Shostakovich: Three Preludes, Op. 34

On April 17, 1917, the young eleven-year-old Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich was among the thousands of people who came to the St. Petersburg station to welcome back to Russia Vladimir Ilyich Ulianov, named Lenin. From that shocking experience, Dmitri began to consider himself a son of the revolution –two years later he would compose a funeral march in memory of the fallen.

Dmitri was born in Saint Peterburg on October 25, 1906, the son of a chemical engineer and Sophie, a young pianist who at that time was finishing his studies at the Conservatory. When Dmitri turned seven, he began to attend the piano lessons that his mother gave to his older sister, Maria, as a listener. During these practices, little Dmitri remained silent, huddled in a small chair, listening, absorbed.

Shostakovich, as a child

After two years of witnessing such a scene, Sophie realized that the boy might have some interest in music and decided to provide him with some rudiments. For fun, she put the piano transcript of an Andante from a Haydn symphony on the lectern and invited Dmitri to sit down. Stupefied, Sophie witnessed how little Dmitri, slowly but surely, played the entire piece, for which he had invented a fingering adapted to his little hands.

At the end of 1919, Dmitri entered the Petrograd Conservatory. He finished his studies six years later, when he presented his composition professor with a symphony later released by the State Symphony, which unleashed the joy of his compatriots. Soon the work was already known in Europe and America, thus making Dmitri the first great author of the new Russia, a composer formed entirely under the Revolution, and by the Revolution. Thereafter, Dmitri had carte blanche for creation, though it lasted a pittance –until Lenin's death. Difficulties were to arise when Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, named Stalin, took over the destinies of the country. But that is another story.

24 Piano Preludes, Op 34
The 24 piano preludes of Opus 34 were composed between the years 1932-33, by a 26-year-old Shostakovich. It is a cycle of 24 miniatures that take up the experimentation of Bach in the 18th century, Chopin and Scriabin in the 19th, and Debussy in the 20th century. Shostakovich's contribution has a special place in the history of this instrumental genre and constitutes a key to understanding the development and subsequent stylistic maturation of the composer.

There is a lot of children online, recorded by their parents, joking around with the piano.
Sarah Tuan is something else. The little pianist is capable of properly interpreting 20th-century music. Here she pays – perhaps unintentionally – a full tribute to that other boy who used to listen to classes for his sister a hundred years ago.

Three splendid Preludes from Opus 34 are what little Sarah gives us on the occasion of the concert offered by the winners, in their category, of the International Russian Music Piano Competition, in June 2011.