Shostakovich and the infinite sadness....

Knock, knock, who’s there? The NKVD…  

Shostakovich was one of many Russian composers that, during Staling times, suffer of censorship and constant fear of being arrest, exile of worse. His work was labeled of being intentionally discordant, muddled or extremely formalism for the state aesthetics. This abuse made Shostakovich’s life a living hell for many years.

During these times many of Shostakovich’s friends, patrons and family members, suddenly disappeared, drowned into the maelstrom of Stalinist repression. It is amazing how Shostakovich managed to keep, in a way, his sanity and at the same time, write some of the most remarkable music.

Shostakovich, according to many scholars and biographers, was an obsessive man. Full of strange habits, tics and grimaces. He was, certainly, very vulnerable and receptive, an important feature of his genius. It is unimaginable how a man like him could survive all the repression and horror of Stalin’s era. His life, like most of his compositions, were full of antagonism, at the beginning of his musical career, Shostakovich make his debut as a state composer, but, later in his life, he developed a love-hate relationship with the state.

Shostakovich composition style has two different directions, the extreme neo-classical and the heroic. The Cello Sonata in D minor for cello and piano Op. 40, was writen in a particular difficult time in Shostakovich’s life, He was in a period of emotional turmoil. This sonata is formed by four movements. The piece is full of the duality that a composer like Shostakovich was suffering by being trapped in a totalitarian system. As part of his latest works, this piece is full of statements more responsible and profound in its nature. The humanism and tragic lyricism of the sonata struggle with the concept that the artist cannot survive by retreating into a private creative world; he must be part of the socio-political problems, however bitter the experience were.

His face reveals a troubled man, struggling with his interests and his duty as an artist, his music, undoubtedly, reveals this concerns. In his cello Sonata, the first movement begins with accompanying and flowing piano arpeggios. As the musical tension arrives we can hear the themes, unusual and full of shifts but, tonal. Both instruments imitate each other during the piece, and, from the beginning we start to hear the development of a strange and insidious rhythmic motif, penetrating to our spine and through the flowing textures of the themes. Then is there, tataTA, tataTA, it starts in the piano like a whisper, almost an eco and then, is finally taken by the cello. First in pizzicatos and then, take it to its full sonority, it almost sound like someone knocking at the door, using the rhythm ostinato as a peculiar password. Knock, knock, who’s there…..?