Customer Reviews

Shostakovich: Sonatas for Violin and Viola / Kagan, Richter, Bashmet

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These live recordings from 1985 are fantastic treasures. The Moscow Studio Archives release may now be unavailable -- perhaps this Regis version is now easier to obtain. Oleg Kagan plays the Violin Sonata (1968) and Yuri Bashmet plays the Viola Sonata (1975), which was Shostakovich's last work, both accompanied by the great Sviatoslav Richter on piano. Kagan, who died at a tragically young age, was a student of David Oistrakh, the dedicatee of the Violin Sonata. Yuri Bashmet was the star student of Fjodor Drushinin, the violist of the Beethoven Quartet, and the dedicatee of the Viola Sonata.

These are unmistakably works of the late Shostakovich, brooding and dark. Unlike some, I do not believe that late Shostakovich in general is the best Shostakovich -- certainly that is not true of his symphonies or his string quartets. It seems obvious to me that his great works were mainly composed between the late 1930s and the late 1950s. However, these sonatas are truly among Dmitri Dmitrievich's greatest works, and deserve a wider audience.

Both sonatas share a similar three-movement structure, and both are enlivened by a central Allegretto featuring memorable folk melodies. The Violin Sonata is notable for including the use of tone-rows in the first movement. Both finish with powerful slow movements, the Violin Sonata's 15-minute Largo and the Viola Sonata's 17-minute Adagio, which Yuri Bashmet conveys with total conviction.

The sound of the disc is not perfect. There are a few coughs here and there, but not so much as to ruin the listening experience. If you have heard Shostakovich's best symphonies (Nos. 4, 5, 8, and 10), and have sampled his string quartets (perhaps with the 2-disc Borodin Quartet set on Virgin -- see my review), and want to hear Shostakovich in other forms, by all means don't miss this!

See my SHOSTAKOVICH: A LISTENER'S GUIDE list for more reviews and recommendations.

Shostakovich two late sonatas, for violin and viola with piano, respectively, are among his bleakest, most despairing and least approachable works. They are actually rather similar in content and overall conception, and the structural elements of either maps rather closely onto the elements of the other. The viola sonata was in fact Shostakovich's very last composition, and is radical in idiom - it was intended as a pure twelve-tone work, although tonal centers are pretty obvious. More disconcerting are the immediately recognizable quotations of other composers, especially Beethoven.

It is a work that has failed to receive a whole lot of attention, and in a sense one can understand why - uncompromisingly bleak and desperate Shostakovich is something we are used to, but the viola sonata takes it a step further - this is genuinely depressing music, hopeless and futile, restless and scathingly spiteful. The violin sonata is barely lighter. It is more approachable, however, and the fact that it is equally profound but at the same time more immediately comprehensible may have contributed to making it better known than its slightly later companion.

In any case, the performances are thoroughly authoritative, as you would expect from Oleg Kagan and Yuri Bashmet, respectively, especially when their pianist is Richter. Indeed, these accounts are as soul-searchingly intense and as wonderfully shaped and phrased as one could possibly have wished for. The sound is actually pretty good - the strings are recorded too close, but the resulting harshness suits the music rather well; the piano sound is splendid. Strongly recommended, though perhaps not for the faint-hearted.