Can I recommend Shostakovich’s final work, Sonata for Violin and Piano? It’s more than a bit heartbreaking to me personally
Classical Piece of the Day - day 40
Dmitri Shostakovich’s Sonata for Viola and Piano (recommended by @smallsilvervine)
This sonata was completed only weeks before Shostakovich’s death; in the final days before its completion, Shostakovich complained about the inability of his right hand to remain still enough for writing and had also telephoned Fyodor Druzhinin (its dedicatee) warning him that he was considering delaying further work as a result of his declining health.
It is divided into three movements: Moderato, which Shostakovich described as a “novella”; Allegretto, in which most of the material is borrowed from his unfinished opera The Gamblers; and Adagio, which Shostakovich often called an "Adagio in Memory of Beethoven" and which contains allusions to Beethoven's “Moonlight” Sonata, as well as Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote.
