S H O S T A K O V I C H

24 P R E L U D E S A N D F U G U E S

O P . 8 7

I N T E R N A T I O N A L P I A N O

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Reviewed by Graham Lock

‘I play Bach every day. It has become a real necessity for me’.

Dmitri Shostakovich, 1951

In July 1950, Shostakovich was in Leipzig for a festival marking the bicentenary of Bach's death. As a jurist for the

international piano competition, he heard his young compatriot Tatiana Nikolayeva play music by Bach, including a

Prelude and Fugue from the Well Tempered Clavier. It proved to be a propitious moment. While he had long admired

Bach, he found Nikolayeva’s playing inspiring and began to think about composing hi own cycle of preludes and

fugues.

Although he initially had in mind a set of technical exercises, he soon realized the expressive possibilities and, in an

extraordinary burst of creativity, composed the entire cycle of 24 Prelude and Fugues, his Op 87, between October

1950 and February 1951. During this period, he played and discussed the work with friends, including Nikolayeva, who

acted as page-turner when he presented his cycle to the Composers' Union in Moscow in May 1951. (Under the Soviet

system, new works had to be officially approved before they could be published and performed in public).

The event became a fiasco. Shostakovich was a controversial figure: his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk had provoked

Stalin's ire in the 1930s because of its avant-garde leanings, and his music was denounced again in the notorious

Zhdanov Decree of 1948, which aimed to stamp out ‘Formalism’. Whether through expedience or envy, several

members of the Composers' Union took the chance to humiliate Shostakovich at the meeting, vilifying the Preludes

and Fugues as 'ugly'. 'morbid', 'unhealthy' and 'of little ideological significance'. Nikolayeva spoke out in his defence, as

did the eminent pianist Mariya Yudina, bur to no avail. The official report from the meeting condemned Shostakovich's

music a 'wasted labour'.

Undeterred, Nikolayeva learned the Preludes and Fugue and played them herself at a meeting of the Composers'

Union the following year. This time they were approved. (She was a more polished pianist than Shostakovich, who had

apparently played poorly at the original meeting, but even so the Union's volte-face seems remarkable. Nikolayeva

gave the public premiere in Leningrad in December 1952 and a decade later she made the first recording of the

complete cycle for the Melodiya label: Shostakovich, who attended the sessions, gave her performance his blessing.

Nikolayeva continued to champion the work and made two further recordings of the complete cycle, in 1987 and

1990.

Ironically, while her 1962 recording is close to definitive, it is these two later, rather laboured accounts that became

widely available and better known in the West; despite their faults, they helped to establish the Prelude and Fugue

both in the public mind and in the canon.

There are now more than a dozen recording of the complete cycle available; the music has also inspired a book of

poetry. Joanna Boulter's Twenty Four Preludes & Fugues on Dmitri Shostakovich (Arc, 2006), and last year brought the

first book-length academic study. Mark Mazullo's fascinating Shostakovich's Preludes and Fugues: Context, Style,

Performance, published by Yale University Press. Yudina's prophecy that the apparatchiks' jibes would 'wither away at

their roots' has proved correct: Op 87 is now recognised a one of the 20th century's greatest work for solo piano. What

remains at issue is its precise nature.

The Music

To compose only what you want to compose is to test the boundaries of politics

- Joanna Boulter, 'Fugue'

Although the Well-Tempered Clavier was the model for the Prelude and Fugues, there are many differences between

the two. Unlike Bach, Shostakovich arranged his cycle not in chromatic order but according to an ascending circle of

fifths (with each major key pair followed by a pair in the relative minor). A Mark Mazullo points out, this structure

enabled Shostakovich to treat the cycle like a narrative, beginning with the inviting C major Prelude and ending with

the tremendous power of the D minor Fugue, a suitably epic climax to the cycle's journey. The first 12 Preludes and

Fugues are, generally, shorter and lighter in mood: the second 12 become both more ruminative and more troubled,

so the cycle seems to accrue gravitas as it progresses.

The music traverse a wide spectrum of emotion, from the funny A major Fugue to others that are suffused with more

ambiguous and tragic feeling. There arc other kinds of diversity too. Shostakovich alludes to Russian and Jewish folk

music, evokes bells and chanting choirs, and draw on the full resources of the Western classical tradition: various

Preludes, for example, employ the sarabande, the passacaglia, the chorale, the toccata and the etude. He also pays

homage to specific composers, notably Bach and Mussorgsky, although critics claim to hear reference to many other.

from Couperin to Schubert to Mahler.

Can they all be right? Shostakovich once said he enjoyed Jewish music because it was ‘multifaceted … It can appear to

be happy while it is tragic'; this, he added, was close to his idea of ‘what music should be. There should always be two

layers in music.' Given his life story, it is tempting to listen below the surface of his music and to hear the deeper layer

a hidden political subtexts. But they are hard to interpret with any certainty. Take the allusions to Jewish music in the

Preludes and Fugues, such as the klezmer-like F-sharp minor Prelude: is Shostakovich taking a stand against Stalin's

rampant anti- Semitism or did he include it because, as he says above, he liked Jewish music as music? Aesthetic

choice or political message? The frenetic, near-serialist D-flat major Fugue, its subject an eleven-note tone row, is

another puzzle. Is it cocking a snoot at Soviet strictures against 'Formalism', as many commentators assume? Is it a

parody of mechanistic Western modernism? Or is this a composer determined to explore all the possibilities of

musical language, whatever the political risks?

