Shostakovich: A Collection of Children's Pieces, Op. 69

It was Robert Schumann’s Kinderszenen and Album fur die Jugend that inspired Tchaikovsky to start composition on his Children’s Album in 1878. He dedicated the set to his nephew Vladimir Davidoff (Bobik) who was 7 years old.‘For a long time I have been saying to myself that it would be a good thing to contribute, within the limits of my powers, to the enrichment of the piano literature for children, which is rather poor. I would like to compose a series of very easy little pieces with attractive titles like Schumann did’ he wrote to his patron Mme von Meck. In less than a week of writing these words he had completed the 24 pieces of his Children’s Album. Like Schumann’s works, there is nothing childlike about the music, rather it displays an adult mind totally understanding of a child’s view of the world, together with a tender nostalgia. Tchaikovsky’s Op.39 proved so popular that later Russian composers also composed works for children. In the Soviet period Prokofiev composed his Music for Children (1935), wonderfully fresh music far removed from dry didactic texts most children had for piano study. In 1947 Shostakovich composed his Children’s Pieces for his daughter Galina. Rather more closely related to traditional teaching pieces that Prokofiev’s Music for Children, they nonetheless instil rather charmingly the academic notion of a happy ‘major’ and a sad ‘minor’ by inverting it in A Merry Story in E minor, and a Sad Story in G major.

Russian pianist Boris Petrushansky started lessons with legendary pianist and pedagogue Heinrich Neuhaus in 1965 Moscow, a period of severe Soviet repression, the same cultural and social environment in which Shostakovich himself was captivated for his whole creative life. Like few others Petrushansky knows how to express the irony, the bitterness, but also the hope of Shostakovich’s piano works.

Petrushansky played with the world’s most famous orchestras and conductors (Gergiev, Abbado, Fedoseev, Salonen) and worked as partner with Leonid Kogan, Igor Oistrach, Misha Maisky and Dmitri Sitkovetsky. He is also active as professor at the famous Imola piano school in Italy.

[recorded 1992-2003, licensed from Stradivarius]