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SHOSTAKOVICH PART III - AFTER STALIN= THE LAST YEARS

Stalins death in 1953 was the occasion of an outbreak of great grief for the vast
majority of Russians and considerable relief for those many others. His passing
would not have had any immediate repercussions for the millions for whom he
had been the Great Leader. What would follow was as uncertain as it was
unpredictable. For Shostakovich and many others who had suffered under a
repressive regime there must have been a sense of growing optimism.
Nevertheless life goes on, as they say, and change would not take place quickly.
The same old party remained in power, without Stalin, whilst a power struggle
was secretly taking place within the inner corridors. The same old orders and
regulations remained in place.
For Soviet composers in general nothing would immediately change. For
Shostakovich in particular a great weight had been lifted. Within six months he
had produced his tenth symphony, the one which is now the most popular. It
could be called a Soviet Artists Resurrection from Unjust Criticism. Look at the
background back in 1953. Of his nine symphonies, only two were universally
popular, the youthful number one and also Number 5, the Soviet Artists Reply.
Numbers 2 and 3 have never gained popularity. Number 4, which was always
one of his favourites, had never been allowed to give forth its birth pangs.
Number six seems to have survived any ordeal but its extremes of mood have
never made it a pot boiler exactly. Number seven the Leningrad was born midst
flag waving hysteria but by the time the war was over this was a pot boiler which
had gone off the boil. Number eight, its immediate successor, was one of
agonising pain, borne valiantly by its composer but put to sleep by his
proscribers. Number nine was seen as the ultimate in flippancy and then the
curtain came down. It was not a some further reply but a declamation of his own
determination, his own single mindedness, his uniqueness and his own triumph
over adversity and suffering
It was received well in the west but earlier it had been given a run through to the
Composers Union to whom Shostakovich confessed its weaknesses, that he
still had difficulty in writing an opening allegro and that the first movement was
perhaps too long and the second too short. Its first movement is one of brooding
might it perhaps reflect the nights on the landing? Sorry, I am falling into the
trap which I accuse others of, of being imaginative. The second movement is
short but, in just four minutes, it doesnt alf blow your head off. Was it a portrait
of Stalin as related by Volkov in Testimony? I very much doubt it. It is in the
third movement that one encounters two musical cryptographs. It is here we
hear for the first time the DSCH theme code although he had incorporated it in
his first violin concerto, written for David Oistrakh, but not played until after the
symphony. He also introduced an Elmira theme into this movement. D.SCH was
an abbreviation of his name which was musically derived from the letters
attributed to the notes in German notation. The musical phrase it produces
became his autograph. Elmira Nazirova was a music student of his in Moscow
for whom he had fallen in a big way. He therefore concocted a similarly coded
Elmira theme based on her name. It needs a musically trained code breaker at
Bletchley Park to work it out. In the third movement these two themes become
intertwined. It is in the final movement that the DCSH is proclaimed over and
over again. It is triumph and a cock a snook combined.
In 1954, the year following Stalins death, Nina, Shostakovichs wife whom he
had married in 1933, died. They had previously divorced and remarried when
she discovered herself to be pregnant. It had been a good marriage and she a
supportive partner. And now he was left with two teenage children. In 1956 he
married Margarita Kainova, a party official whom he barely knew. This was short
lived and it too would end in divorce only four years later. He married his third
wife, Irina in 1962. She was twenty one years younger than him and she
remained a loving wife and nurse, supportive despite his two principal
extraneous relationships. She has continued since his death to set up a
Shostakovich Foundation which she still runs
1955 saw Shostakovich busy for stage and screen. For the theatre, he wrote
music for Hamlet but his great success was the film, The Gadfly. This was a
scenario of an Italian revolutionary whose sobriquet was the Gadfly, a sort of
cross between DArtagnan and the Scarlet Pimpernel. A gadfly is someone who
upsets the status quo. Now if anyone says that Shostakovich couldnt write a
good tune, just listen to the Gadfly especially the Romance or the Barrel organ
Waltz.
