In a revolution-themed festival, Shostakovich’s music was inevitably going to have an important place in the proceedings and in the second concert of the Canberra International Music Festival, titled The October Revolution: A Line in the Sand, the Russian composer was the main event. And yet, despite the concert’s title, this was a very personal, intimate Shostakovich on display, removed – as much as one ever could be in Soviet Russia – from the political turmoil of the time.

Cellist David Pereira and pianist Lisa Moore took the stage of the Fitters’ Workshop for Shostakovich’s 1934 Cello Sonata Op. 40. Written before the public denouncement of his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtensk, the Sonata speaks of upheavals in the composer’s love life. Shostakovich’s marriage to his wife Nina floundered when he became infatuated with a 20-year-old translator, Yelena Konstantinovskaya, and it was during this period that he wrote the Cello Sonata.

David Pereira, Lisa Moore, Canberra International Music FestivalCellist David Pereira and pianist Lisa Moore. Photos © Peter Hislop

Pereira’s sound was penetrating and intense while Moore highlighted bright melodies in the upper register of the piano before plunging into its tenebrous...