Piano Concerto No. 2 (Shostakovich)
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Dmitri Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 2 in F major (Op. 102) was composed in 1957. He composed it for his son Maxim's nineteenth birthday, and Maxim premiered the piece during his graduation at the Moscow Conservatory.
The work is scored for solo piano, three flutes (third doubling piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, snare drum, timpani and strings.
The concerto lasts around 20 minutes and has three movements, with the second movement played attacca, thereby moving directly into the third (although the second movement does come to an acceptable resolution in C minor, such that the third movement is not entirely necessary to bring the music to a conclusion):
The jolly main theme of the first movement is played by the bassoon, which is soon accompanied by the clarinets and oboes. The piano enters unobtrusively with an answering theme, played as single notes in both hands an octave apart. Soon, the piano picks up the pace with the British sea shanty melody 'Drunken Sailor'. The music slows gradually until it's going almost nowhere, when a blast from the orchestra leads into tumultous and jumping octaves in the lower piano register while the orchestra plays the original piano melody fortissimo. This section is marked by the occasional appearance of the soloist in the upper register playing the 'What shall we do with a drunken sailor' theme, as well as tumbling chromatic chords and runs. The piano builds in a triplet pattern to introduce the recapituilation of the main theme in a triumphant tutti. At the climax, everything comes to a silent pause, and the piano comes in with an almost fugue-like counterpoint solo. After a minute of the fugue, the orchestra comes back in playing the melody in the high winds. The orchestra builds on the main melody while the piano plays scales and tremolos, which lead into a joyous few lines of chords and octaves by the piano, with the main theme finally resurfacing and bringing the movement to a bouncy close.
The second movement is far more subdued and grim, somewhat more characteristic of Shostakovich. The strings start gently in C Minor, with a short introduction before the piano comes in with a beautiful, mournful triplet theme in C Major. Although it remains slow throughout, and with a comparitevly small range, it is marked by the recurrance of two- or four-on-three rhythms, as well as the remarkable amount of expressiveness available for such a seemingly easy piece.
The finale is a lively dance in duple time, making much use of pentatonic scales and modes. Soon, the second theme is introduced, in 7/8 time, with the piano accompanied by balalaika-like pizzicato strings. This carries on for a short time before a new, cadenza-like theme is introduced, back in duple time, with arpeggios and semiquaver runs. These three themes are then developed and interwoven before a final statement of the 7/8 theme and finally a virtuosic coda in F major.
This concerto is sometimes dismissed as an unimportant work by the composer, espically in comparison to some of his symphonies. In a letter to Edison Denisov in mid-February 1957, barely a week after he had finished work on it, the composer himself wrote that the work has ‘no redeeming artistic merits’. It is suggested that he wanted to preempt criticism by deprecating the work himself (having been the victim of official censure numerous times), and that it was actually meant to be tongue-in-cheek.
Despite his dismissal, the composer performed the piece himself various times, and recorded it along with his first concerto. Both are played at fast speeds that are rarely matched in modern recordings, and they show off the composer's pianistic skill quite well.
Maxim's own son, Dmitri Maximovich Shostakovich, has also recorded the piece, with his father conducting. Identical in bearing to his famous grandfather, Dmitri the younger also matches his grandfather's frenetic speed and expression very closely. Other recordings include that by Marc-André Hamelin for Hyperion Records.
The first movement was featured in the Disney movie Fantasia 2000. The soloist was the pianist Yefim Bronfman.
| Concertos by Dmitri Shostakovich |
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| Piano Concerto No. 1 | Piano Concerto No. 2 |