During this post-Stalin period of the 1950s the iron grip of the Kremlin had
loosened. Soviet artists came to England I was taken to hear David Oistrakh
play the Brahms and Khachaturian violin concertos at the Albert Hall in a
concert which was a sell out. The Communist Party of Great Britain, armed and
abetted by Colletts Left Wing Bookshop of Charing Cross Road, turned out all
bedecked in red ties and cheered every movement. Harry Pollitt the party
secretary, who would not hear a bad word of Stalin, was there, but not in the
Royal Box.
In the Soviet Union, Stalin had been succeeded by Malenkov who, in turn, was
ousted by Khrushchev in 1956. After two years, Khrushchev had a bit of a purge
of his own but at least he had a sense of humour. After an attempted palace
counter revolution by Malenkov and Molotov, Malenkov was dispatched to be
made manager of a hydro-electric station in Kazakhstan. As to Molotov, the man
who had been both Stalins prime minister and foreign minister, he was reduced
to ambassadorial level. To America, UK or France? You might think so, but no,
Khrushchev appointed him ambassador to the Outer Mongolian Republic.
That same year, 1956, the Bolshoi found itself without a suitable new work to
open a concert to commemorate the anniversary of the October Revolution.
Shostakovich was contacted just days before and set to work on his Festive
Overture, completing it in three days. So far as tempo and influence are
concerned he is said to have based it on Glinka's Ruslan and Ludmilla overture.
This piece is as rip roaring as any Soviet official could have wished for.
Something in this style would probably have found official favour had it been in
his ninth symphony. I suppose my old butt, Lord Coe of the Greenwich Park
Olympics, bless his cotton running shorts, would recognize this overture. It was
to feature in the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow when our Seb was the
golden boy of the 1500 metres.
In 1957 Shostakovich was still officially out of favour but by no means out of
energy. That year his son, Maxim, had his nineteenth birthday. His Dad could
have given him a moped or something else the lad might enjoy. Instead he gave
him a piano concerto he had written for him and, as you would know your
Shostakovich by now, that meant a lot of practice. Now I ask you. What sort of
present is that? Even Shostakovich would write of it that the work had "no
redeeming artistic merits". He was probably trying to pre-empt its possible
official reception. As it happens this second concerto has turned out to be one
of the most popular of his works. In 2015 it came third in Classic FMs popularity
vote for piano concertos behind only the Grieg piano concerto and
Rachmaninoffs second. Maxim became a conductor, defected to the West in
1981 but returned to St Petersburg after Glasnost. He is now 79 but who knows?
He might well still play the concerto from time to time but I doubt that he rides a
moped.
Now it was time for yet another symphony, the eleventh written in 1957. I
mentioned it in Part 1. It bears the title the Year 1905 and was to bring to life
the events of Bloody Sunday the failed revolution of that year. It forms a
diptych with Symphony No 12, The Year 1917 written in 1961. Number 11 has
been described as Film Music Without a Film. It is in four continuous
movements and easy to plot. It brings to life the events of the revolution as they
unfold. The peasants waiting at St Petersburg for the Tsar to appear; the second
movement depicts the massacre; the third movement is a funeral march, the
strings playing the song You Fell As Victims, a favourite of Lenin; the last is
called the Alarm Bell and the reaction to the coming storm. The symphony is
full of Russian musical references, strictly not allowed in Socialist Realism.
Many of the tunes would have been instantly recognizable to its contemporary
audience. It has the mood of a Tolstoy novel or a touch of Mussorgsky, not that
Mussorgsky wrote any symphonies. For me it is most associated with the
famous BBC series, in 1964, The Great War. That series had its own stark
theme music by Wilfred Joseph but the 26 part series had various selected
excerpts as accompanying music and by far the most frequently chosen and
played was from this symphony of Shostakovich, a testimony to its cinematic
character. Yes, it was film music; it turned out to be just a different film, but
effective.
