Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 03/24/2011, uploaded on 12/10/2011

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Dmitri Shostakovich’s piano works, on the whole, have never gained the attention bestowed upon his symphonic and chamber music. Among them, only the opus 87 Preludes and Fugues are particularly well-known. However, there are quaint pieces in the composer’s oeuvre, written for the piano, that perhaps deserve a little more attention. Composed in 1922, when Shostakovich was only sixteen years of age and a student at the Petrograd Conservatory, the Three Fantastic Dances are a sort of modern approach to traditional dance forms. Shostakovich called them in his “very first piano compositions,” and perhaps to him they were the first of any merit, but these three miniatures were in fact preceded by a handful of other works for the piano.

The opening piece is a march written in the unusual Locrian mode. Its whimsical main theme features a dotted rhythm that blithely carries the piece along, offset periodically by the momentary sternness of regular quarter notes. Overall the piece, with its unusual tonality and frequent whole-tone harmonies, has an impish quality and the quirkiness typical of its composer. The following waltz has a somewhat more subdued mood than the march. It ruminates over some supposed plaintive thought and then abruptly sweeps it away with a flourish only to take it up once again. Lastly, the polka has a lively gait, and seems to take its role as amusement very seriously and with a studied air. Shostakovich, however, makes use of “mistaken” notes that rather undercuts the piece’s seriousness and ordinary tonality, concluding in a quite unconventional cadence.      Joseph DuBose