Festive Overture in A Major, Op. 96, Dimitri Shostakovich
The overture, as a musical form, was little used by Shostakovich, and the Festive Overture was composed through a strange turn of events. Shostakovich received the commission for this work literally three days before the planned performance, a gathering at the Bolshoy theatre on November 6, 1954, celebrating the 37th anniversary of the 1917October Revolution. Vasili Nebol'sin, a conductor at the Bolshoy, discovered that he had no opening work for the concert. This was a potentially disastrous position for him, since it was a very important concert. He approached Shostakovich, hoping that the composer might be able to help him. When Shostakovich agreed to write the opening piece, a greatly relieved Nebol'sin organized couriers to take the individual sheets of manuscript, still wet with ink, to the theatre where specially employed copyists would prepare the orchestral parts.
Lev Lebedinsky. A friend of Shostakovich, was at the composers' apartment when the commission arrived. He writes,"Then he started to compose. The speed with which he wrote was truly astounding.when he wrote light music he was able to talk, make jokes, and compose simultaneously, like the legendary Mozart. He laughed and chuckled, and in the meanwhile work was underway and the music was being written down." The overture was ready for rehearsal in two days.
It opens with a brass fanfare, acting as a curtain -raiser. The fanfare continues, adding rippling strings and woodwinds and a heavy organ-like bass, building towards a sequence of unison chords which introduce the first Presto theme. This theme modulates to the relative minor key in the upper woodwinds and then returns to A Major in the violins. A subtle passage for trumpets, using rapid tonguing, briefly reminds one of the opening fanfare before going into a development section, which is followed by a triumphant restatement of the theme, played by the brass in rhythmic augmentation.
The lyrical second theme appears, in the key of the dominant, played by horns and celli and then taken over by the upper strings and developed more thoroughly. A pizzicato section with snare drum ensues, serving as a transition back to material from the first theme.
The first Presto theme is emphatically restated, and the overture builds to the first of two major climaxes in the work, the combination of both first and second themes in counterpoint, involving the entire orchestra. This in turn builds to the final and most profound climax of the work, the recapitulation of the opening brass fanfare. This grandiose and expansive section of the work explodes into the coda, which is a mad dash for the finishing line, ending an overture that, in the words of the composers' friend, Lev Lebedinsky, is a "brilliant, effervescent work, with its vivacious energy spilling over like uncorked champagne."