The twelfth, The Year 1917, does not match its predecessor. The Eleventh is a
giant rolled out canvas. The twelfth portrays the events of the October
Revolution, 100 years ago this October coming, but somehow each movement
appears more separate from each other. It seems now to have fallen out of
favour and perhaps it is time to re-assess it, but that is not for me. There does
come a point where it outdoes all the previous symphonies for tumult. It is
perhaps Shostakovich saying You aint seen nothin yet
Though officially he remained out of favour there had been a growing thaw
towards him, prizes awarded and as early as 1954 he was voted top in a
popularity poll in Leningrad. In 1958, there came a party admission that the
Zhdanov purge, and socialist realism with it, had been perverse and the
composers involved wronged Shostakovich and all the others, some
posthumously, were officially rehabilitated. Poor Mayakovski would then have
been able to have rested more comfortably in his grave. Prokofiev would not
have cared two hoots anyway. This had come about as a consequence of
Khrushchevs denunciation of Stalin and the Cult of the Individual in a secret
three hour speech to the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956. Khrushchev was
not all sweet reason and good humour. Only six months after the Congress he
had put in the tanks ruthlessly to crush the 1956 Hungarian uprising.
Now, back in grace, Shostakovich wrote his first cello concerto for the 31 year
old Mstislav Rostropovich (Slava to you). Here was a cellist, said to be the equal
of Casals, yet not known in the West. Phillips immediately brought him to
Philadelphia where he recorded the LP under Ormandy. I know that because I
bought it. It is an unusual concerto in that the so called four movements are to
my mind a one movement work cast in four separate episodes. It starts and
finishes with the DSCH motive. Later on, he would write a second concerto for
Slava. After the excitement of the first this one disappoints in that it inhabits
again a world of gloom.
Before I venture into the sixties, I pause to deal with one constant niggle which
I have touched upon before. Time and again I read interpretations as to what
Shostakovich secretly had in mind but which he could not publicly own to. We
saw in the Leningrad symphony suggestions that the twenty minute repetitive
invasion theme was referring not to the German invaders but to Stalin as the
real villain. In the tenth symphony, there are commentators who say that
Shostakovich saw the turbulent second movement as again depicting Stalin. In
the eleventh symphony, the Year 1905, completed in 1956, more than one pundit
has described the second movement as a Shostakovich protest to the Soviet
invasion of Hungary which in any event did not happen until November of that
year. The problem as I see it stems from conflicting political stances, and that
there are two opposing concepts. On one side of the argument, as propounded
in the West, is the concept that a composer should have full artistic freedom, art
for arts sake. On the other side, was the dogma laid down in the Soviet Union,
that the artist/composer should be part of building a new society and a servant
of the state to do its bidding. I have little doubt that Shostakovich accepted the
system in which he lived whilst resenting and abhorring the authority which had
imposed it. It seems to me that there are adherents, particularly in the United
States, who just cannot accept that their man could belong to the opposing
system. Some claim their argument is supported by the testimony of
Shostakovich himself. He has been placed on a plinth as the composer resisting
the system. I may be wrong but I suspect that they have prompted the responses
they wished to hear and that, egged on, Shostakovich himself has obliged with
a tacit nod. The rationale of their argument would imply that by acting upon his
masters bidding Shostakovich was not being honest with himself whilst I am
averring that he was the very opposite, principled and the model of honesty.
This conveniently leads us to 1960 when Shostakovich actually signed up to
become a member of the Communist Party. He had certainly never wanted to.
It was anathema to him, but that year he had been invited to become first
secretary of a newly rebranded Composers Union. One version states that he
was tickled pink, (if not red) but, that in order to hold that position, it was a
requirement for him to become a member of the party which he was averse to
doing. He was, however, extremely proud to have been acclaimed by his fellow
composers and honoured to be offered the position. On the other hand Maxim
recalled that his Dad was near to tears and near suicidal at the prospect .
