Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975):
Cello Concerto No. 1 in E flat major, Opus 107
Shostakovich wrote the First Cello Concerto for Mstislav Rostropovich during the summer of 1959. “I can only say that this concerto was first conceived quite a long time ago,” wrote the composer. “The original impulse came from hearing Sergei Prokofiev's Symphony-Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, which interested me greatly and aroused my desire also to try my hand at this genre.”
Rostropovich memorized the entire concerto in just four days and played it through for an “astounded” Shostakovich. Rostropovich was the soloist at the first performance on October 4, 1959. Eugene Mravinsky conducted the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra.
Conductor Kiril Kondrashin likened the First Cello Concerto to the First Violin Concerto. Both, he said, “have much in common: originality of form (particularly in regard to the position and function of the cadenza), the colorful music of the finales...and the concentrated lyricism of the slow movements.”
Shostakovich called the opening movement “an Allegretto in the style of a jocular march.” Its four-note motto recurs in the finale.
Phillip Ramey writes: “The highly expressive second movement features a broad cello cantilena. Connecting the slow movement and the energetic, high-spirited rondo-finale is a complex but highly effective solo cello cadenza which develops previously heard material. The Concerto ends brilliantly with arresting proclamations of the motto.”
Hector Berlioz (1803-1869):
Symphonie Fantastique, Opus 14
In 1827, Berlioz fell madly in love with an Irish actress named Harriet Smithson. She portrayed Ophelia and Juliet in Charles Kemble’s Shakespeare productions in Paris. Berlioz began sending her love letters, which she ignored. When she left Paris two years later, they still had never met.
Berlioz turned to his music as an outlet for his unrequited love. “I was on the point of beginning my great symphony, in which the development of my infernal passion is to be portrayed,” he wrote to a friend. “I have it all in my head, but I cannot write anything.”
Berlioz finally did write his Symphonie Fantastique, the first part of what he called “Episode in the Life of an Artist.” It was first performed at the Paris Conservatory on December 5, 1830. Berlioz played the timpani part. Harriet Smithson was not in the audience.
The composer provided an explicit program for the work: “A young musician of morbid sensibility and ardent imagination poisons himself with opium in a fit of amorous despair. The narcotic dose, too weak to result in death, plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by the strangest visions, during which his sensations, sentiments, and recollections are translated in his sick brain into musical thoughts and images. The beloved woman herself has become a melody…which he finds and hears everywhere.” Berlioz called this melody the idée fixe.
Accordingly, the five movements depict various dreams of our hero. The first movement, “Dreams, Passions,” finds him remembering his life before meeting his beloved. After hints in the slow introduction, the melody of his beloved is stated in full. In the second movement, he sees her at “A Ball,” in which her tune is transformed into a waltz. The third movement, “Scene in the Fields,” depicts shepherds, whose pastoral calm he contrasts with his own turmoil. In the fourth movement, “March to the Scaffold,” he dreams that he has killed his beloved and is being executed. The Finale, “Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath,” portrays the beloved involved in an infernal orgy with ghosts, witches and assorted monsters. The idée fixe changes into a grotesque version of the original. Berlioz also parodies the same Dies irae (“Day of Wrath” from the Mass for the Dead) used by Rachmaninoff and others in a grand free fugue to end the work.
It wasn’t until 1832 that Harriet Smithson heard the Symphonie Fantastique and realized that she was the source of its inspiration. In his Memoirs, Berlioz wrote: “From that moment, so she has often told me, she felt the room reel about her; she heard no more but sat in a dream, and at the end returned home like a sleepwalker.”
The pair finally met the next day and began a stormy courtship. Berlioz even threatened to poison himself on one occasion. The wedding took place on October 3, 1833, with Franz Liszt and Heinrich Heine as witnesses. It was not a happy union and they separated after nine years.
After Harriet’s death in 1854, Berlioz wrote to Liszt: “In spite of everything, she was always so dear to me. For the last twelve years, we have not been able either to live together or to part. These very tortures we suffered together have made this final separation more painful for me. She has been delivered from an appalling existence.” Liszt’s cold-blooded reply: “She inspired you, you loved her and sang your love, her mission was fulfilled.”