Defying the cultural anaemia of post-war Soviet Russia, the First Violin Concerto in A minor, (1947-48), dedicated to David Oistrakh, took shape at a time of severe censorship and purge. Following some dozen rehearsals in the presence of Shostakovich, Oistrakh with Mravinsky and the Leningrad Philharmonic gave the first performance of the Concerto on 29th October 1955 - to "a rapturous ovation". Not falling "easily into one's hands", it was, he declared, an "innovational" work, remarkable for "the surprising seriousness and depth of its artistic content, its absolute symphonic thinking", that posed "exceedingly interesting problems for the performer, who plays, as it were, a pithy 'Shakespearian' role, which demands complete emotional and intellectual involvement, and gives ample opportunities not only to demonstrate virtuosity but also to reveal deepest feelings, thoughts and moods".

Shostakovich first played through the music at the piano for Oistrakh and his son, Igor, in 1948 - "with a virtuosity which itself would have been admirable ...if he had not been so deeply moved by the music ...The tragedy of the images conquered one as much as the lyrics of the whole structure" (Igor, 1977). Western commentators seem undecided as to the extent of alteration (if any) the work may have undergone in the seven year interim between creation and performance. We have Igor's word, however, that his father knew for certain of "the composer ." working on a second version". We know that David Oistrakh himself not only edited the violin part but also gave "real help in the work's composition", presumably after 1948 (Literaturnaya Gazeta, 8th June 1957), and we have a letter from Shostakovich to Oistrakh both confirming changes made following the first performance, and regretting his inability "to produce a new orchestration of the beginning of the finale".

In the Liszt-Brahms-Busoni tradition, the work is in four movements - Nocturne, Scherzo, Passacaglia and Burlesca, with a Cadenza (as organically germane as anything in Beethoven) bridging the last two. Schwarz (Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 1972) speaks of the "contemplative and ethereal" character of the first; the "rough-hewn middle section suggesting a Jewish folk- dance" of the "sparkling" second; the "lapidary grandeur" of the third; and the "devil-may-care abandonment" of the last. Over a decade earlier, Oistrakh had found other adjectives. Atmospherically, the Nocturne (originally adagio) was "not all melancholy hopelessness, but ...a suppression of feelings, of tragedy in the best sense of purification". The Scherzo (the soloist "concretizing" with the woodwind) was "evil, demoniac, prickly". The Burlesca, on the other hand, he considered to have been wrongly labeled, the imagery of its title communicating little of "the festive character or Russian color of the music, suggestive of a joyous folk party, even the bagpipes of traveling musicians. I would look for another name to convey the wildness and shining jubilation of its deeply Russian experience". In consequence of his legendary autumn 1972 London recording with Maxim Shostakovich, the composer's son, he wrote of the Cadenza as stemming "from a gradual dynamic intensification demanding an irreversible forward movement and a gigantic inexhaustible vigor".

Stylistically and thematically, the music's strata of peasant gaiety and profound gravity challengingly span the earlier (cheerful) Ninth Symphony and later (serious) Tenth. Indeed certain elements -passages from the Scherzo, for instance, the autobiographical DSCH motto (the notes D, E flat, C, B in German nomenclature) - were to resurface again in the latter. Elsewhere Shostakovich's inspiration seems to recall his greater wartime utterances - the Yiddish step of the Second Piano Trios finale, the passacaglia of the Eighth Symphony. The First Violin Concerto is scored for piccolo, three flutes, three oboes, cor anglais, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, double bassoon, four horns, tuba, timpani, tam-tam, xylophone, celesta, two harps and strings.

Writer: Ates Orga