 0-7735-2581-5, 222 pages

Nigel Papworth

I quote: 'Dmitri Shostakovich was not only a great composer of the twentieth century but also an outstanding Russian pianist, one of the best of his generation. His universal fame as a composer has tended to overshadow his significance as a brilliant performer of his own works. Although many scholars have analysed Shostakovich's music, his career as a pianist has been largely overlooked by biographers. This book represents the first careful examination of this important aspect of his life.

'By his early twenties Shostakovich was already a well-known pianist in Russia, but unlike Rachmaninov or Prokofiev he never toured extensively overseas. His participation in the First International Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 1927, a tour to Turkey in 1935, a short visit to Czechoslovakia in 1947, and trips to Bulgaria and France in 1958 were insufficient to establish a reputation as a world renowned pianist. Furthermore, Shostakovich's recordings of his own works appeared sporadically in the West and began to gain an appreciative audience only after his death.

'Nevertheless, Shostakovich's piano performances profoundly influenced his life, both on and off the concert platform. Until 1930, he concertized intensely and played a varied repertoire, but from 1933 onward, he limited his programs to his own compositions. Shostakovich appeared publicly as a soloist until 1958 and as an ensemble player until 1966, when disease permanently incapacitated his hands.

'My fascination with Shostakovich's performances of his own music began in the early 1970s when I was studying at the Gnesin Institute in Moscow. Although I had always admired his music, I took for granted the commonly held notions that as a pianist Shostakovich was inferior to the great Soviet concert pianists and that his interpretations of his own works were of lesser value than those of other pianists. However, while researching a project on Shostakovich's Prelude and Fugue in E minor, (from the twenty-four Preludes and Fugues, op. 87), and thus comparing his recording of the piece with those of Svyatoslav Richter and Tatiana Nikolayeva, I found Shostakovich's interpretation to be absolutely captivating. Despite many faults of execution, his performance contained a special something that seemed to elude the others. His playing so impressed me that I began to collect recordings of Shostakovich performances wherever and whenever I was able to locate them.

'Fortunately, Shostakovich recorded many of his compositions. These recordings include both piano concertos, the Concertino for Two Pianos, op. 94, seventeen preludes and fugues from op. 87, the sonatas for cello, op. 40, and for violin, op. 134, the Piano Quintet, op. 57, the second piano trio, op. 67, the song cycle From Jewish Folk Poetry and the piano arrangement of Symphony No. 10. Moreover, he recorded many of these compositions more than once. For detailed information on these recordings, please refer to the "Discography of Shostakovich's Recorded Performances" (pp. 205-14).

'By the 1970s, however, Shostakovich's recordings had already become rarities; it took me over ten years to obtain most of his officially published LP records from stores specializing in rare disks, private collections, and libraries in the USSR, Israel, the United Kingdom, and Germany. Although more often than not these LPs were of poor quality, they still allowed me to hear his tempos and to sense the nuances of his agogics and touch and his unique way of "sculpting" a piece. In some performances, I also recognized textual variants that were played by Shostakovich but never mentioned in his editions. After the firm Revelation issued a series of high quality, digitally remastered Shostakovich recordings in 1998-99, I was able to verify my findings even more precisely.

'Although a number of valuable English- language publications have recently appeared, to my surprise, none, including Elizabeth Wilson's Shostakovich: A Life Remembered (1994) and Laurel Fay's Shostakovich: A Life (2000) provides comprehensive information on Shostakovich's concert life or his career as a pianist. They even neglect to mention his rich legacy of recorded performances. My chronological study fills this gap, tracing Shostakovich's pianistic roots as well as his education, repertoire, and concert life. In so doing, I explore in detail the vital role of the piano in his life, composition, and teaching.

'We are fortunate in that almost all of the significant events of Shostakovich's career as a pianist have been well documented. The main source of biographical material is the composer's published correspondence with his mother and his friends, including Boleslav Yavorsky, Lev Oborin, Ivan Sollertinsky, Vissarion Shebalin, Viktor Kubatsky, Levon Atovm'yan, Yelena Konstantinovskaya, Isaak Glikman, Marietta Shagynian, and many others. In addition, during the last few years, numerous books, articles, and memoirs, all of which contain a wealth of new information, have been released in Russia. For example, the volume entitled Dmitri Shostakovich v pis'makh i dokumentakh, compiled by Irina Bobikina and issued in 2000 by the Glinka Museum of Musical Culture in Moscow, includes a virtual treasure of authentic documents. Unless otherwise indicated, I have translated the documents myself from their original sources.


Shostakovich's hands, as featured in Moshevich's new book

'Although this book is aimed at all Shostakovich admirers, I also incorporate as much practical information as possible for performers, teachers, and students. In addition to general discussions of Shostakovich's piano and ensemble works, my analysis of each piece also includes tables of his performing tempos and other concrete details for convenience and quick reference. I compare various aspects of Shostakovich's interpretations with his scores, by using various editions, all of which are acknowledged in the endnotes.'

And there you have it - tidily summarised by the author of this new, relatively unheralded book on Shostakovich which, as she quite rightly implies, goes a long way to plugging a rudely gaping hole in the composer's biography.

Moshevich's approach is unashamedly methodical; her overall language (be it descriptive, factual or musical) is clear and direct. As for the attention to detail, the good news is that this constantly borders on the obsessive!

The book is organised chronologically, as can be gleaned from the list of contents:

Roots, 1906-1923
At the Crossroads, 1923-1933
Composer-Performer, 1933-1945
Return of Fear, 1945-1953
Recognition, 1953-1975

Although Moshevich seeks pianistic links wherever possible as she plots the composer's life and career history, she includes a host of non-keyboard instances, such as work on the symphonies and quartets, his operatic and film music and so on, guiding the reader through 69 years of musical discovery and inventiveness, of successes and failures, of ease and of pain.

Not only is Moshevich concerned with Shostakovich's keyboard oeuvres and the phenomenon of the composer as a concert-hall soloist; she explores with equally painstaking detail Shostakovich's recordings - comparing them with his original manuscript and, where the opportunity arises, with other recorded versions (for example his different pressings of the piano concertos, the Second Piano Trio and the Cello Sonata). Opus 87 forms a logical and expansive study base through which the author analyses Shostakovich's somewhat disparate recordings (he committed only 18 of the 24 Preludes and Fugues to disc) and performances.

I'm particularly impressed by Sofia Moshevich's inclusion of the song cycles in her study, including fine interpretative detail - pedalling, phrasing, tempo and so on, from the early Pushkin cycle with its pre-echoes of the Fifth Symphony to the late Lebyadkin's keyboard "stupidity" (sic!) with its own Godunov heritage.

There are plenty of musical illustrations, often of a comparative nature, as well as a Shostakovich discography, a huge bibliography and a set of notes.

Need I say more? A really valuable addition to any bookshelf - although I expect my own copy to be often open on my desk as an invaluable reference source.

The last word goes to Moisei Weinberg, who recorded a four-hand version of the Tenth Symphony with Shostakovich in 1954:

'In this recording, I play the "violin" part, while Shostakovich plays the bass. This was suggested by Shostakovich, and we always played in this way. Later he began complaining about his hands; it was hard for him to perform, and at times I had to play instead of him, premiering some of his compositions such as his Seven Romances on Poems by Blok and his Violin Sonata (with D. Oistrakh). Shostakovich's interpretations can be considered exemplary in regard to tempo, character, and grasp of the structure. They bear the images and feeling of the composition as conceived in his mind.'