Concet Report on Dimitri Shostakovich

I recently attended a concert in the Sutton Music Series entitled Shostakovich Centenary Tribute. The concert was held at the Morris R. Pitman Recital Hall on September 25, 2006. All of the pieces in this concert were composed by the late Dimitri Shostakovich. The date of this concert signifies the date of Shostakovich’s birth. It was performed by Stephanie Leon Shames who played the piano and Matthew Dane who played the viola. The concert environment was, like the dress of most the audience casual. The atmosphere before the concert was fairly informal the waiting audience consisted of several students like me. The hall was filled with the noise of conversation.

The stage was empty except for a small podium and a grand piano no performers were out and about. Once the lights dimmed everyone became quiet and through the door Ms. Shames comes out and goes strait to the piano in a much disciplined fashion no word about the upcoming piece was mentioned.

The First piece is entitled Three Fantastic Dances, Op.5 it has a form composed of three different movements. This was preformed as a solo played by only Ms. Shames. The historical style of this piece is from the Twentieth century. The first thing that I had notice is that there was no music on the piano for her to read, this whole work was executed from only memorization which I found amazing due to the complexity of the piece. The first movement, “Allegretto”, began with a melody that had a sort of skipping around effect. The melody would be considered had a very staccato style. It had an allegretto tempo which is no doubt what the name of the movement is referring to. The rhythm in this movement is mostly composed of dotted rhythms, due to the randomness of the notes played. The dynamics of the work varies very much it will be played very soft during one second and then shortly after the amplitude will increase as high as possible. With just the piano playing and with the superior acoustics of the recital hall the timbre was very clear. The second movement “Andantino” had a slower tempo than the first movement. The melody was a mix of both Legato and Staccato melodies. The whole work seems to be constantly going up and down throughout the whole piece. The third movement “Allegretto” was very similar to the first movement. The tempo rhythm and melody were all the same just the changes in amplitude were more intense in this movement. The duration of the whole piece was about 5 minutes in length. My reaction to this piece is amazement for one due to the complexitiy and for the performer who did it all by memory and to my ears accomplished it flawlessly. I believe that