Shostakovich: Music for viola & piano
Performed by Lawrence Power (viola) & Simon Crawford-Phillips (piano)
The selections are as follows:
Shostakovich:
- Un peu triste
(after Prelude No 10) arr. Yevgeny Strakhov
- Marche funèbre
(after Prelude No 14) arr. Yevgeny Strakhov
- Une valse vite
(after Prelude No 15) arr. Yevgeny Strakhov
- Une valse militaire
(after Prelude No 16) arr. Yevgeny Strakhov
- Mélodie amoureuse
(after Prelude No 17) arr. Yevgeny Strakhov
- Une danse ironique
(after Prelude No 18) arr. Yevgeny Strakhov
- Finale
(after Prelude No 24) arr. Yevgeny Strakhov
- Viola Sonata, Op. 147
- The Gadfly (excerpts)
arr. Vadim Borisovsky
Lawrence Power performs the chamber music of Shostakovich. The center piece is the Viola Sonata, Shostakovich’s last completed work, premiered posthumously, on what would have been the composer’s sixty-ninth birthday. The amazing slow finale reworks the opening of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata—a tribute to a composer he revered.
Shostakovich, the film composer, also takes a bow in the form of “The Gadfly”, with its famous ‘Romance’ beloved of violinists everywhere. That this works just as compellingly on the viola is triumphantly displayed in the arrangement made by Vadim Borisovsky (founding violist of the Beethoven Quartet), one of the Five Pieces he recast from Shostakovich’s original.
Shostakovich’s 24 Piano Preludes have also proved irresistible to transcribers and here we have the seven brilliantly reworked by a pupil of Borisovsky, Yevgeny Strakhov.
Here is a video of violist Lawrence Power in Bowen’s viola concerto
Tags: Shostakovich, Lawrence Power, Sonata, Preludes