L. van Beethoven. Sonata No. 8 for Piano (Second movement). Instrumentations

L. van Beethoven. Sonata No. 8 for piano, second movement

Instrumentation for Small and for String Orchestra

1921–1922, Petrograd

Orchestra:

1. 2 Flauti, 2 Oboi, 2 Clarinetti (B), 2 Fagotti - 2 Corni (F) - Archi
2. Violini I, Violini II, Viole, Violoncelli, Contrabassi

Duration: 5 ′ 30 ″.

Arrangements for orchestras of different sizes (not marked by opus numbers), which have survived in manuscript collections, include the Fugue in E flat major from Volume Two of Johann Sebastian Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov’s romance I Waited for Thee in the Grotto at the Appointed Hour, Franz Schubert’s Military March No. 1 (originally for piano four hands), Robert Schumann’s Oriental Picture No. 5 (originally for piano four hands), fragments of Johannes Brahms’s Rhapsody Op. 119, No. 4 (originally for piano), as well as excerpts from two of Ludwig van Beethoven’s piano sonatas—the first movement of Sonata No. 32 (Shostakovich’s score has not survived in its entirety) and the second movement of Sonata No. 8 (“Pathétique”).

Shostakovich began taking orchestration classes in October 1920, during his second year at the Petrograd Conservatoire. It was a two-year course. The assignments consisted in orchestrating piano pieces. Shostakovich’s works mentioned above date to 1921-1922, when the students moved from acquiring basic instrumentation skills to carrying out practical assignments, and precede the orchestrations of his own works. He did two arrangements of Beethoven’s Adagio cantabile in A flat major from Sonata No. 8 in C minor: one for string orchestra and one for small symphony orchestra with paired woodwinds, without trumpets and timpani.

This work was the beginning composer’s first creative approach to the music of Ludwig van Beethoven, a representative of the Viennese classical school, and is of immense interest as one of the first attempts at orchestral writing by the brilliant instrumentation expert that Shostakovich later became known as in music history.