“A previously unknown piece for viola and piano by Dmitri Shostakovich, titled Expromt (Impromptu), was announced as authentic on September 25,” reports Maya Pritsker in Tuesday’s (9/26) Musical America (subscription required). “The piece was discovered in the Moscow State Archive among the papers of violist Vadim Borisovsky (1900-1972), a friend of Shostakovich and a founding member of the Beethoven Quartet. According to Russian musicologist Olga Digonskaya, an expert on the Shostakovich catalogue, ‘This piece got into the State Archive in 2008. Its opus number, 33, was the same as the music (the composer wrote for) the film Vstrechny (“Counterplan,” 1932), though the piece was obviously not related to it.… I was asked by my colleagues from the Archive to take a look…. I immediately saw that this is an unknown miniature by Shostakovich.’ Expromt was added to the State Archive’s List of Unique Documents after its authenticity was confirmed by Digonskaya as well as experts from the Russian Institute of Art History and Shostakovich at the Glinka State Museum of Musical Culture. The autograph consists of two separate pages, written by the composer in his typical shorthand. One page has the viola part and another page has the complete piece with the piano part.”
Posted September 26, 2017
