The contrast with yesterday cannot be greater: this recording shows a cellist at the height of his powers. Austrian cellist Heinrich Schiff would be starting a conducting career two years later, in 1986. Schiff was in pain for a long time, because he overexerted his right shoulder (the one that holds the bow). During a concert in 2010 he had to take breaks because of the pain. It would be his last concert as a cellist.
Shostakovich wrote his cello sonata also in pain, albeit of a different kind. He had a short lived affair with a student in 1934 and had fallen in love with her. While he was writing the sonata he was also writing the divorce papers to his wife Nina. In the end it was settled, and he and Nina had their first child two years later.