Dilettante Music

After being condemned as a formalist in 1948 -- a condemnation which was just this side of a death threat and just the other side of being officially ostracized -- Shostakovich wrote either for popular entertainment or for his drawer. For popular entertainment, he wrote film scores and oratorios. For his drawer he wrote his First Violin Concerto and his Tenth Symphony. But there was one exception to this trend: the Twenty-four Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87. Composed quickly between October 10, 1950, and February 25, 1951, Shostakovich refused to consign these pieces to his drawer but rather insisted on playing them for the Composer's Union, the very body which had condemned him as a formalist. It was a brave aesthetic choice: there are few forms more formal than that of a prelude and fugue and few forms less likely to embody the notion of Socialist Realism, the official doctrine of all artistic endeavors in the U.S.S.R. in the late '40s and early '50s.

Despite furious debate within the Union, Shostakovich refused to relent and he continued to play the pieces. Who knows why he felt compelled to stand up for the preludes and fugues or why he felt so strongly about them, but one could understand if Shostakovich took great pride in his work. One could especially understand it if he took very great pride in the final prelude and fugue, the most massive prelude and fugue of all 24, the most blatantly heroic and the more clearly courageous piece he ever composed.

The powerful D minor prelude, a sarabande-like opening, sets the tone for the pair with its strongly accented and tenuto main theme and its maestoso yet pianissimo second theme. As he had in only a few of the other fugues, Shostakovich took one of the themes of the prelude as the subjects for his fugue. In this case, the pianissimo maestoso theme transforms into the six-bar opening theme which is fully developed in a D minor fugue. Yet not fully developed: when the first subject seems to be winding down, a seven-bar second subject built from sighing minor seconds over a striding bass appears and gradually accelerates the tempo until it is nearly twice as fast as the fugue's opening. At the height of the second theme's development, the first theme returns fortississimo in the bass. The double fugue blazes through to the most monumental conclusion to any of the fugues, a climax of both this prelude and fugue and all Twenty-four Preludes and Fugues.

The D minor prelude and fugue is by far Shostakovich's greatest work for the piano, one of his greatest works in any medium, and one of the greatest preludes and fugues for the piano since Beethoven's last piano sonata.

~ All Music Guide