Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk Aftermath

Home , Muddle Instead of Music, Orango (Shostakovich), The Great Citizen

2 Introduction 27 Fourth Symphony: composition 3 Recap Lady Macbeth and Muddle instead of Music 28 Fourth Symphony: first performance 5 Muddle instead of Music: immediate aftermath 29 Fourth Symphony: reception 8 Muddle instead of Music: historical / ideological context 31 Fourth Symphony: context of the Soviet Symphony 9 Muddle instead of Music: Shostakovich’s reaction 33 Fourth Symphony: gigantism 11 Muddle instead of Music: recent research 35 Fourth Symphony: analysis 13 Shostakovich redeems himself: 1936-41 38 LISTENING NOTES: Symphony No. 4 in C minor, Op. 43 14 Shostakovich redeems himself: Fourth Symphony 41 Fifth Symphony: The Great Terror 15 Shostakovich redeems himself: Fifth Symphony 42 Tukhachevsky 16 Shostakovich redeems himself: Sixth Symphony 44 Comparing Fifth Symphony and Fourth Symphony 17 Shostakovich redeems himself: Piano Quintet 46 Fifth Symphony: Leningrad premiere 18 Shostakovich redeems himself: list of works 1936-41 47 Fifth Symphony: Between Leningrad & Moscow premiere 19 Struggle to rehabilitate Lady Macbeth 48 Fifth Symphony: Soviet Music Review 21 Rehabilitation: State Commission – 1956 51 Fifth Symphony: Cold War reinterpretation 22 Katerina Izmailova approved 53 Fifth Symphony: Concealed messages 24 Born again Katerina 54 Fifth Symphony: Concealed messages… Carmen 56 LISTENING NOTES: Symphony No. 5 in D minor, op 47

Introduction

This session will examine the aftermath to Pravda’s devastating attack on Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk; the Muddle instead of Music article.

Overnight Shostakovich was a pariah.

Within five years Shostakovich had rebuilt his reputation as the Soviet Union’s leading composer. This recovery is demonstrated by Pravda’s use of his photograph in 1941; Shostakovich as poster boy for the first batch of Stalin Prize winners.

The exploration of reputational recovery in the late 1930s will focus on two major works: Fourth Symphony Fifth Symphony.

Rehabilitation of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk took much longer. Shostakovich started a campaign to bring his opera back to the stage during the Khrushchev Thaw. After 27 years of silence Katerina Izmailova was heard again.

Recap Lady Macbeth and Muddle instead of Music

A quick recap on the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.

Shostakovich started to write Lady Macbeth in October 1930, less than a year after his opera Nose was premiered in Leningrad.

By December 1932 Lady Macbeth was complete.

It was first performed January 1934 at Maly opera Leningrad, and two days later a second production opened, at Nemirovich-Danchenko theatre, Moscow.

For two years Lady Macbeth performed to full houses in the Soviet Union, and there were productions abroad in: Cleveland, Philadelphia, Zurich, Buenos Aires, New York, London, Prague, Stockholm…

On 26 January 1936, Stalin went to see the new Bolshoi production of Lady Macbeth. He didn’t like it. Two days later, Pravda carried a devastating review – Muddle instead of Music. Unsigned… indicating it was an official Party perspective.

Recap Lady Macbeth and Muddle instead of Music /2

Pravda’s article Muddle instead of Music says:

Lady Macbeth isn’t proper Soviet music… It’s discordant. Difficult to follow – impossible to remember.

Appeals to western bourgeoisie. Perverted bourgeois taste…“formalist”.

Lady Macbeth misrepresents Leskov [the author of the 1865 story, used as the basis for the opera]. His story has had a new significance imposed on it.

Our critics swear by the name of socialist realism… but via Shostakovich’s opera we’ve been served up the coarsest kind of naturalism. Naturalism is not the same as realism… love scenes where the music quacks, grunts, growls, and gasps.

Clowning… complexity… Meyerholdism! This is not genuine t ART. This is a Leftist deviation.

A game of clever ingenuity that may end very badly. Shostakovich is a talented young composer let down by the musical establishment. Effective criticism could help his future development.

Muddle instead of Music: immediate aftermath

Union of Soviet Composers groups met and discussed Muddle instead of Music.

This level of Party intervention in music was unprecedented. At first some music professionals naively assumed a Pravda editorial was open to challenge; Leningrad critics were quickly brought in line!

On 6 February 1936 Pravda published a review of Shostakovich’s ballet, Limpid Stream. The story line… a troupe of dances visits a collective farm. On paper this sounds like an ideal subject for a sincere socialist realist ballet.

Pravda’s title for the review is ominous: Balletic Falsity. The review conceded that Limpid Stream is less dissonant and less contrived than Lady Macbeth; but reported major flaws:

unrealistic, uninformed portrait of life on a collective farm

arrogant avoidance of folk songs and folk dances (nothing anchored the music to its location, Kuban on the Black Sea coast).

Perhaps these flaws are because this “collective farm” music was largely recycled from an “industrial” ballet – Bolt? [Fay p 85]

Muddle instead of Music: immediate aftermath /2

On 14 February 1936 Pravda fired a broadside at the arts in general. It is with surprise that we note that Literary Journal treated the editorials in Pravda as an affair apart from literature, and even uninteresting. The journal has not carried a word of comment... The other newspapers are in the same blissful state of ignorance. Izvestia is silent. Komsomolskaya Pravda is in the same position. Is it possible that these papers have nothing to say? [quoted from Victor Seroff]

Pravda… in effect the Party… was making a big deal out of the Lady Macbeth affair.

All over the Soviet Union workers found themselves pulled into work place discussions about the arts, and bourgeois formalism.

Composers hurriedly acknowledged their own earlier misgivings about the direction of Shostakovich’s work, critiqued their own misguided scores, and made clear their intentions to ensure future works met Party expectations.

