As he lay dying in August 1975, Shostakovich completed his final work, a deeply personal summation of his entire creative life (obliquely referencing each of this fifteen symphonies)—the Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 147. I will be playing this, one of my very favorite Shostakovich works, several times this season with both Timothy Ridoud in the UK and Hsin-Yun Huang in the US. Below is a live performance of the 2nd movement for WQXR here in New York.
Hsin-Yun Huang, viola, and Ignat Solzhenitsyn, piano, play the second movement of Shostakovich's Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 147, in the WQXR studio.