The Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Opus 77, was originally written by Dmitri Shostakovich in 1947 - 1948. He was still working on the piece at the time of the Zhdanov decree, and in the period following the composer's denunciation the work could not be performed. In the period between the work's initial completion and the first performance on 29 October 1955, the composer and its dedicatee, David Oistrakh, worked on a number of revisions. The ...
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The Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Opus 77, was originally written by Dmitri Shostakovich in 1947 - 1948. He was still working on the piece at the time of the Zhdanov decree, and in the period following the composer's denunciation the work could not be performed. In the period between the work's initial completion and the first performance on 29 October 1955, the composer and its dedicatee, David Oistrakh, worked on a number of revisions. The work was finally premiered by the Leningrad Philharmonic under Yevgeny Mravinsky. It was well received, Oistrakh remarking on the "depth of its artistic content" and describing the violin part as a "pithy 'Shakespearian' role".
The concerto lasts around 35 minutes and has four movements, with a cadenza linking the final two:
The work is scored for piccolo, three flutes, three oboes, cor anglais, three clarinets (3rd doubling bass clarinet), two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, tuba, timpani, tambourine, tam-tam, xylophone, celesta, two...
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