Sonata for Violin and Piano, Opus 134
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH
Born September 25, 1906, St. Petersburg
Died August 9, 1975, Moscow

In the spring of 1967, Shostakovich wrote his Second Violin Concerto and presented it to David Oistrakh that September on the occasion of the violinist's sixtieth birthday. Surprised and grateful, Oistrakh had to tell Shostakovich an embarrassing fact: the composer had his dates wrong-Oistrakh had been born in 1908 and so was only 59 that year. Undeterred, Shostakovich then celebrated Oistrakh's true sixtieth birthday by composing his Violin Sonata for the violinist the following year. Oistrakh gave the first performance, a private one, before the Union of Soviet Composers on January 8, 1969. The public première-with Oistrakh and pianist Sviatoslav Richter-took place in Moscow on May 3, 1969.

The music of Shostakovich's final period, covering roughly the last decade of his life, forms a very specific chapter in his output. Gone is the nose-thumbing glee of his early music, and gone too are the broad, heroic canvases of his symphonies. In their place comes a new language, inward and often dark. Whether this is the result of bitterness at the Soviet system (as ideological critics will have it) or the result of a long and painful final illness is a matter of ongoing debate, but the fact remains that Shostakovich's final works bring a sharpening, a refinement, a darkening of his musical language. This music can be very beautiful-as in the Suite on Verses of Michelangelo and the valedictory Viola Sonata-but it can also bring a haunted and bleak musical landscape, particularly in the late chamber music.

Shostakovich's only violin sonata is a big work, both in duration (it lasts well over half an hour) and intensity-much of it is built on a huge, aggressive sonority. One of the most surprising features of the sonata is Shostakovich's use of tone-rows, and this is all the more remarkable given the official Soviet condemnation of such procedures. Shostakovich defended his occasional use of tone-rows in his late music, telling an interviewer in 1973: "I did use some element of dodecaphony in these works. Of course, if you take a theory and use solely this theory, I have a very negative attitude toward this kind of approach. But if a composer feels that he needs this or that technique, he can take whatever is available and use it as he sees fit. It is his right to do so. But if you take only one technique, whether it is aleatory or dodecaphonic, and use nothing but that technique, then it is wrong."

It should be noted that Shostakovich's use of tone-rows is not nearly so strict as that of the Second Viennese School. Rather than embracing that system, he instead experiments with some of its techniques, and his rows function as basic thematic material which he is then free to treat any way he prefers. The fundamental technique of the Violin Sonata is not to manipulate the rows in the way Webern might have but instead to create musical structures based on continuous variations of a row.

The Violin Sonata is in three massive movements. The piano alone opens the Andante by introducing the movement's fundamental row, which contains some repetition even on this opening statement. Soon the violin joins this texture, and that opening theme moves between the two instruments. Shostakovich then builds a long music-drama upon variations of the opening theme--some of these episodes are brusque and violent, some melodic, some delicate-and the movement reaches a quiet close on the violin's eerie tremolo ponticello.

The Allegretto takes a more traditional form: it is a scherzo in (vaguely) ternary form. The distinguishing feature of this movement is its furious energy. The violin stamps out the opening theme-almost more rhythm than theme-and Shostakovich changes meter frequently throughout the aggressive opening minutes of this movement. The "trio" section arrives when the music settles into a steady 3/4 meter and waltzes with a hard-edged energy. Shostakovich delays a literal return of the opening material until late in the movement, which drives to a brutal close.

The finale opens with a grand Largo introduction that leaves us uncertain about the harmonic direction of the music. Out of the silence, the violin-all by itself-picks out the movement's principal theme pizzicato. This long theme is itself an extended row, and Shostakovich will repeat and vary this material as he proceeds. These variations are sharply contrasted: back comes the fierce energy of the opening movement, but there are extended interludes here of delicacy and a dark beauty. As the movement nears its climax, Shostakovich gives the piano a dramatic passage by itself, which is followed by a cadenza for the violin marked quasi tremolo. Gradually the heated energy of this climax subsides, the music grows more subdued, and Shostakovich concludes with quick reminiscences of the opening two movements. In fact, the sonata returns to the same ponticellopassage that brought the first movement to a close, and it is on this icy sound that the music fades into unsettling silence.