Perhaps such ambiguities are pan of the point. To leave your music open to interpretation, multifaceted and

multilayered, is to leave an aesthetic breathing space inside the vacuum of political repression; a tiny refuge from the

tyranny of official truth. As Joanna Boulter says in 'Fugue': These are secret songs, melodies in the inner voices, for

those with ears to hear.

The Recordings

How many pianists have the ears to hear? There arc only 15 recordings of the complete Preludes and Fugues currently

available, so I have added a handful of discs that feature excerpts from the cycle by two of the most authoritative

interpreters who never recorded the entire work: Sviatoslav Richter and the composer himself Shostakovich made the

first recording of 16 of the 24 Preludes and fugues for the State archives in December 1951 and February 1952.

Though a brilliant pianist in his younger days, by the 1950s his technique had become less secure, afflicted by nerves

and a weakness in his right hand that would later curtail his public performances. Nonetheless, these sessions are

essential listening for their insights into the composer's interpretations of his own music. He's not afraid to depart

from the score, for example, taking the C major Fugue faster and the G- sharp minor Prelude lower than the

metronome markings, each time to good effect. His playing style is often described as brisk and unsentimental, and

he can sound very jittery, as in the A minor and G major Fugue, even reducing the flowing A major Fugue to a messy

scramble. Yet elsewhere his touch is telling and apt - in the G minor Prelude, the elegiac F major Prelude - and his

treatment of the great D minor Fugue is a masterclass in pacing and tension.

His colleague Sviatoslav Richter began to perform excerpts from Op. 87 in the mid-1950s. A live Moscow recital from

1956 feature eight of the Prelude and Fugue, including a thrilling dash through the dissonances of the D-flat major

Fugue, but the sound is recessed and muffled. Two months later he recorded several of the same pieces again in the

clearer acoustic of a Prague studio: the playing is detached, as if he were still finding the music's measure, though

there are fine versions of the G major and B minor pair. His best-known and justly celebrated foray’s into the Prelude

and Fugues are the six he recorded in Paris in 1963, where he reaches into the soul of the music. A prancing A-Rat

major Fugue, a crepuscular E minor Prelude, the G-sharp minor Prelude’s flinty grandeur: all reveal his imperious

finesse and impeccable judgments of tempo and dynamic.

When she made her debut recording of the cycle in 1962, Tatiana Nikolayeva too was at the height of her powers,

playing here with a serene assurance that perhaps only Richter ha matched. She spins a subtle enchantment from the

start and is especially hypnotic in some of the later, more meditative fugue, notably the mysterious B-flat minor,

where she seems to float through inner pace.

Her D minor Prelude and Fugue is a fitting culmination, awesome power given full rein by her awesome control.

Thirteen years passed before Australian pianist Roger Woodward recorded the first complete cycle in the West.

Woodward labels Nikolayeva ‘romantic’ and not only aligns himself with the alternative 'modernist' pianism of

Shostakovich and Richter ('detached, percussive, dry') but extends it into the realm of the absurd, zipping through

many of the early Prelude and Fugue at bizarrely fast tempo, as if denying himself the tiniest crumb of self-expression.

He eases up a little in the second half and the F-sharp major and E-flat minor pair in particular are effective, but the

closing Prelude and Fugue spool our in willful insouciance.

Nikolayeva was in her sixties when he recorded her second and third sets in 1987 and 1990. They are markedly less

successful than her first: her passion for the music remains undimmed but neither finger nor brain are as nimble as

they were and at faster tempo the results can sound fumbled. The leisurely tempo she adopts for some of the

sprightlier pieces are appealing bur the more contemplative fugues sometimes sink too deeply into thought. The

decline in her D minor Fugue is especially sad: the 1987 version is ponderous, the 1990 struggles to a plateau rather

than a climax.

These sets were the first versions of the Preludes and Fugues many of us heard (and loved) and their release

prompted a steady flow of new interpretations throughout the 1990s.

Marios Papadopoulos treats the cycle to a cool, respectful appraisal that focuses on tonal and structural clarity. His

diligent exposition of the score is like a spacious discourse that at times leaves the music bereft of emotional hell.

Momentum also suffers: he is too studied at some tempos (C-sharp minor Prelude), too languid at others (E minor, F-

sharp minor Fugues).

Keith Jarrett's 1991 recording brought a fresh perspective from a pianist with no allegiance to either the romantic or

modernist traits of the classical tradition. Not that his jazz roots are very evident here, except perhaps in the rhythmic

urgency he imparts. This is a mixed blessing: beneficial in, say, his vivacious account of the B major Prelude and Fugue,

while leaving many others sounding rushed. (This is the fastest version of the complete cycle after Woodward. For an

experienced improviser, Jarrett also show a curious reluctance to characterize the music.

