Shostakovich's music for stage and screen has its pleasures but my project leaves me little control over my focused listening, and these… The common wisdom on Rachmaninov's Sonata for Cello and Piano is that it is really a piano sonata with cello accompaniment. Although the Fifth Symphony is an “absolute” piece of music (i.e., there is no extra-musical story or narrative attached to it), Shostakovich did include a brief description of “a lengthy spiritual battle, crowned by victory” in the program notes. 40, Sonata for Cello & Piano in G minor Op. Shostakovich composed the Cello Sonata for the cellist Viktor Kubatsky, an esteemed cellist and one-time principal at the Bolshoi Theater. His Sonata for Cello and Piano in E minor begins, not surprisingly, on the low E of the cello, supported by plump off-beat chords not dissimilar to those that accompany the opening theme of the Fourth Symphony, also in E minor. Title Sonata in F sharp minor for Cello and Piano, Op.40 Composer Lilienthal, Abraham Wolf: Opus/Catalogue Number Op./Cat. His worries at the time were simpler and more intimate: two years into his marriage to Nina […] Even if Shostakovich the symphonist had barely begun to emerge, he nonetheless had several masterworks to his credit in 1934 when he composed his Cello Sonata. Shostakovich, also an able pianist, subsequently toured with Kubatsky, premiering his Cello Sonata in Leningrad on Christmas Day, 1934, alongside the cello sonatas of Grieg and Rachmaninov. ©2006 Patrick Castillo < Return to Parlance Program Notes In the fall of 1932, Shostakovich completed his massive opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District.
shostakovich: cello sonata program notesThis program offers a selection of the Preludes in imaginative re-arrangements for cello and piano prepared by composer and pianist Lera Auerbach. His "Cello Sonata No.1" was the first duo sonata that Brahms allowed to be published. Edited by Rostropovich. 20th Century. Right from the start, the Sonata feels like a new departure.