Narodowa Orkiestra Symfoniczna Polskiego Radia NOSPR
Dmitri Shostakovich
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Composer Biography
Dmitry Shostakovich, a child of Tsarist Petersburg, was schooled by the first Leninists and experienced both censure by Stalin and acclaim by Khrushchev.
Composition History
The First Violin Concerto was not publicly released until after Stalin's death in March 1953, due to its complex and abstract nature, which did not comply with Kremlin guidelines.
Performer Biography
Antoni Wit, the conductor, studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris and Penderecki, and was a prize-winner in the Herbert von Karajan Competition in 1971.
Performer Biography
Ilya Kaler, the violinist on this recording, won the Grand Prize at the Genoa Paganini Competition in 1981, the Gold Medal at the Sibelius Competition in 1985, and the Gold Medal at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Competition in 1986.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Shostakovich agreed with Tolstoy that music is a "stenography of feelings," capable of expressing a vast range of human emotions and ideas that words or other arts cannot.
Historical Context
The First Violin Concerto was composed during a period of severe censorship and purges in post-war Soviet Russia, known as "Zhdanovshchina," which forced Shostakovich to use two musical idioms.
Instruments
Ilya Kaler performs on a 1748 Camilus Camilli violin for this recording, courtesy of Dmitry Gindin Violins, Florence, Italy.
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