Shostakovich pres third wife, Irina, whom he married two years later, said that
he had later told her he had been blackmailed to take up the position. By most
accounts, Shostakovich cherished the role of first secretary which he continued
to hold till 1968.
The 1960s would see further changes but an article of this length cannot deal
with them all or comment on each opus. Shostakovich, now free from the
shackles, was at long last able to look back with caution but without fear. First
of all, he was at long last able to release the fourth symphony for first
performance after it had been mothballed for a quarter of a century. Following
its first performance in Moscow under Kondrashin, its first performance in the
West took place in Edinburgh under Rozhdestvensky. Fortunately it was
broadcast. and although I recall being a little disappointed my excitement was
like being an observer for the raising of the Titanic.
Shostakovich chose also to revisit Lady Macbeth, watering it down and
renaming it Katerina Ismailova. This had been the modernist opera which had
got him into trouble in the first place. To allay any queries from the authorities,
a production of the Barber of Seville was announced, with the intention that it
would have a last minute cancellation and replaced. It soon got known down
the grapevine that The Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District was being
performed and the buzz word to find out when was Are you going to the
Barber? It has now reverted to the Lady Macbeth title and is back in the
repertoire, an art deco preservation.
Also in 1960, Shostakovich visited Dresden in connection with his writing music
for Five Days Five Nights, a fictional film about the razing of Dresden. The
centre of that city had been destroyed in February 1945, three months before
the end of the war, through what is accepted as a senseless incendiary attack
by British and U.S bombers. Shostakovich, deeply moved, immediately wrote
his eighth string quartet which more than ever is plastered with the DSCH motto
and includes various references from his works, a furioso version of the Jewish
song which was the finale of his second piano trio, the first and fifth symphonies
and Lady Macbeth. Now, most of his quartets are what you might call quite laid
back but the eighth, which is not only the most popular but probably played
more than all the others put together, finds Shostakovich at his most frenzied
and is the most virtuosic. Yet, it evokes feelings of gloom and melancholy. It
was said to be dedicated to the victims of Fascism and War but that title was
just a label. There is clearly something about this quartet that has a deeper
significance and here I can go along with some of the comments attributed to
Shostakovich by Simon Volkov. Shostakovichs son and also a friend have both
referred to DSCH as being near suicidal. It may be exaggerated but it is clear
that Shostakovich was pondering the question of death, a subject upon which
he continued to dwell thereafter for the rest of his life. The quoted works in this
quartet had no connection to Fascism and it has been mooted that Shostakovich
was writing a memorial for himself with his suicide in mind. Perhaps this quartet
was for him what the Pathtique was for Tchaikovsky with the exception that
Tchaikovsky died twelve days after the Pathtique but Shostakovich, thank
goodness, survived his Eighth quartet.
Death itself became a pre-occupation with Shostakovich which can be observed
by his interest in works by others on the subject and in his own three remaining
symphonies. He had a special fondness for Mussorgsky. Having earlier made
an orchestration of Mussorgskys Boris Godunov, he did likewise in 1959 for the
opera, Khovanschina also. In 1962 he picked up again on this idea when he
orchestrated Mussorgskys Songs and Dances of Death. If that did not lay
darkly on the mind enough, he also wrote at the same time what would become
his thirteenth symphony entitled Babi Yar. It unlike any symphony he had
written before. Babi Yar was an infamous mass grave in a ravine in the Ukraine
where 33,000 Jews from Kiev were rounded up by the Nazis in 1941. They were
made to strip and lie down on the pile of dead bodies already there before
themselves being machine gunned down in turn. Shostakovich, with his out of
keeping pro-Jewish leanings, was horrified when it came to light. So was the
young Russian poet, Yevtushenko who had written a poem of protest with Babi
Yar as its title. (Baba or babi is granny and yar is ravine. It was de rigueur
to be able to make mention of the sufferings of Jews without including mention
of those of the Soviet people. That was the background against which
Yevtushenko denounced not only the Nazis but also the Soviets. The poem, Babi
Yar, opens provocatively with the words
I feel myself a Jew.
