May 6, 2019, Monday, 8:00 PM—Mischa Maisky, cello and Lily Maisky, piano—CAMA's Masterseries at The Lobero Theatre

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constitute much of the movement, with the opening theme or derivative motifs nearly always present in the melodic texture. The tremolo is taken over by the cello, played by alternating the two lowest strings—a strikingly sonorous effect—through much of the development and coda. The reflective second movement begins in the distant and unrelated key of F- sharp major, then enters a sort of tonal noman’s land in a middle section that drifts in and out of D-flat major on its way to a modulation to F minor that never really arrives. The key of F minor does arrive in the scherzo, the principal theme of which bears a striking resemblance to the finale of the Third Symphony (also in F minor), recast into triple meter, but with the same driving mood. The middle section lies somewhere between hymn and love song. The finale, a carefree rondo in which nothing terribly important happens, is less a climax than a dessert after a particularly nutritious meal. Both Tchaikovsky pieces on the program were originally composed for solo piano at the behest of Nikolai Bernard, editor of the St. Petersburg monthly music magazine Nuvelliste. In a time when a large proportion of people with disposable income were skilled amateur instrumentalists, it made financial sense to publish magazines containing music for them to play. In a December 1875 letter Bernard asked Tchaikovsky to compose a piece for each month of the year, and suggested subtitles for TCHAIKOVSKY each piece. Tchaikovsky, a better composer than negotiator, wrote back that he was “most grateful for your courtesy and readiness to pay me such a high fee,” and supplied the pieces well ahead of the publication schedule. Bernard also supplied each piece with a poetic epigraph, most of them by Russian poets unfamiliar to Western readers. Those verses appear in only two of Tchaikovsky’s manuscript scores (January and March), so it is not certain that he had the other ten in mind as he composed. The verse for October, “Autumn Song,” describes fallen yellowed leaves blowing in the wind. In 1882, Bernard again proposed a set of character pieces, but this time 13 CENTENNIAL SEASON CELEBRATION
Tchaikovsky’s publishers, Pyotr and Osip Jurgensen, stepped in, pointing out that their contract with Tchaikovsky gave them a right of first refusal on anything he composed. Tchaikovsky was peeved, but conceded that the Jurgensens were within their rights. They eventually published a set of six pieces as Opus 51. The Chopinesque Valse Sentimentale is the sixth of the set. Shostakovich’s only cello sonata dates from what he would have called a pivotal time of his life, and he didn’t know the half of it. He was at the top of the Soviet musical world with the success of his second opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. Its January 22, 1934 premiere in Leningrad was followed two days later by its first performance in Moscow, and it continued to fill seats in both opera houses for two years. It was hailed as a great leap forward for Soviet opera in the very year that Soviet bureaucracy promulgated a directive to the effect that “socialist realism” was the artistic ideal for music, although the directive said nothing specific about what “socialist realism” meant. In May of 1934 the opera was performed as part of an international festival in Leningrad, where Shostakovich met and fell in love with a 20-year-old university student who was working as an interpreter for the festival. It caused a separation, and then a divorce, from his wife of two years, Nina Varzar (the dedicatee of Lady Macbeth). While they were apart, in August 1934, Shostakovich composed the cello sonata, his first major chamber work. He dedicated it to Viktor Kubatsky, who played in the Bolshoi Theater orchestra, and gave its first performance with him on December 25, 1934. The choice of Kubatsky was more politic than artistic: he was known as an organizer of concerts, so involving him would mean the new sonata would get repeated public performances. He was also known for his limitations as a player, which may have had something to do with the sonata’s being received poorly at first. Shostakovich quickly remarried Nina, writing to a friend, “I have only now realized and fathomed what a remarkable woman she is, and how precious to me.” Nina was also pregnant with their first child. Their marriage appears to have been a success until her death in 1954, with Nina acting as his personal and business manager as well as wife, mother and emotional support. He would need her in the coming years, when the Soviet establishment moved to bring its musical establishment to heel, choosing to make Shostakovich, its golden boy, and Lady Macbeth, its major international success, examples of—as an infamous January 1936 Pravda article put it—“petit bourgeois and formalist” degeneracy. In a time of government purges that became known simply as “The Terror,” the Pravda article made Shostakovich an outcast, and most of his concert music was effectively banned. The cello sonata seems to have escaped that ban, perhaps because chamber music was not much on officialdom’s radar, or perhaps because the sonata offended no one. 14 CENTENNIAL SEASON CELEBRATION
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May 6, 2019, Monday, 8:00 PM—Mischa Maisky, cello and Lily Maisky, piano—CAMA's Masterseries at The Lobero Theatre

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