Mstislav Rostropovich - Shostakovich Cello Concerto No.2 Op.126

The State Academic Symphony Orchestra of the USSR.
Conductor: E. Svetlanov
Violoncellist: M. Rostropovich
Recorded live in the Large Hall of Moscow State Conservatory,
September 25th, 1966

Shostakovich's last major work before his first heart-attack -- his first intimation of his own mortality -- was the Second Cello Concerto. Composed in the early months of 1966, the Cello Concerto seems to have started life as what Shostakovich called his Fourteenth Symphony. In the event, however, the work evolved into the concerto, although the work's symphonic character was so pronounced that Shostakovich wrote to his friend Isaak Glikman "...that the Second Concerto could have been called the Fourteenth Symphony with a solo cello part" (Shostakovich, A Life, Laurel Fay, p. 247).

Although the work was conceived and composed prior to the deterioration of his health, the Second Cello Concerto is, for the most part, a dark and ominous work with a long and introspective opening Largo and a counter-balancing Allegretto finale, which is a sort of dusky barcarolle. Indeed, the work ends with the curious "clock-work" percussion which closed the Fourth Symphony of 1935 and which would close the Fifteenth and final symphony of 1971. Yet the work is not all gloomy: the central movement, also an Allegretto, is based in part on a popular song of the '20s, "Pretzels, Who'll Buy my Pretzels?" Apparently, Shostakovich and some of his close friends saw in the New Year of 1966 with a game of "Name that Tune" and Shostakovich played that tune which he said was one of his favorites. One of the party guests was the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, the dedicatee and first performer of the Second Concerto.

Scored for pairs of winds with double bassoon, a pair of horns and of harps, plus a large percussion section, Shostakovich's Second Concerto is a darkly lit work with flashes of light. The outer movements are rhapsodically composed around pivotal climaxes and the central movement is a sardonic scherzo of a type that Shostakovich had been writing since his E flat major Scherzo of 1923 - 1924. The lack of display for the soloist and the inward nature of the music has denied the Second Cello Concerto the popularity of the First Concerto of 1959; nevertheless, it is a great, if underappreciated, work