Here I tread across old Egypt.
Here I die, nailed to the cross.
And even now I bear the scars of it.
Shostakovich set the verses for bass/baritone, basses only chorus and
orchestra. For many it is more a cantata or song cycle rather than a symphony.
He went on to seek from Yevtushenko four more poems to add to the set and
the subject matter widened to include quotations from and references to other
Jewish suffering including Anne Frank and Dreyfuss. The subject is grim as to
put one off put off but stay with it. Its orchestration is dark and in the depths
with cellos and double basses prominently backing the male bass voices. Its
commencement is reminiscent of Boris Godunov, reminiscent also of The Year
1905. It goes on to sing the praises of the individual and the achievements of
great men of the past including Tolstoy and Galileo.
Despite the Soviet attitude to the arts being said to have thawed, their
disapproval was made very clear. Yevtushenko was seen as the villain more so
than Shostakovich, understandable as they were able to read the text long
before they had had an opportunity to hear the music. Still, Shostakovich was
an accessory and the pressure was put on. Some mitigating alterations were
made to the text and the sufferings of the Soviet people added. The original lead
baritone/baritone soloist was persuaded not to participate. The score had been
sent to Mravinsky, the conductor who had been Shostakovichs champion over
nearly thirty years. He, in turn, turned it down. It makes me angry just to think
about it but Shostakovich probably was a more understanding being than I am.
He did not break off relations because, the year after, the two travelled to London
for the famous visit by the Leningrad Philharmonic. As to Babi Yar, pressure
was put on to stop the first performance. There was of course no official
presence but it went ahead all the same with Kyrill Kondrashin conducting and
with great success.
It had been in his 1960 visit to London that Shostakovich was introduced to
Benjamin Britten by Rostropovich when he had given the first performance of
Shostakovichs first Cello Concerto. The two composers shared a box and
Shostakovich noted of Britten, he was bobbing up and down like a schoolboy,
even nudging me with happiness at the music. Britten had first encountered the
music of Shostakovich when he went to a first performance of Lady Macbeth in
1935. It could well have become a possible model for Peter Grimes. Both have
principal characters who are social outcasts. Lady Macbeth also contains a
series of orchestral interludes which enhance the evolving drama. Now in 1960,
the friendship they established was electrical. They were both very shy.
Otherwise in character, in background, in style they were different but the
relationship was one of two composers who each recognized the genius and
individuality of the other. Britten and Pears would travel often to Russia and
Shostakovich visited them the once at Aldeburgh. When the War Requiem
recording was released Britten sent a copy to Shostakovich, who in his letter of
thanks described it as a profound work of conscience. Later, in an interview
about modern trends in music, he said: Id like to see more Brittens; English
ones, Russian ones, German ones, and of different generations.
What both composers did have in common was a special love of Mahler which
each of them had developed long before Mahlers widespread popularity. Each
wrote works dedicated to the other. In the case of Britten, it was his third church
parable, The Prodigal Son. In the case of Shostakovich, his dedication to
Britten was his symphony no 14. Yet again, the subject was death, which was
produced through various poems based on the subject. This obsession with
death was another characteristic held in common with Mahler. I have not heard
the Shostakovich 14 more than once but I felt a rather curious connection.
These two composers could never possibly be mistaken, one for the other.
Britten could no more have written the Leningrad symphony than Shostakovich
could have written Rejoice in the Lamb. Yet this fourteenth symphony did give
me quite a jolt in one or two places where I picked up distinct sounds which
brought to my mind the march from Brittens Variations on Frank Bridge;
another where the spiky harmonies were reminiscent of the Prelude and Fugue
for 18-part strings and yet another which could have inhabited the world of Les
Illuminations. Co-incidence, probably, and eerie. When Britten conducted the
British premiere at Aldeburgh the following year, he held the score aloft at the
end of the performance and kissed it in homage.
Towards his end, Shostakovich began to show an interest in serial music and
he has this in common with Britten also. In neither of their cases does it seem
to be serial music written into stone but to be used when the time is right.
Shostakovichs health began to be of concern from the mid-sixties . He had had
a fall during Maxims wedding which had been followed by the first of two heart
attacks. He was aware of his waning physical powers but never of his
composing powers. When ill in hospital, he would compose from the hospital
bed. Again there was the same mental resilience with Britten who died but a
year after Shostakovich.
Before his end, he wrote his four last quartets, one each dedicated to each of
the players of his favourite Moscow quartet The Beethoven. And like
Beethoven those four quartets would inhabit a different world as Shostakovich
looked for new ways in his last years to express his inner self.
Shostakovich did not believe in God or in a life hereafter. He knew what was
coming and for him death itself was the end. His symphonic cycle ended with
his fifteenth symphony written in 1971. Again, it is a curious retrospective, one
where we have no idea what are the specific events or pointers he is necessarily
referring to. One is simply imbued by the atmosphere and the changing moods.
No need to puzzle as to the meaning of his quotations. The first movement
might throw you. It is light in texture to the point of weightlessness. It is full of
references, particularly to Rossinis William Tell Overture which may be a
fleeting memory from the Shostakovich nursery. Why are there quotes from
Wagner, not a composer associated with Shostakovich, the opening chords
from Tristan and also Siegfrieds Funeral March. I used to think of this
symphony, starting off with a solo glockenspiel, as insubstantial. With more
recent hearings the kopek has dropped. No need to search for codes or
interpretations. This is a composer expressing his own inner personal
recollections and we must simply honour that and savour the mood. It ends with
just one quiet ping as if life goes out with just that a ping and not a whimper.
Shostakovich is perhaps the first composer whose genius has been pitted
against a political system. I am struck by the difference between the man so
outwardly shy and nervous in total contrast to the man who would go over the
top in unleashing such awesome power in his music. In his private life also, he
was not afraid to stand up for what he believed was moral regardless of the risks
he ran. I am reminded of the protests he addressed on behalf of friends and
associates. Here I think of Prokofievs first wife Lina who was Spanish and sent
to the Gulag for ten years, her crime, that of being a foreigner. I also think of the
composer Moishe Weinberg, who having twice escaped the Nazis, was sent to
the Gulag for alleged Zionist connections. In both these cases Shostakovich
took up their causes fearlessly.
I end with one lovely little known story set out in a book by Eric Roseberry. It
concerns the Fitzwilliam Quartet. They had turned professional in 1971 and
became the quartet in residence at York University. They were the first string
quartet in this country to record Shostakovich. In 1972, Alan George, their
violist, wrote to Shostakovich, seeking the score of his thirteenth quartet and
asking for permission to play it. Shostakovich replied at once with his consent,
sending them the parts and politely expressing the hope that he might come
and hear it. He repeated this in a further exchange of letters and then, true to his
word, confirmed his intended arrival at York. Alan George met him at the station.
I do not know if Shostakovich had other engagements to fulfil but here was this
renowned international composer travelling by train to York to hear a youthful
string quartet play his music. He was a bigger man that they had expected but
who, by now, was frail from ill health. Shostakovich realised that it might be a
strain for them to be playing the work for the first time in a provincial city in
England in his presence and suggested they had a run through with him first
during that afternoon. He was able to make some suggestions and small
alterations to the score. That evening the composer himself turned up at the
Lyons Concert Hall in York. For those present, the atmosphere must have been
super charged and the occasion one never to be forgotten. And all because of
one sick man who gave the time effort and enthusiasm to come all the way from
Moscow to York to pass on his encouragement to the next generation.

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