Shostakovich: The Cello Concertos

Featuring

Yo-Yo Ma
Andris Nelsons
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Dmitri Shostakovich

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Composition History

The First Cello Concerto was conceived "a rather long time ago" according to Shostakovich, and he dedicated it to Mstislav Rostropovich.

Composition History

Shostakovich and Rostropovich first met in 1943 when Rostropovich, then sixteen, enrolled in the Moscow Conservatory and attended Shostakovich's orchestration classes.

Composer Biography

Dmitri Shostakovich, the composer, and Mstislav Rostropovich, the cellist, shared a remarkably productive collaborative friendship that lasted for nearly thirty years.

Compositional Technique

Shostakovich embedded his personal four-note motto D-S-C-H (D, E-flat, C, B) into the First Cello Concerto, a variant of which appears as the opening motif.

Compositional Technique

The First Cello Concerto includes an ironic quotation: a tiny distorted fragment from "Suliko," Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's favorite Georgian folk song.

Composition History

Shostakovich wrote his Second Cello Concerto for Mstislav Rostropovich in his sixtieth birthday year, seven years after the first.

Compositional Technique

The First Cello Concerto features a jaunty four-note motif that opens the work and functions as a thematic kernel, similar to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.