Arranged 1955; 10 minutes

These five pieces derive from film, theater and ballet scores that Shostakovich composed alongside his major symphonies, string quartets and operas.  His apprenticeship for film work was served in his teens.   Then, he would improvise all manner of scenes for silent films on a cinema piano, helping support his family after his father’s death, during a time of hardship in St. Petersburg.   Later in life, Shostakovich learned to work speedily within the film industry, particularly when political pressure was falling heavily on his music for concert performance.  His trusted friend Levon Atovmian (1901-73), a composer, arranger and well-connected man about the music industry, would then select and arrange music from Shostakovich’s many film scores resulting in concert suites, including Hamlet (1932) and The Gadfly (1955), plus four Ballet Suites.  Atovmian transcribed tonight’s Five Pieces for two violins and piano in 1955.  

The lyrical, gently melancholy Prelude comes from film music Shostakovich wrote for The Gadfly, scene 15 to be precise, headed ‘Guitars.’  The toe-tapping, light-hearted Gavotte is drawn from music he wrote for a stage adaptation of scenes from Balzac’s novels, titled The Human Comedy (1934).  The Elegy is ‘The Panorama of Paris’ theme from the same stage adaptation, also to be found in the third of four Ballet Suites that Atovmian put together.  The Waltz, which similarly appears in other Atovmian arrangements, is of no known abode, while the sprightly Polka finale comes from the ballet The Limpid Stream (1935), where it bears the remarkable title “Dance of the Milkmaid and the Tractor Driver.”