Dmitry Borisovich Kabalevsky (1904–1987)
Piano Sonatas
Dmitry Borisovich Kabalevsky was born in St Petersburg
on 30 December 1904. Having studied at the Moscow
Conservatory with both Nicolay Myaskovsky and
Alexander Goldenweiser, graduating in composition
(1929) then piano (1930), he was appointed a senior
lecturer there in 1932 and made a full professor seven
years later. Riding out the 1920s ideological ferment as a
member of both the progressive Association of Soviet
Musicians and the conservative Russian Association of
Proletarian Musicians, he found his mature style in the
following decade through two works which achieved an
international success. The Second Symphony (1934),
championed by Arturo Toscanini and Malcolm Sargent
among others, evinces a drama and lyricism such as
Prokofiev made central to his music on returning to the
Soviet Union, while the opera Colas Breugnon (1938),
based on the satiric novel by Romain Rolland, combines
Western European neo-Classicism and Russian folk-music
to potent dramatic effect.
Although his suite The Comedians (1940) has enjoyed
lasting popularity, and his work in the theatre and cinema
gained official approval so that he was among the few
notable Soviet composers not to be censored by the
notorious Zhdanov Decree of 1948 (though some
commentators believe he avoided being blacklisted by
persuading officials to substitute Myaskovsky’s name for
his own), Kabalevsky was unable to maintain comparable
success in his music of the 1950s and 1960s. His later
operas failed to hold the Soviet stage, and though certain
piano works have remained near the periphery of the
modern repertoire, his greatest success was with such
compositions as the Cello Sonata (1962) and the Second
Cello Concerto (1964), works whose often introspective
manner is essentially at odds with the rôle of the dutiful
citizen to which Kabalevsky aspired as a Soviet artist,
and which led him to criticize younger colleagues who
pursued a more experimental path during the 1960s and
1970s.
Kabalevsky’s most lasting achievement was probably
in the field of music education—notably with the
developing in his later years of a systematic programme
of music in schools which, together with his extensive
piano and choral output for children and young people,
offers many striking similarities with the didactic activities
of such otherwise different contemporaries as Zoltán
Kodály and Carl Orff. Apart from the Fourth Piano
Concerto and several overly elegiac song-cycles, he
completed only a few original compositions during the
period prior to his death in Moscow on 14 February
1987.
Abstract instrumental pieces feature prominently in
Kabalevsky’s earlier years, with the piano sonatas giving
a good (though by no means inclusive) account of his
development over two decades. Not the least of their
attractions is the acuity with which they reflect the spirit
of the time without venturing into overtly radical or
inherently reactionary musical territory, and thereby
enhancing the repertoires of pianists from both inside and
outside the Soviet Union. Indeed, the last two sonatas have
been championed by such contrasting pianists as Vladimir
Horowitz and Benno Moiseiwitsch.
The First Sonata (1927) is among Kabalevsky’s earliest
published works, with the influence of Prokofiev seldom
far away. The first movement begins with a theme whose
harmonic complexity is in contrast with its successor’s
folk-like simplicity. The development uses both themes,
reaching a notably rhetorical climax before heading to a
modified reprise in which the second theme opens out into
a brief but eventful coda. The slow movement begins with
one of Kabalevsky’s most appealing ideas, melody and
accompaniment distributed evenly between the two hands,
which gains in emotional intensity before resuming its
pensive course. There is a further climax, then a winding
down to the wistful close. The finale starts in bravura
fashion, though with a subsidiary theme that has overtones
of French music from the period, before a passage of
relative austerity presages a fugal treatment of the opening
theme. After a modified reprise, the coda begins calmly but
proceeds via ominous chords to the return of the main
theme and on to a decisive close.
Along with the 24 Preludes immediately preceding it,
the Second Sonata (1945) represents the peak of
Kabalevsky’s writing for piano. The first movement
begins with a strongly contrapuntal idea that is
complemented by the suave but no less determined theme
that follows. Dying away in the bass, this leads to a central
section of forceful ostinato rhythms, reaching a
culmination of considerable virtuosity at the height of
which the reprise ensues. This time, the second theme is
all but omitted to make way for a fateful coda. Taking its
cue from this, the second movement opens in a mood of
subdued melancholy over a somberly undulating bass.
There is a more plaintive and open-textured central section
that soon takes on greater eloquence, leading seamlessly
into the initial music which this time builds to a climax of
starkly repeated chords before the calmly fatalistic close.
The finale banishes such introspection with a toccata-like
drive such as the resolute second theme does little to
dispel. The central span focuses on an elaboration of the
latter, then the return of its predecessor ushers in a
modified reprise which makes possible the surging
dynamism of the closing pages.
Completed immediately afterwards, the Third Sonata
(1946) could hardly provide a greater contrast. The first
movement begins in a mood of Haydnesque equanimity
that is continued by the capering second theme. A tensile
development centres on the first of these themes, after
which its successor is freely reprised on the way to a coda
that unexpectedly tapers off into silence. The slow
movement is pervaded by a calmly unfolding theme
which is leant a certain gravitas by its methodical stepwise
progression, for all that the central section introduces a
degree of emotional anxiety which is leavened by a subtly
elaborated return of the main theme and then thrown into
relief by the inwardness of the coda. The finale once again
dispels any such ambivalence with an agile theme that
takes on greater character as it unfolds. The central section
amasses real momentum, spilling over into a reprise of
the initial idea and then a coda that steers the work
towards its hectic conclusion.
In addition to the three sonatas, Kabalevsky also wrote
two crisply neo-classical sonatinas that each provide a
telling foil to his larger-scale symphonic works from the
early 1930s. Thus in the notably brief First Sonatina
(1930), the first movement pivots between its athletic and
poetic themes with a telling poise and concision, before
its successor unfolds in a mood of ruminative calm and
with an unforced simplicity, while the finale recalls the
opening with a polyphonic dexterity that is carried through
to a breathless ending. The Second Sonatina (1933) is
slightly more extended—the first movement highly
resourceful in its imitative texture and laconic manner,
then the central movement pursues a more relaxed but no
less integrated discourse, while the bustling finale utilizes
a whole range of contrapuntal devices on its way to an
incisive close.
Richard Whitehouse