Stravinsky violin concerto oistrakh biography
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Behind the Score: Shostakovich, Oistrakh and the Ukraine Connection
By Michael Cirigliano II
As audience members file into Orchestra Hall for this week’s Minnesota Orchestra concerts, many will know they’re about to hear one of the great concertos of the 20th century, Dmitri Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto. But what about the story behind the score?
Aside from its revered status as a showcase for virtuosity and expression, the concerto is an example of artistic resilience in the face of oppression, and a testament to the deep friendship between two musicians: the Saint Petersburg-born Shostakovich, and the concerto’s dedicatee, David Oistrakh, who was born, raised and trained in the Ukrainian port city of Odesa.
Gateway to the world
A cosmopolitan, economic powerhouse at the time of Oistrakh’s birth in 1908, Odesa had become a gateway to the world—a diverse city of cross-cultural currents, where discussions of music and art, politics and Ukrainian independence filled its sea of bustling cafes. For Oistrakh, who grew up in a musical Jewish family, his relationship with the violin eclipsed even his earliest memories. “However hard I try,” he wrote in his memoirs, “I can’t recall ever having been without a violin during my childhood.”
After receiving his first
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Quick Facts
- Composer’s life: Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, September 25, 1906; died in Moscow, August 9, 1975
- Year completed: 1948
- First performance: October 29 and 30, 1955, with the Leningrad (formerly St. Petersburg) Philharmonic under Yevgeny Mravinsky, with soloist David Oistrakh
- First BSO performance: November 1964, Erich Leinsdorf conducting, with soloist Leonid Kogan
- Approximate duration: 36 minutes
In addition to the solo violin, the score of Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1 calls for 2 flutes and piccolo (doubling 3rd flute), 2 oboes and English horn (doubling 3rd oboe), 2 clarinets and bass clarinet (doubling 3rd clarinet), 2 bassoons and contrabassoon (doubling 3rd bassoon), 4 horns, tuba, timpani, tam-tam, tambourine, xylophone, celesta, 2 harps, and strings (first and second violins, violas, cellos, and double basses). The concerto is about 37 minutes long.
When he set to work on his brooding and brilliantly virtuosic First Violin Concerto in the summer of 1947 at his dacha on the Gulf of Finland, Shostakovich had a specific soloist in mind: David Oistrakh (1908-1974). Nearly the same age, the two men had known each other for many years. In 1935, they had toured Turkey together as part of an official Soviet musical delegation; Oistrakh d