Cello Concerto No. 1 (Shostakovich)

Shostakovich wrote the work for his friend Mstislav Rostropovich, who committed it to memory in four days.

The first recording was made in two days following the premiere by Rostropovich and the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Aleksandr Gauk.

The first concerto is widely considered to be one of the most difficult concert works for cello, along with the Sinfonia Concertante of Sergei Prokofiev, with which it shares certain features (such as the prominent role of isolated timpani strokes).

[2][not specific enough to verify] The first movement begins with a four-note main motive some believe is derived from the composer's musical cryptogram D-S-C-H for his name DSCH.

It is also related to a theme from the composer's score for the 1948 film The Young Guard, which illustrates a group of Soviet soldiers being marched to their deaths at the hands of the Nazis.

The solo cello plays its first melody in artificial harmonics with answers by the celesta, which leads into the cadenza.

It begins by developing the material from the cello's second theme of the second movement, twice broken by a series of slow pizzicato chords.

After the second time this is repeated, the cello's first theme of the second movement is played in an altered form.

At bar 105, a distorted version of Suliko, a song favoured by Stalin and used by Shostakovich in Rayok, his satire on the Soviet system, is played.

The bass instruments play a modified version of the theme, which is repeated by the solo cello after.