Violin Sonata (Shostakovich)

Oistrakh collaborated with Shostakovich on several of the composer's major works, purportedly contributing his own insight and suggestions based on the violin's strengths and technical limitations.

Before the official public premiere in May, Oistrakh and Shostakovich recorded the work informally in the latter's apartment, though the composer's physical handicap (he was diagnosed with polio in 1965) and a relative lack of rehearsal and polish is evident in the performance.

Oistrakh later recorded the sonata with Sviatoslav Richter on piano for the official release (USSR Melodiya CM-02355-6 Deep-Blue Stereo Label).

[2] In soft crotchet (or quarter-note) octaves, a tone-row in the piano opens the work, reminiscent of the first bars of Sergei Prokofiev's Violin Sonata No.

Both composers follow darkly threatening opening material with hushed tracery that returns near the movements' respective finishes, and both end as inconclusively as they begin.

Tempo remains constant throughout its six-minute duration, however, so various rhythms diversify and give structure to the movement, characterized overall by a gritty relentlessness.

Instead of actually adjusting tempo or dynamics, Shostakovich often prefers growing perceived accelerandos and crescendos out of thickening textures and shorter note values, which, particularly at Rehearsal 32, 47, and 51 give the movement the effect of frenzy or perhaps desperation.

The passacaglia is occasionally interrupted or prolonged but otherwise it never stops repeating until the final, cadenza like, statement by violin solo is reached (rehearsal 75).