While his pianism is always sparkling and crisp, the lack of a more probing sense of engagement means much of the

cycle come over as empty and anonymous.

Caroline Weichert, daughter and ex¬ student of distinguished German pianist Gregor Weichert, offers a consistently

thoughtful, clearly articulated perusal of Op. 87: I particularly like the ominous air she gives the E major Prelude and

her dancing dispatch of it partner fugue. In her liner note he describes Shostakovich' music as a 'trompe-l'oeil’,

concealing 'a volcano of rage and de pair beneath a veneer of innocence and convention’. It's a shame her rather

unruffled playing barely hints at these hidden drama: indeed, her too-smooth take on ~u h turbulent piece as the G-

sharp minor and D-flat major Fugue is the set's most serious drawback.

The remaining recording from the 1990s were made by a trio of Soviet émigrés, each with a very different approach.

The first thing to say about Boris Petrushansky is that, at 185 minutes, his is the longest cycle on disc (an hour longer

than the Woodward. The second thing is that his set is more varied and accessible than it length might suggest.

His slow tempos, with their carefully placed accents, often have a canny purpose and reveal new aspects of the music,

such as the melting tenderness he coaxes from a song-like C-sharp minor Fugue and his beautifully sustained

unfolding of the E-flat minor Prelude and Fugue. Yet the excessive rubato can be problematic: the elegant, valedictory

F major Prelude is pulled apart by his accentuated deliberation.

If Petrushansky divided opinion. Vladimir Ashkenazy's set polarised it further: admirer praised his immaculate classical

technique; critics found his playing here dispassionate and monochrome. Both sides have a point: his exquisite poise

often serves the music well, as in his delicate take on the E major Prelude; yet his reserve inhibits him in such carefree

moments as the A major Fugue and. more crucially, prevent him from plumbing the deeper feelings others have

found elsewhere.

The last of this Russian trio, Konstantin Scherbakov, is a brighter, bolder, brasher alternative to the others. His playing

in the earlier Preludes and Fugues is lively and attractive: later results are more variable - a fun B-flat major pairing, an

anodyne F minor - and the closing stages of the cycle arc spoilt by some tripping tempos, while more vagaries of

tempo scupper the c1imactic D minor fugue.

After a hiatus at the beginning of the millennium, the last five years have brought a flurry of new versions. The first

three need not detain us long. Kori Bond's set is burdened by a rhythmic earnestness that grounds the more speedy,

extrovert pieces. Her serious mien pay dividend in quietly compelling accounts of the B-flat minor and C minor pair,

and he give the D minor Prelude a nicely weighted gravitas, but then fails to build momentum in the Fugue.

The notes to Muzla Rubackyte’s recording liken the D minor Fugue to 'a cathedral rising to the heavens'; alas, the

image this performance evokes is closer to a cathedral stalling in mid-air and crashing in a haze of pedal! A resonant

acoustic Rubackyte’s fluid way with phrases (they lose shape and definition, like writing in water), her hurried tempo

and a tendency to prettify add up to a set with few redeeming qualities.

The graceful air to David Jalbert's C major Prelude is very welcoming, and his fluency and clarity make him a charming

guide to miniature gem like the A minor Prelude and the A major Fugue. Yet other pieces feel too contained and, as

the cycle proceeds, his unassuming approach feels underpowered: the crucial D-flat major and D minor Fugues are all

surface speed, no hidden menace. By the end, the overall impression is or a set that is too neat and airbrushed:

Shostakovich-lite.

In contrast, Jenny Lin's C major Prelude is off-putting, marred by snapped-off phrases, is and her A major Fugue has a

strange, hard-edged formality. But hers is a cycle that grow in stature as it rises to the challenge is of the more

ambitious Preludes and Fugues. Her assurance and power reap rich rewards too, notably in the imposing E-flat minor

Prelude and a properly c1imatic D minor Fugue, but also generally in a set that, after a faltering start, prove more

responsive than most to the music's panorama of colour, drama and passion.

More responsive than most, but not all. Because Alexander Melnikov's 2008-09 cycle is a towering achievement. He

grabs your attention with the hushed intensity of his C major Prelude and never lets go; he sustains taut inner

dialogues to me mesmerising effect (the F-sharp minor Fugue, the C minor Prelude) and his virtuosity extends from

the controlled frenzy of the D-flat major Fugue to the impossible moto perpertuo brilliance of the B flat major Prelude.

He brings each individual prelude and fugue into vivid focus, and plays due attention to the harsh, quasi-dissonances

of the 'aggravated mode' that Shostakovich devised, stretching the limits of the conventional tonal language to which

Soviet censure had confined him. Melnikov explains this in his booklet essay (and on the accompanying DVD interview)

and applies it in his performance; nowhere more tellingly than in the D minor Fugue, which he represents a both epic

struggle and epic climax. Here, at last, is a vision of Shostakovich's magnificent work that can stand next to those of

Nikolayeva and Richter.

Nikolayeva, Richter and Melnikov are the pianists who allows us to glimpse into the music's history and soul. Who

have the ears to hear its 'secret songs'.