Muddle instead of Music: immediate aftermath /3

A few brave souls defended Shostakovich, as a great talent capable of reform: Sollertinsky – his closest friend Asafiev – leading musicologist Neuhaus – director of Moscow Conservatoire who declared Shostakovich “one of the finest composers in the whole of Europe”. [Mikkonen, p 234] Knipper threw a lifeline “Don’t drive nails in Shostakovich’s coffin… let’s help him straighten himself out”. [Hakobian, p 99] (Knipper’s generosity might have surprised Shostakovich. The previous year Shostakovich had publically criticised Knipper’s Fourth Symphony as vulgar, trite and inorganic)

Maxim Gorky, head of the Writers Union, sent a letter to Stalin in March 1936: The Pravda article hit [Shostakovich] just like a brick on the head, the chap is utterly crushed.… “Muddle,” but why? What does this so-called “muddle” consist of? Critics should give a technical assessment of Shostakovich’s music. But what the Pravda article did was to authorize hundreds of talentless people, hacks of all kinds, to persecute Shostakovich. And that is what they are doing.

There’s no recorded response from Stalin to Gorky on this issue. [Fay p 91]

Muddle instead of Music: historical / ideological context

Let’s just pause and put Muddle instead of Music in a historical ideological context.

This episode precedes the Great Terror. Kirov had been killed in 1934. The Party was preparing the case for the first Show Trials of Zinoviev and Kamenev, which would take place in August 1936. The Great Terror was primarily an internal party squabble until summer 1937.

Muddle instead of Music is the first time that the Party made a cultural pronouncement, and invited everyone to express their approval of it.

Perhaps because this was a new experience, opera houses were slow to react. Lady Macbeth’s final performance in Moscow was 7 March… 39 days after Muddle instead of Music was published! This was at the Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre, where the opera played as Katerina Izmailova. [Fay p 305]

Muddle instead of Music: Shostakovich’s reaction

Shostakovich read Muddle instead of Music in Arkhangelsk – 1,300 km north of Moscow. He was in Arkhangelsk for a concert with cellist Viktor Kubatsky.

He contacted his friend, Isaak Glikman, and asked him to organise a “subscription at the post office to get all the relevant press cuttings”. [Glikman p xviii] By 23 February 1936 the cuttings filled the first 78 page scrapbook. [Fay p 87] Glikman says Shostakovich “read the daily avalanche of cuttings with extraordinary self-control and restraint… There were plenty of false friends to shake their heads dolefully and bleat about the decline and fall of the composer… but he, the least self-important or complacent person imaginable, held fast to his belief in his own creative powers”. [Glikman p xviii – p xix]

Muddle instead of Music: Shostakovich’s reaction /2

At his own request, Shostakovich met Platon Kerzhentsev, Chairman of the Committee for Artistic Affairs, on his return from Arkhangelsk.

Shostakovich confirmed he understood the guidance offered by Pravda. Would it be helpful to meet comrade Stalin? Should he write a letter? What was the best course of action to redeem himself?

Kerzhentsev suggested three steps:  Reject his formalist mistakes – perhaps he was too close to thinkers such as Sollertinsky.  Produce music accessible to the masses.  Make sure you submit any proposed stage works to my committee for advance screening. [Fay p 90]

Shostakovich got back to his composing in mid-February, finishing off his Fourth Symphony. … more on that shortly

Muddle instead of Music: recent research

It interesting that Shostakovich didn’t attend a single one of the many USC self-criticism sessions.

Perhaps Kerzhentsev helped Shostakovich understand he was absolutely able to redeem himself? … and also that he was by no means the unique target?

Recent research notably Leonid Maximenkov’s study Muddle instead of Music (not yet translated into English) casts interesting light on Kerzhentsev’s activity.

Kerzhentsev was newly appointed to a newly created role: Chairman of the Committee for Artistic Affairs.

Kerzhentsev used the fall out of Muddle instead of Music to enhance his position.

Some of his actions emphasised Lady Macbeth as a symptom of a wider problem:

Within a month of Muddle instead of Music, Kerzhentsev made a surprise attack on the Proletarian musicians led by Lebedinsky.

Three months after Muddle instead of Music, Kerzhentsev turned against ballet “Ballets don’t manage to depict the present, they are false and sickly-sweet”. [Mikkonen, p 234]

Muddle instead of Music: recent research /2

There are also suggestions Kerzhentsev played a subversive role in the whole Lady Macbeth affair.

Kerzhentsev suggested Stalin attend specifically the Bolshoi production… (there were three productions currently playing in Moscow) The Bolshoi house style was brash … and for Lady Macbeth the “ad lib” brass group sat immediately under the government box. Kerzhentsev knew this loud music would irritate Stalin.

The argument goes that Kerzhentsev was building a case against a faction in the Maly Opera. This faction wanted recognition for what they had brought to Soviet opera… and a greater role in further development of Soviet opera.

Discrediting Smolich’s production of Lady Macbeth at the Bolshoi would help the case against Maly Opera: Maly was one of Lady Macbeth’s proud parents, and Smolich was one of Maly’s leading directors.

Whether or not these suspicions are true… with shots firing off in all directions, Shostakovich seems to have settled down, accepted that he was no more guilty than anyone else, and carried on composing.

Shostakovich redeems himself: 1936-41

Let’s take a very quick look at Shostakovich’s work between 1936 and 1941.

1941? On 16 March 1941 Shostakovich’s photograph was prominent on the front page of Pravda. This time it was good news. He was one of the “laureates” for the new Stalin Prize.

Let’s look at his trajectory from pariah to first class Stalin Prize winner.

Shostakovich redeems himself: Fourth Symphony

Shostakovich was writing his Fourth Symphony at the time of Muddle instead of Music. Two movements were complete. He’d just started the third movement – the finale.

He resumed work in mid February, and finished the symphony on 26 April . [letter to Kubatsky, dated 27 April, quoted Fay p 93] This symphony is huge… clearly influenced by Mahler.

Shostakovich was convinced it was a model Soviet symphony, aligned with latest aesthetic thinking.

Muddle instead of Music had no lessons to apply here: there was no naturalistic grunting, no infantile leftism, no outmoded sexual promiscuity.

But the ending… The symphony self-destructs. It’s not a happy ending.

During orchestral rehearsals Shostakovich withdrew the symphony. His public statement was that it needed re-work.

Fourth Symphony had its orchestral premiere twenty five years later, in 1961… with no amendments.

During the years of silence, its existence was acknowledged. The next symphony was explicitly the Fifth Symphony.

Shostakovich redeems himself: Fifth Symphony

The Fifth Symphony was preceded by a careful publicity campaign. Shostakovich explained in an interview with a Moscow evening paper that his new socialist symphony was “a Soviet Artist’s Creative Response to Just Criticism”.

Soviet writer Alexei Tolstoy led the post-premiere praise for the work, saying it: encapsulated the “development of a personality” and that the audience’s enthusiastic reaction showed Shostakovich had successfully reformed himself.

From the beginning, some listeners heard a less-than-joyful ending. Here are the private views of Aleksandr Fadeyev (leading Stalinist author, later head of the Writers’ Union) writing about the Moscow premiere in his diary: Work of astonishing strength... but the ending does not sound like a resolution (still less like a triumph or victory) but rather like a punishment or vengeance on someone. A terrible emotional force, but a tragic force. [Taruskin –Interpreting Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony In Fanning Shostakovich Studies 1995, p34]

But what was important for Shostakovich was Soviet establishment acclaim for his Fifth Symphony. And this was achieved.

I will include detailed material on Fourth Symphony and Fifth Symphony below. It is interesting to hear each in the context of Lady Macbeth. Fourth Symphony shares some stylistic similarities with the operatic interludes. Fifth Symphony can be heard as catharsis, maturing the juvenile quirkiness of Lady Macbeth’s Tragedy-Satire.

Shostakovich redeems himself: Sixth Symphony

By autumn 1939 Shostakovich was sufficiently confident to launch Sixth Symphony without any public commentary.

This might seem surprising in hindsight. Sixth Symphony is a curiously structured work… which puzzled some critics. A long brooding largo first movement, followed by two care-free movements: an allegro, then a presto finale in the form of a gallop.

Shostakovich redeems himself: Piano Quintet

Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet takes his reputation to a new level… Stalin Prize Winner, first class.

It’s surprising that recognition comes from a chamber work. It’s not monumental, and it’s hard to see a Socialist Realist narrative here.

The movements are named: Prelude Fugue Intermezzo… Just a touch formalist?

Marina Frolova-Walker found this comment from Igor Grabar (painter) in the minutes of the Stalin Prize Committee: Listening to Shostakovich’s Quintet, I had the feeling that I was not among contemporary composers, but among the great masters. [MFW Stalin Prize p 42]

Clearly Shostakovich had demonstrated the skills which the author of Muddle instead of Music had anticipated.

He had redeemed himself!

Shostakovich redeems himself: list of works 1936-41

Here are the works Shostakovich composed, and gave an opus number, between Fourth Symphony and Piano Quintet. They include nine film scores:

Symphony No. 4 in C minor, op 43 Music to Hail, Spain, op 44 (play by Alexander Afinogenov) Music to the film The Return of Maxim, op 45 Four Romances on Verses by Pushkin, op 46 Symphony No. 5 in D minor, op 47 Music to the film Volochayev Days, op 48 String Quartet No. 1 in C major, op 49 Music to the film The Vyborg Side, op 50 Music to the film Friends, op 51 Music to the film The Great Citizen (first part), op 52 Music to the film The Man with a Rifle, op 53 Symphony No. 6 in B minor, op 54 Music to the film The Great Citizen (second part), op 55 Music to the animated film The Silly Little Mouse, op 56 Piano Quintet in G minor, op 57

In the same period he also wrote several works without opus numbers, including: Jazz Suite No 2 Suite on Finnish Themes (commissioned to celebrate the potential annexation of Finland).

He started, and abandoned, an operetta based on the Ilf & Petrov story Twelve Chairs.

Struggle to rehabilitate Lady Macbeth

From 1936 to 1954 Lady Macbeth lay dormant in the Soviet Union.

In March 1953 Stalin died, and in December 1954 Nina Shostakovich died of cancer.

Nina, Shostakovich’s wife, had been the dedicatee of the opera.

Isaak Glikman is an excellent source for Lady Macbeth’s revival

Shostakovich told him on 23 December 1954 that to relieve the loneliness of this sad time he had been looking through Lady Macbeth and revising the part of Boris… Don’t imagine that I’m doing this with the theatre in mind. I’m no longer interested in whether the opera gets another production… it’s had quite enough mud and abuse thrown at it already. [Glikman p 57]

This minor revision to Boris’s music in Act One was joined by replacement of two interludes, specifically the “pornophony” interludes. Energetic copulation gave way to wistful longing. … perhaps that’s the way of all flesh?

Struggle to rehabilitate Lady Macbeth /2

This was the time of Khrushchev’s Thaw. It was no longer unthinkable that Lady Macbeth could be staged.

In March 1955 the Artistic Board of Maly Opera invited Shostakovich to discuss a new production with them.

Maly decided to schedule the updated opera in their next season.

Shostakovich immediately asked Glikman to revise the text. He gave him carte blanche to clean it up – ensuring the new text fitted the music.

A letter followed: It lists parts of the libretto Shostakovich found “not very pleasing to the eye”

He highlights the assault on Aksinya (Scene Two): “where there’s swearing… and naming of body parts”.

And Katerina occasionally appears insatiable… He suggests that one place: her complaint that Sergei is sleeping ‘while her loving lips are so close’ must also go. On the contrary she should be happy that he is asleep or going to sleep: it means he is recovering from his thrashing. [Glikman p 56]

Rehabilitation: State Commission – 1956

Authorisation for performance of Lady Macbeth was inevitably going to be a delicate matter. Everyone had signed up to Pravda’s criticism in 1936. Muddle instead of Music had been an article of faith for two decades.

It helped that Shostakovich had revised the score and renamed the opera Katerina Izmailova. And the title page stated this was the definitive score, and the old score was not to be used.

Molotov appointed a “State Commission” to assess the new opera. It met in Shostakovich’s apartment in March 1956.

Here are a couple of extracts from Glikman’s account of this meeting: [Shostakovich] sat down at the piano and performed the opera marvellously. There followed a short interval, during which time the members of the committee became aloof and severe; then the discussion started. The opera was subjected to the harshest criticism in the spirit of the notorious article Muddle instead of Music… In particular Khubov and Kabalevsky surpassed themselves. They compared the music with the worst invective from the article…

Kabalevsky … as chairman of the committee concluded that the opera would be impossible to stage as it made an apology for a murderess and seductress – his sense of morals was highly offended. [Wilson p 291-2]

Katerina Izmailova approved

The revised opera remained unheard for seven years.

What changed?

In 1961 Shostakovich joined the Communist Party. Significant widening of CPSU membership was one of Khrushchev’s reforms.

It’s said that revival of Lady Macbeth was raised by Shostakovich as he contemplated joining the party. Was Lady Macbeth a bargaining chip?

In 1962 the score was published.

Minister of Culture Ekaterina Furtseva authorised a production of Katerina Izmailova at Stanislavsky-Nemirovich-Danchencho Theatre.

Katerina Izmailova approved /2

As the premiere approached Khrushchev’s Thaw seemed fragile.

Since August there had been rumblings about Babi Yar – Yevtushenko’s poem about anti-Semitism. Rumblings started being directed at Shostakovich too, once it was known this poem opened Thirteenth Symphony. The complaint was that Babi Yar used a Nazi atrocity site near Kiev to launch a contemplation of anti-Semitism. “But what about all the Slav suffering in the Great Fatherland War?” protested the detractors.

In November, Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was published.

1 December, Khrushchev went to an exhibition of abstract art in the Moscow Manezh, and erupted. What is hung here is simply anti-Soviet. It’s amoral. Art should ennoble the individual and arouse him to action... What’s the good of a picture like this? To cover urinals with? [Encounter April 1963] 18 December, Thirteenth Symphony was premiered. A tense event… not banned, but hardly endorsed.

In this tense atmosphere cultural officials were cautiously invited to a private performance of Katerina Izmailova, which was publically billed as Barber of Seville.

They must have liked it. Katerina Izmailova was approved for public performance from 8 January 1963.

Born again Katerina

Katerina Izmailova was a great success.

There were productions around the world: Riga, London, Zagreb Helsinki, Nice, Pecs, San Francisco Vienna, Kazan, Kiev, Rousse, Leningrad, Budapest …and that’s just the first three years!

Shostakovich travelled the world, offering advice. He had to persuade some directors to tone down the eroticism.

A film was made in 1966, miming to a recording of a Kiev performance, conducted by Konstantin Simeonov.

Only one performer both sings and mimes the role… Galina Vishnevskaya as Katerina.

Vishnevskaya wrote in her memoirs that after the film premiere she received a letter from an engineer: how could you a famous artist have permitted yourself to behave so shamelessly?

Vishnevskaya told Shostakovich about this letter: To my amazement [he] flinched, and his face reddened. One would have thought that such idiotic blather would have meant nothing to the great Shostakovich. [ENO Programme 2001 said to be quoting from Galina – a Russian story]

Born again Katerina /2

Shostakovich died in 1975.

Vishnevskaya was now in exile in the west with her husband Rostropovich.

In 1978 they recorded the 1934 score of Lady Macbeth, And passed the score to Sikorski for publication.

The “original version” – more erotically charged, with its attraction as “anti-Soviet forbidden fruit”, quickly displaced Katerina Izmailova in the West. *“Original version” needs some qualification and further research. Judging from the sung text Rostropovich occasionally reverts to the 1932 lyrics – which preceded the stage premiere, and I have seen comments that the music is a hybrid of the 1934 and 1962 scores.]

It’s not clear that restoring the “original” Lady Macbeth would have been Shostakovich’s preference.

Fay tells us: Although most Western commentators routinely dismiss Shostakovich’s endorsement of the revised version of his opera as the result of political coercion, there is significant evidence to suggest that his preference for the revised Katerina was in fact genuine. [Fay p 238] Marina Frolova-Walker points out that Shostakovich’s widow Irina, who worked on assembly of the updated score continues to stress Katerina Izmailova as Shostakovich’s “mature” reflection on the opera. [MFW R3 Building a Library 16/6/2018]

FURTHER EXPLORATION:

Fourth & Fifth Symphonies

Fourth Symphony: composition

Shostakovich started working on a Fourth Symphony around November 1934. After several false starts, work on the definitive Fourth Symphony started September 1935.

By the time of the Pravda denunciation, Muddle instead of Music (28 January 1936) two movements were already complete. There is no evidence that these existing movements were amended in response to Muddle.

Shostakovich briefly paused composing activity. In mid February he resumed work on the third movement finale. The symphony was completed on 26 April 1936.

Shostakovich played a piano reduction of the score to Klemperer, visiting the USSR at the end of May. Klemperer was enthusiastic, and requested permission to perform the symphony in the West.

Fourth Symphony: first performance

A Leningrad premiere date was set: 11 December 1936.

Glikman attended many rehearsals I detected a strong sense of wariness in the hall; rumours had been circulating… that Shostakovich had not heeded the criticism to which he had lately been subjected, but had persisted in writing a symphony of diabolical complexity and crammed full of formalist tendencies. And so, one fine day, who should turn up at rehearsal but Composers’ Union Secretary Vladimir Iokhelson, with another authority figure… Yakov Smirnov in tow… [Glikman p xxiii] The premiere was cancelled Shostakovich was given the face-saving option of withdrawing the symphony.

Sovetskoye iskusstvo reported Shostakovich had *Asked for the performance to be cancelled+ “on the grounds that it in no way corresponds to his current creative convictions, and represents for him a long-outdated creative phase”. [Fay p 95] The actual premiere had to wait twenty five years. Fourth Symphony re-emerged around the same time as Lady Macbeth … probably part of the bargain Shostakovich struck for joining the Party. Unlike Lady Macbeth, the symphony’s score from the 1930s remained unchanged.

First Soviet performance was in Moscow, 30 December 1961 conducted by Kondrashin. The first Western performance was 7 September 1962, the Philharmonia conducted by Rozhdestvensky at the Edinburgh Festival.

Fourth Symphony: reception

For twenty five years Shostakovich had talked down his Fourth Symphony. Perhaps it was inevitable that commentators looked for flaws. Boris Schwarz described it as: a titanic failure, yet one which leaves the listener strangely moved. [Schwarz p 170] Some of the material reappears in the well-known Fifth Symphony; so perhaps Fourth Symphony is a dry run?

This view was reinforced when Sollertinsky, Shostakovich’s *long dead+ best friend, was found to have said: Fifth Symphony was created from the “waste matter” of the Fourth [Tsukkerman, Sovetskaya muzïka 10 (1987) quoted Fay p 103] In the 1970s Western audiences became more aware of Mahler. Mahler’s influence is fairly obvious in this symphony: the mix of serious and banal, the size, the diversions...

When Shostakovich was claimed as a dissident in the late Cold War, Western analysts looking for hidden messages had a field day with Fourth Symphony … often with muddled chronology and tendentious musical analysis.

Here’s a typical partisan programme note I found on-line: the first theme [of the first movement] returns ... now completely defeated and broken, as if a prisoner being forced to confess to a crime they did not commit. [conductor Michael Lewanski, 2014]

Fourth Symphony: reception /2

Given the modern perception of Fourth Symphony as an hour-long scream of despair it is not surprising to read sober biographers questioning how Shostakovich could ever have thought he would get away with this symphony.

Here, for instance is Laurel Fay: Given the political and aesthetic climate of the time, there seems very little doubt that even in a flawless performance the massive, Mahlerian work would have been construed as the epitome of formalism, an act in arrogant defiance of the Party's benevolent guidance. Indeed, the more intriguing question is not why it was withdrawn but how it came as close to public performance as it did. [Fay p 96]

The case for Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony as a sincere attempt at a Socialist Realist model is made by Pauline Fairclough a leading scholar of Shostakovich and his era.

Fairclough’s title – Soviet Credo – reflects Shostakovich’s Izvestiya article 3 April 1935 where he describes Fourth Symphony as my “symphonic credo”.

Fairclough argues: there is considerable evidence to suggest … substantial aesthetic and ideological justification for the symphony's blend of heightened expressivity, theatricality and Mahlerian musical 'democracy'. [Fairclough, Credo - intro xxii]

Fourth Symphony: context of the Soviet Symphony

Here’s a quick contextualisation of the Soviet Symphony in the mid-1930s. Socialist Realism was officially announced in 1932. Arts workers mapped out the implications; the most important developments were at the Writers conference in 1934.

In 1935 composers met in for a “Symphonism Symposium”. There were two important assumptions:  the symphony was accepted as serious art form suited to the proletariat  the Soviet Symphony would be built on the foundations of the Russian national school plus progressive hero Beethoven.

Boris Asafiev, a leading musicologist, argued the Symphony was the apex Soviet musical form. He drew a parallel with dialectical materialism (a Bolshevik article of faith): The issue of musical motion and the logic of musical thought reveal themselves more clearly and consequentially in symphonic forms than in other musical manifestations. The dialectic nature of the process of musical formation in symphonic forms allows the very concept of symphonism to emerge from the dialectic of musical consciousness, since any truly symphonic work is a dynamic process organised by consciousness embracing one or another type of life phenomena through the dialectically lawful progress of the musical idea in its successive phases of development. [Fairclough Credo cpt 1, p 6] Asafiev’s words may seem very obscure; they boil down to a Marxist justification for the superiority of Symphonic Music.

Fourth Symphony: context of the Soviet Symphony /2

Proceedings from the Symphonism Conference showed a new direction: the symphony / cantata hybrid was out of favour (Shostakovich had written two of these in the late 1920s); the song symphony (such as Knipper’s Poem of the Komsomol Fighter) was out.

The preferred route for the Soviet Symphony was now purely orchestral.

Additionally, Ivan Sollertinsky, a great friend of Shostakovich, leading musicologist with repertoire responsibility in Leningrad was promoting Mahler as a role model.

Sollertinsky published a monograph in 1932 which demonstrated Mahler’s political alignment. Mahler had taken part in the May Day Rally in Vienna 1905. Mahler had written: “How can one be happy when a single being on earth still suffers?” [Fairclough CfM p 38] Here is the case Sollertinsky made for Mahler at the 1935 Symphonism Conference: We have up till now underestimated this composer. We have recognised him as a petit-bourgeois fellow-traveller and let it rest at that. Mahler is a unique composer who tried to resolve the problems of the Beethovian symphony… tried to solve the problem of bringing folklore into the symphony…. tried to address the problem of a democratic musical language. [Soviet Music 6 1935, quoted Fairclough Music & Letters 5/2002 Perestroyka of Soviet Symphonism: DDS in 1935 p 265]

Fourth Symphony: gigantism

Shostakovich is on record using the word grandiosomania about his Fourth Symphony. [In 1956 – see Fay p 96] Gigantism was the Spirit of the Age: massive demonstrations the USSR embarking on a colossal industrial and ideological programme the hyperbole of the Five Year Plans the Stakhanovite movement... where workers strove to exceed the quota.

Two other contemporary symphonies exhibit striking similar grandiosomania: Gavriil Popov Symphony no 1 op 7 Boris Lyatoshynsky Symphony no 2 op 26

Popov’s First Symphony was written 1928-32, and orchestrated in 1934. In September 1932, it won second prize in a Bolshoi/ Komsomolskaya Pravda competition. Vladimir Iokhelson, presenting the prize, praised the work as: evidence of the “evolution of the intelligentsia’s consciousness” and a “panorama of great constructive power”.

It was first performed 22 March 1935. But by then aesthetic standards had changed… Iokhelson now had to remove the work from the repertoire, for reflecting “the ideology of classes hostile to us”. It was reinstated one month later. But in 1936, following the Lady Macbeth affair, was withdrawn again, and never reinstated in Popov’s lifetime.

Fourth Symphony: gigantism /2

Lyatoshynsky’s Second Symphony had a successful premiere in Kiev in 1936.

In February 1937 it came to Moscow. The local musicians rebelled: This isn’t music at all It’s rubbish 100% formalism.

Lyatoshynsky tried to talk the players round. A Советская Музыка / Soviet Music journalist witnessed the fracas and published an article five days later: “the most destructive criticism of my life”.

Like Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony, these are gigantic abstract works. Popov’s First Symphony drawing on Skryabin. Lyatoshynsky’s Second Symphony drawing on Gliere.

Unlike Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony, both Popov and Lyatoshynsky end their symphonies positively… triumphantly. Even so, they were unacceptable to those controlling the repertoire.

Fourth Symphony: analysis

Let’s look at the construction of Fourth Symphony.

There are three movements. First and third each about twenty five minutes long, with a brief ten minute interlude between them.

There’s a massive orchestra, the largest of any of Shostakovich’s symphonies, sometimes scored as a chamber ensemble, with some odd combinations of instruments; sometimes extraordinarily over-scored, giving a super-saturated sound.

The first movement is a sonata. Charity Lofthouse describes it as a “novel sonata form”.

There are three themes, which are recapitulated in reverse. The themes all undergo complex transformations… complex to the extent that analysts disagree on the base form of the second theme, and the locations of the fundamental sonata landmarks. [Charity Lofthouse Mahlerian Quotations, Thematic Dramaturgy, and Sonata Form in the First Movement of Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony ResMusica (7) 2015]

Fourth Symphony: analysis /2

The third movement is a funeral march enclosing a long divertimento of light music forms: polka, waltz, march, waltz, gallop, romance, waltz – says Hakobian. [Hakobian p 134] Each part of the divertimento is slightly distorted, oddly orchestrated which gives a distancing effect The funeral march returns and gives way to a series of discordant fanfares which finally implode, leaving the symphony to slowly die away.

The material is heterogeneous, an approach we find in parts of Lady Macbeth.

Sollertinsky had proposed building the Soviet Symphony on Mahler’s musical approach…

Shostakovich has taken this to heart, and also borrowed some of Mahler’s own material, particularly from Mahler’s First and Second Symphonies.

Some borrowing is blatant, like the Mahler cuckoo. Some process inspiration, like the third movement funeral march, modelled on Mahler’s First Symphony, but switching Mahler’s original Frère Jacques tune for Die zwei blauen Augen von meinem Schatz from Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen.

I’ve seen the Fourth Symphony described as an anti-Resurrection symphony a rebuttal of Mahler. [Fairclough attributes this view to Richard M Longman]

Fourth Symphony: analysis /3

Shostakovich’s final pages seem to be a mash up of: Stravinsky Oedipus Rex Tchaikovsky Sixth Symphony Mahler Das Lied von der Erde

Are these objets trouvés? or is there an implied meaning here?

The finale includes an interesting reuse of Shostakovich’s own material. Remember Shostakovich’s ambition: I want to write a Soviet Ring of the Nibelungs. It will be an operatic tetralogy about women, in which Lady Macbeth will take the place of The Rhinegold. The driving image of the next opera will be a heroine of the People’s Will movement. [Fay p 78] Shostakovich did start an opera about Sofya Petrovskaya, the People’s Will assassin of Alexander II. But in December 1934 Sergei Kirov was assassinated in Leningrad; and the opera project suddenly became rather distasteful, or even politically dangerous.

Musicologist Olga Digonskaya recently identified a brief extract from Petrovskaya opera, and noticed that the music was reused in Fourth Symphony finale. [Olga Digonskaya in Ivashkin and Kirkman, eds, Contemplating Shostakovich: Life, Music and Film. 2012]

LISTENING NOTES: Symphony No. 4 in C minor, Op. 43

Written September 1935 to April 1936 Two of the movements were already complete when Pravda published Muddle instead of music, the attack on Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of Mtensk

The premiere was originally planned for 11 December 1936. However, Shostakovich removed the conductor’s score, said the work needed rethinking, and cancelled the performance It was twenty five years before the work was heard in public… exactly as originally written Kirill Kondrashin conducted the Moscow Philharmonic, 30 December 1961

Hindsight has critics asking how Shostakovich could have expected this complex abstract symphony to be accepted into Soviet repertoire. However, a similar approach can be found in other composers of the time (Popov’s First Symphony and Lyatoshynsky’s Second Symphony), encouraged by the writings of leading musicologists including Asafiev and Sollertinsky

Fourth Symphony requires a massive orchestra, the largest of any his symphonies Sometimes very loud, sometimes as a chamber ensemble with unusual instrument combinations Sprawling and complex in form, and notoriously difficult to analyse Effectively there are two large episodic movements, separated by a brief intermezzo

I. Allegretto poco moderato Opens with a shrill wind and percussion motif, leading to a loud martial sequence The music becomes calmer, and then ominous. For around fifteen minutes three themes are developed through a wide range of emotions and styles, including a banal polka Strings start an impetuous fugue which leads to a massive climax Brass and strings lead off with a grotesque waltz which gradually collapses After a pause, a sequence of orchestra chords attempts to re-start the movement Brief return to the opening sequence, then fragments from other parts of the movement, ending with a repeating sequence on cor anglais

II. Moderato con moto This movement acts as an interlude between the gigantic first and third movements Based on a simple A B A B A structure, the second theme remains under-pinned by the rhythm of the first theme The final section is dominated by clicking and whirring percussion – a striking effect which appears in several of Shostakovich’s later works

III. Largo – Allegro Starts with a funeral march – which becomes increasingly ironic Next, a toccata at breakneck speed, which develops into an angry brawl Then a divertimento re-casting the themes as a whimsical polka, a gallop, and a waltz The music seems to run out of momentum Timpani intervene to re-energise the movement A brief brass fanfare re-introduces music from the funeral march The fanfare is repeated three more times, and each time the reprised funeral music is more confrontational. A fifth fanfare is followed by the funeral music blowing itself apart For the final minutes, the music quivers quietly in a dense and sinister atmosphere

Suggested recordings Symphony No. 4 in C minor, Op. 43

Soviet recording from 1966

Kondrashin and the Moscow Philharmonic from 1966 (This conductor and orchestra had given the world premiere in 1961)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuZcDfMJK-k

An excellent modern recording from 2013

Vasily Petrenko conducting the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bSejBOgsqI

Fifth Symphony: The Great Terror

Shostakovich wrote his Fifth Symphony between April and July 1937. That is barely five months after the premiere of Fourth Symphony was aborted, and this new Symphony was explicitly the fifth – explicitly marking the absence of a fourth.

There’s an important political context for Fifth Symphony – the Great Terror. From mid-1936 to late-1938 the Terror came in waves.

In January 1937 there was the Second leadership Show Trial (Radek was the most prominent defendant). In February and March the Rightist deviation (including Bukharin and Rykov) were accused. In May the military leadership was purged.

While Fifth Symphony was being written the Terror was primarily a Party elite issue, but as we’ll see below, this did impact Shostakovich.

By the time Fifth Symphony was premiered in November 1937, the Great Terror was in month four of a purge of relatively ordinary people: kulaks saboteurs junior military ranks.

Tukhachevsky

On 22 May 1937 Shostakovich’s patron since 1925, Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, was arrested as part of the military leadership purge. On 11 June, he was tried and shot for treason in the “Case of the Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization”.

Tukhachevsky was not only a talented amateur violinist.

He was a civil war hero, a Napoleon figure (militarily) who had led phenomenally successful Red Army campaigns. Historically he had had a squabble with Stalin, whose interference impeded deployment of troops to Battle of Warsaw in 1920.

In 1937 Trotsky was making unhelpful comments such as: “Not everyone in the Red Army is dedicated to Stalin. They still remember me”. [Oslo interview quoted Volkogonov p 320]

The main evidence against Tukhachevsky was a Nazi sting operation. Forged letters showed Tukhachevsky plotting with Berlin to overthrow Stalin. These letters found their way (with a credible back-story) to Czech President Beneš, who passed them on to Stalin, feeding his innate paranoia. [see Volkogonov p 318]

Tukhachevsky /2

In later life Shostakovich claimed he was called in for questioning about Tukhachevsky one Friday. He was asked to report back after the weekend. On Monday he returned, to find his interrogator had been purged... so, he was free to go home.

This would have been during the time Shostakovich was working on Fifth Symphony.

A mutual friend of Tukhachevsky and Shostakovich was less fortunate than Shostakovich. Musicologist Nikolai Zhilyaev was arrested for involvement in the plot on 2 November, and shot on 20 January 1938. [Fairclough Dmitri Shostakovich 2019] [Wilson says Zhilyaev died in prison in 1942. Russian Wikipedia backs the Fairclough version that he was shot in 1938]

Comparing Fifth Symphony and Fourth Symphony

Let’s compare Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony with Fourth Symphony.

The basic thematic material of the Fifth is a little simpler; it does not undergo such radical transformation, and the orchestration is much more conventional, there are none of the eccentric instrumental combinations of the Fourth.

To a modern western listener, there is still an influence of Mahler in the sound of this music… the second movement in particular seems to have something of a grotesque Mahler Ländler about it.

But the Mahlerian influence is different from that of the Fourth…

Structurally the Fourth was a sprawling work perhaps influenced by Mahler’s Second… Third… Seventh

Fifth takes structure from a different source; this is the classical symphony style of Beethoven, or Tchaikovsky. Each movement in a clear form – with signposts for the listener. The movements inter-relate; tied together with fragments of melody or rhythm.

There’s a sonata form first movement, setting out a dilemma a dance movement revisiting elements of the problem… slightly blasé a contemplative slow movement a finale which resolves the problem. All quite conventional.

Comparing Fifth Symphony and Fourth Symphony /2

Musicologists often refer to a 1907 conversation between Mahler and Sibelius.

According to Sibelius’s biographer Erik Tawaststijerna (in Sibelius volume 2: 1904-14) this conversation occurred on a walk the two took in Helsinki in 1907.

Sibelius told Mahler he: admired the symphonic style and severity of form... the profound logic that created an inner connection between motifs.

Mahler took a different perspective: the symphony must be like the world. It must be all embracing.

I suggest that Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony fits Mahler’s take on the symphony as a world… while his Fifth Symphony fits the Sibelius take of interconnecting logic.

Fifth Symphony: Leningrad premiere

Fifth Symphony was premiered in Leningrad on 21 November 1937. It was conducted by Evgeni Mravinski – the first of six Shostakovich symphonies he premiered.

Fay tells us there was little prior publicity. The programme note was a very basic description of the music: “a lengthy spiritual battle, crowned by victory”.

Reaction to the symphony was spectacular ovation. The composer was called back to the stage so many times that friends worried that the authorities might see the enthusiastic reception as some sort of provocation. Sollertinsky and Shebalin’s wife removed Shostakovich from the scene.

Official reaction was initially ambivalent. And Moscow was suspicious that the rapturous reception had been organised by a “claque of friends”. [Fay p 99]

Fifth Symphony: Between Leningrad & Moscow premiere

There were three more performances in Leningrad before Fifth Symphony was heard in Moscow.

Aleksandr Gauk conducted the Moscow premiere on 28 January 1938.

Shostakovich prepared the ground in an interview to Вечерняя Москва / Moscow Evening News, which was published 25 January, with the heading “My Creative Answer”.

