Michael Houstoun: Shostakovich’s 'Piano Concerto No. 2'

Stalin died in 1953 and Shostakovich wrote his second Piano Concerto in 1957. That perhaps is the primary reason the concerto contains
such high and happy spirits. For so many years during the Stalin regime, Shostakovich had a suitcase permanently packed, half expecting at any moment to be arrested and sent away to a gulag. To be liberated from such a threat would surely release those elements of joy and simple beauty which find the most wonderful expression in this concerto.

It was written on the occasion of Shostakovich’s son Maxim’s 19th birthday who played its first performance at his graduation from the Moscow Conservatory. Shostakovich pokes fun in the finale at the sort of pianistic exercises that Maxim would have had to repeat endlessly during his studies there. He does reference the dark militarism of the Stalin years in the first movement, but that is obliterated completely in the balm of the glorious slow movement, justly famous, the inspiration of a magnificent genius.What a pleasure to come and play it all with the DSO and my long-time colleague James Judd. It’s the perfect concerto for a celebratory gala!