Viola Sonata (Shostakovich)

On the morning of July 1, 1975, Shostakovich telephoned Druzhinin to tell him that he had an idea for a Viola Sonata. He called again later in the day asking whether certain double stops played in rapid succession were possible on the viola. Druzhinin encouraged the composer to write as he pleased and said that violists would stretch their techniques to play whatever he asked them to.[2]

Despite Shostakovich's complaints about the inability of his right hand to remain still enough for writing,[3] he called Druzhinin on July 5 to announce he had completed the score and that it had been dispatched to the Union of Soviet Composers for copying.[4] After unexpected delays in its preparation, Druzhinin received the fair copy of the score from the composer's wife on August 6.[5]

The sonata is divided into three movements:

The composer described the first movement as a "novella."[6] It begins with an unaccompanied pizzicato figure in the viola which recalls the opening of Alban Berg's Violin Concerto,[7] followed by an austere piano line, which leads into a more animated middle section. The movement closes with a remembrance of the opening bars. Most of the material for the second movement was borrowed from Shostakovich's unfinished 1942 opera The Gamblers.[8] After the successful revival in fall 1974 of his other Gogol opera, The Nose, he requested the return of the manuscript for The Gamblers from his former pupil Galina Ustvolskaya, to whom he had given it.[9] Shostakovich referred to the final movement as an "Adagio in Memory of Beethoven" or "Adagio in Memory of a Great Composer," although emphasized that its mood was "bright and clear," further characterizing it as "radiant music."[10][11][12] Allusions to Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata are juxtaposed with reminiscences of themes presented earlier in the Viola Sonata, followed by an extensive self-quotation which strings together references to each of Shostakovich's fifteen symphonies.[13] Its final pages close with a quote from his early Suite in F♯ minor.[14]

The sonata was privately premiered at Shostakovich's apartment by Druzhinin and pianist Mikhail Muntyan on September 25, 1975, what would have been the composer's 69th birthday. Its public premiere took place at the Small Hall of the Moscow Conservatory on October 1, 1975 with the same performers. A critic for Izvestia wrote that the music was "like the catharsis in a tragedy; life, struggle, overcoming, purification by light, exit into immortality."[15] Daniil Shafran later transcribed the sonata for cello and piano with the approval of Shostakovich's widow.[16]

• Wilson, Elizabeth (1994). Shostakovich: A Life Remembered. Princeton. ISBN 0691029717.
• Fay, Laurel (2000). Shostakovich: A Life. Oxford. ISBN 0195134389.