Scherzo in F# Minor

Scherzo in F# Minor, Op. 1

Composer: Dmitri Shostakovich

Date of Publication: Late fall to winter of 1919

Shostakovich's first scherzo begins with his childhood, long before he had even touched an instrument. Shostakovich's mother believed children shouldn’t start learning music too early, and so, never let him learn the piano through most of grade-school. Shostakovich was left enviously watching his sisters' piano lessons.

However, when his mother finally sat 9-year-old Shostakovich down at the bench, he refused to begin with the standard technique studies that every beginner pianist learns - scales, finger exercises, etc. From watching his older sisters’ performances, he insisted on playing "real music." To shut him up, Shostakovich's mother brought him a book of Haydn's piano sonatas. Yet, after only a few questions about notation, Shostakovich was able to play the first movement without any mistakes on his first try – albeit at a very slow tempo, but legend has it that his rhythm was entirely accurate despite the tempo. Delighted by her son's talent, Sofiya Vasilievna Kokoulina rushed to apply Shostakovich to the Petrograd Conservatory for the Arts. Here, Shostakovich spent the next 6 years of his life studying composition with Aleksandr Glazunov and Maksimilian Steinberg and piano with Leonid Nikolayev.

Shostakovich’s first piece, the Scherzo in F# minor, was – relatively speaking – nothing special, but it embodied many romantic styles akin to Borodin or Rimsky-Korsakov Shostakovich had studied at the Conservatory. It starts out with a soft woodwind passage which then leads into a meandering Romantic theme, and finally into a grand coda.

Fun fact: Shostakovich composed this piece for his compositional mentor, Maximilian Oseevich Steinberg.