Uploaded November 2016 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Viola: Isabelle van Keulen
Piano: Ronald Brautigam
Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 147 is the last composition by Dmitri Shostakovich. Completed in July 1975, just weeks before his death, it is dedicated to Fyodor Druzhinin, violist in the Beethoven Quartet. The work received its official premiere in October 1975 with the performing forces of violist Fyodor Druzhinin and pianist Mikhail Muntyan. Appearing at the end of the composer's compositional output, the Sonata for Viola and Piano effectively represents the bleak, mortality-obsessed late style composition of Shostakovich.
The work unfolds in three movements, following a relatively straightforward tempo scheme of slow-fast-slow. The first movement, Andante, begins with a sparse pizzicato figure in the viola, accompanied by an equally stark piano line, followed by an explosive and wrenching middle section, and closing with a remembrance of the movement’s opening. The second movement, Allegretto, is characterized by sharp contrasting of dry, pointed figures with smooth, connected passages; the primary material of the movement was borrowed directly from Shostakovich’s unfinished opera The Gamblers (1942), granting the movement a vocal and dramatic quality.
0:00 I. Moderato
8:27 II. Allegretto
15:24 III. Adagio
Viola: Isabelle van Keulen
Piano: Ronald Brautigam
Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 147 is the last composition by Dmitri Shostakovich. Completed in July 1975, just weeks before his death, it is dedicated to Fyodor Druzhinin, violist in the Beethoven Quartet. The work received its official premiere in October 1975 with the performing forces of violist Fyodor Druzhinin and pianist Mikhail Muntyan. Appearing at the end of the composer's compositional output, the Sonata for Viola and Piano effectively represents the bleak, mortality-obsessed late style composition of Shostakovich.
The work unfolds in three movements, following a relatively straightforward tempo scheme of slow-fast-slow. The first movement, Andante, begins with a sparse pizzicato figure in the viola, accompanied by an equally stark piano line, followed by an explosive and wrenching middle section, and closing with a remembrance of the movement’s opening. The second movement, Allegretto, is characterized by sharp contrasting of dry, pointed figures with smooth, connected passages; the primary material of the movement was borrowed directly from Shostakovich’s unfinished opera The Gamblers (1942), granting the movement a vocal and dramatic quality.
0:00 I. Moderato
8:27 II. Allegretto
15:24 III. Adagio
