Massimo Paris & Miyuki Washimiya - Shostakovich: Sonatas, Op. 40 & 147 (2018)

The success of the music of Shostakovich in the XX century has been one of the key points in the evolution of the language of music and it has given one of the most important alternatives to the school of Vienna. With his own style always looking to the past and searching for those roots he felt to be corrupted by the totalitarian regime, which he tried to opposite to first with his symphonic works and then with the chamber ones. Shostakovich is not only one of the most important figures of his age but he also is one of the most important authors in the history of music. A really prolific composer, whose chamber works- free from the regime’s imposition- autonomously stand out as absolute masterpieces, no matter if they are the 15 quartets, the 24 planned ones, or the three sonatas dedicated to the instrumental duo. The most important of these compositions undoubtedly is the Third, dedicated to the Viola. The others actually are the First Sonata for Cello Op.40, here presented in the original transcription by Massimo Paris and the Second Sonata op. 134, dedicated to the Violin. The Sonata for Viola Op.147, more than be the last composition of the author, also is the extreme summa of his most significant works and so the definite point of arrival of his complex and articulated poetics. We can suppose that Shostakovich realized he would have never composed anything else after. He finished writing it between June and the first days of August 1975 and in the same month a lung cancer definitively closed his life and his artistic path. […]