Greg Stepanich

For Shostakovich's 100th: My top five

Today is the 100th birthday of Dmitri Shostakovich, whose reputation in the 31 years since his death in 1975 has done nothing but grow steadily, to the point that it is now safe to assert that he is by common assent Russia’s greatest 20th-century composer.

It’s instructive to look back at the Shostakovich article in the 1980 Grove, which asserts that it is Shostakovich’s symphonies that will prove his most enduring legacy. And yet while most of the symphonies appear to be more frequently programmed than they once were, it’s his chamber music and the concerti that have benefited the most from Shostakovich’s ability to reach new generations of audiences. The First Violin Concerto in particular, to judge from the new recordings of it that have been made in recent years, is now a firmly established part of the repertory.

I’ll reiterate here what I’ve said before about the tricky question of Shostakovich’s politics: That while he did his bit for his noxious one-party state, I believe that he essentially sacrificed himself to the greater cause of Russian music in general, to its history and its future, making a conscious decision to endure the nastiness of the Soviet regime in order to bear witness and to offer through his work whatever he could to his compatriots. I don’t believe for a minute that anyone who saw his best friends hauled off and shot in the gulags could have had any illusions about the regime he served, nor was he in any way happy about it.

I think he believed in Russia, and Russian art, and that the government he lived under would one day pass, but the creative contribution of its citizens would be unbroken, and their achievements laudable.

I love the music of Shostakovich because of its great power, its ability to seize center stage and say deep things memorably, and above all the distinctive voice we hear speaking to us in the music. And so as a birthday tribute, here are my five favorite Shostakovich pieces, in no specific order:

1. Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 77. This concerto has everything: Beauty, anguish, strength and fireworks. One particularly gripping moment comes with the Passacaglia before the finale. By this time, the listener is aware he or she is in the presence of a major, serious concerto.

2. Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op. 93. I admire several of Shostakovich’s other symphonies: Nos. 1, 5, 8, and 13 in particular. But the Tenth has a kind of Hindemith-style grandeur that I really like, and the special coloring provided by his frequent use of the horns only adds to that.

3. Preludes and Fugues for Piano, Op. 87 This is an extraordinary collection, worthy to be mentioned in the same breath as Bach’s 48. Shostakovich shows throughout his mastery of counterpoint — he was a stickler for good craftsmanship — and the emotional territory mapped out by these wonderful pieces is immense. Like Bach’s set, it reveals something new every time.

4. Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 102. This is a controversial choice, because Shostakovich himself called it a piece of no real merit. But for me it shows the Mozartean side of this composer’s music, seen in pieces like the First Piano Concerto and the First and Ninth symphonies. The second concerto has flat-out beautiful melodies (the second movement) and an abundance of easy charm that we associate with the Salzburg master.

5. String Quartet No. 8. I’ve yet to find any of the quartets of Shostakovich to be anything less than masterful, and this rich literature will make quartet players happy for decades to come. But the Eighth is special for its memorial content (it was written for the “victims of fascism and war’), and its incredibly dark, somber material. Few quartets demand such intense involvement on the part of the listener, who is asked to absorb repeated stops and starts, shrieks of folksong over a chugging bass, and long passages of hushed, near-motionless music. This is the music of suffering, and few composers knew how better to convey that than Shostakovich.

I realize in putting together this list that I’ve chosen music from a relatively short period of Shostakovich’s creative life (the late 1940s to 1960). But there’s plenty of other great pieces throughout his career; this is one composer who never weakened as he aged; his Viola Sonata, completed a week or so before he died, is innovatory and shattering.

What are your five favorite Shostakovich pieces? If you need to, make it 10. Please post away.

Here's part of the First Violin Concerto, done by Hilary Hahn: