Piano Concerto No. 2 in F major, Op. 102

Program notes

About the Work

Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his Second Piano Concerto at the beginning of 1957 as a nineteenth-birthday present for his son Maxim, who was then a student pianist. Maxim gave the first performance on 10 May 1957 at the Moscow Conservatory. The piece is short, about twenty minutes, in three movements, and its solo part is brilliant without being forbidding: it was made for a young player to shine in.

The composer was dismissive about it. In a letter to his pupil Edison Denisov, written shortly after he finished the score, he said the concerto had no artistic merit to speak of. Writers have never agreed on how seriously to take that. It may be modesty, or a private joke at the expense of official language, or a way of getting his retaliation in first. Audiences have ignored the verdict.

What makes the piece unusual in his output is its mood. There is very little of the bitterness or double meaning that listeners expect from him. The outer movements are quick, bright and full of family humour, and the slow movement between them is one of the most openly tender things he wrote.

The orchestra is modest: piccolo, pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons, four horns, timpani, snare drum and strings. There are no trumpets or trombones.

What to Listen For

I. Allegro. The bassoons set off with a perky march that could accompany toy soldiers, and the piano joins a few bars later with a simple tune in bare octaves, both hands playing the same notes. The movement is in sonata form, and the march keeps returning, louder each time. There is a full solo cadenza before the close.

II. Andante. Muted strings begin alone in C minor with something close to a chorale. Then the piano enters and the key turns to C major: a slow, descending melody over rolling triplets in the left hand. Listen for the gentle rub of two notes in the melody against three in the accompaniment.

III. Allegro. The finale follows without a break. Its first theme is a quick dance in two, and its second is in 7/8 time, with plucked strings that sound a little like a balalaika. Later come pages of scales and patterns in the style of the Hanon finger exercises that piano students are made to practise, a joke between father and son. The ending is a dash for the line in F major.