Dmitri Shostakovich
       Early Piano Music

*  24 Preludes, op. 34
*  Aphorisms, op. 13
*  Piano Sonata No. 1, op. 12
*  Three Fantastic Dances, op. 5

Konstantin Scherbakov, piano.
Naxos 8.555781  Total time: 66:34

Summary for the Busy Executive: Lower your expectations a little.

In the Thirties, my mother studied to become a concert pianist and
worked on the 24 Preludes, so I knew these pieces before I had heard the
better-known Preludes and Fugues, op. 84.  Shostakovich wrote them in
the heady days of Soviet Modernism, before Stalin cracked down on or
even killed the most interesting artists in the country.  In the early
preludes, the composer doesn't concern himself with building an homage
to Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier but with giving free rein to his grotesque
humor.  There's nothing wrong with these pieces, especially in small
doses, but other than the composer's fecundity of ideas, there's also
little that wows you.  The preludes are all miniatures, and two important
tests of a miniature are that it interests you and satisfies you, despite
its short length.  Shostakovich passes the first test, but not the second.
I found myself wanting more from just about every piece.

On the other hand, the Aphorisms, written roughly five years earlier,
grab me.  For one thing, they seem conceived as an entire piece.
Shostakovich often goes to the trouble to link the end of one movement
to the beginning of another by transforming an ending bit into a starting
one.  You arrive to take off to a new place.  One also senses a hint of
Prokofiev, particularly that composer's Sarcasms, but there's plenty of
indications of the Shostakovich to come.  Prokofiev sounds even more
strongly throughout the first piano sonata, which Shostakovich wrote at
around twenty.  The level of mastery astonishes me.  It's not that the
form is perfect or the thematic argument is particularly coherent, by
any means, but that Shostakovich has mastered the shaping of musical
time over a long span.  The level of musical thought far exceeds normal
expectations for one so young.  This composer lets you know he has
something to say.  Prokofiev himself should have been grateful to have
written it.

The Three Fantastic Dances, in contrast, trifle with our affections, but
with good humor nevertheless.  The sixteen-year-old composer hasn't yet
found his voice or even anything close to it.  Whatever shock these
pieces carried once has long since discharged, but their charm remains.

Scherbakov does well with the material, but he's really only as good as
the music.  No big surprise or revelations here, he does best in the
sonata and in the Aphorisms, the most substantial pieces.

Steve Schwartz