Shostakovich used the interview to pass on two reactions which found their way into the programme notes, and became fundamental to positioning the Fifth Symphony.

A view from an unnamed source that the symphony was “A Soviet artist’s creative response to just criticism”.

Alexei Tolstoy’s view that Fifth Symphony was about the development of a (Soviet) personality… and the audience’s enthusiastic reaction showed that the composer had successfully reformed himself.

[Alexei Tolstoy had collaborated with Shostakovich on an uncompleted opera project Orango. This was a Bolshoi project, planned to celebrate the Fifteenth Anniversary of the Revolution; remarkably the plot is a satire about a human / ape hybrid.]

Fifth Symphony: Soviet Music Review

Official approval of Fifth Symphony came in March 1938 with an article by Georgy Khubov in Советская Музыка / Soviet Music.

There is praise for the composer, who has clearly reformed himself:

Shostakovich in his Fifth Symphony for the first time appears as a consciously realist artist, breaking with his false formalist past… for the first time seriously and deeply faces a great ideological task of a philosophical nature… for the first time as an artist addresses a wide audience (and not a narrow circle of "dedicated" music lovers), striving to speak expressively in simple and clear language.

All of this… gives particular significance to Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony — not only for the creative path of a composer who consciously turned from formalism to realism — but for all Soviet symphonic works. It should not be forgotten that a work such as Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony could have appeared only as a result of the wise and justly harsh, truly Bolshevik, criticism that Pravda published, drawing attention to the muddle, gimmicks and crude naturalism in his work. [A reference to Muddle instead of Music – 28 January 1936]

Fifth Symphony: Soviet Music Review /2

Khubov also gives us a Soviet analysis of Fifth Symphony:

The first movement: A deep inner struggle caused "confused feelings”. Questions tormenting the composer have not yet been resolved. Ahead is a new, perhaps even more severe and intense struggle, but the composer himself is still unclear what the outlines of this struggle are and what will be its outcome… Such is the ideological meaning of the first movement .

The second movement: a light, lively scherzo … dispels gloomy thoughts and doubts, but not for long. This is a witty joke, elegantly grotesque, an ironic smile over an irrevocably past. *This is not Shostakovich returning to his bad old ways…+ there are none of the previous antics, farcical buffoonery, naturalistic tricks; there is no fake philistine wit or cheap effects. This brilliantly orchestrated scherzo has new features of a mature Shostakovich, healthy, fresh humour, innocent naivety and even warmth.

The third movement: directly echoes the thoughts and moods at the end of the first movement. This heavy meditation … acquires here, in the concentrated gloomy Largo, the features of tragic detachment. The theme of suffering and tears, the bitterness of loneliness, the nagging, anguish longing completely fill this part of the symphony. There is no inner struggle. The mournful melodies of “crying”, moaning against the background of a constrained, persistently monotonous movement are perceived as an image of a mournful numbness… an expressionist etching depicting a “nightmare of torpor”.

Fifth Symphony: Soviet Music Review /3

Finale: Abruptly… the gloomy Largo breaks off with a thunderous explosion of the tutti orchestra. And, unexpectedly, like deus ex machina, the main “affirming” theme of the finale appears … It bursts into the symphony from without, like a formidable crushing force… But the sensitive, attentive listener always feels that this theme is not yet the result of the organic development of thought in the symphony… This explains the fact that the general impression of the finale of the symphony is not so much bright, optimistic, but severe and formidable.

In summary Khubov’s review contains: acclaim for Shostakovich and his achievement, acknowledgement that he has taken to heart the criticism of Muddle instead of Music.

The Fifth Symphony is a huge leap forward for Shostakovich and Soviet Music in general.

But there is still more work to do this is a great symphony , but it’s not perfect, notably the finale, and Shostakovich hasn’t addressed fully the “national” question.

Here’s Khubov’s final paragraph: Therefore, speaking about the realism of the Shostakovich symphony, it must be emphasized that the problem of nationality still needs to be resolved. This is the biggest and most pressing creative task that the composer now faces; a task that he will undoubtedly solve, since Shostakovich is a great, genuine Soviet artist.

Fifth Symphony: Cold War reinterpretation

There was no significant public Soviet criticism of Fifth Symphony until the Zhdanov affair in 1948, when Koval took the opportunity of a pop-shot at “formalist” Shostakovich, and complained that there was “uncritical over-praise” for this work.

Not everyone accepted the standard interpretation of the work.

Aleksandr Fadeyev (leading Stalinist author, later head of the Writers’ Union) wrote about the Moscow premiere in his diary: Work of astonishing strength... but the ending does not sound like a resolution (still less like a triumph or victory) but rather like a punishment or vengeance on someone. A terrible emotional force, but a tragic force. [Taruskin –Interpreting Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony In Fanning Shostakovich Studies 1995, p34]

Musicologist Israel Nestyev said he though the largo was a topical memorial for the victims of the Great Terror. [Interview with Irina Nikolskaya 1992 – Shostakovich Casebook 2004]

Fifth Symphony: Cold War reinterpretation /2

In 1979 Solomon Volkov’s Testimony was published… “the memoirs of Shostakovich as related to and edited by Solomon Volkov” and Westerners learned “I think it is clear to everyone what happens in the *finale of+ the Fifth. The rejoicing is forced, created under threat, as in Boris Godunov” [Volkov p 183]

This was bad news for the Western performing tradition which had usually taken the ending significantly faster than metronome mark. Barbirolli / Halle 1963, Stokowski / LSO 1964, Ormandy /Philadelphia 1965, Previn / LSO 1966 are all fast. Stokowski / Philadelphia 1939 is closer to Soviet style.

The champion sprinter was Bernstein.

See this comparison of Mravinsky and Bernstein endings on YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYiekN4Z58U

The Bernstein performance is from his 1959 visit to USSR. Shostakovich was reported as saying to Mravinsky (who was sitting next to him) at the concert: “He *Bernstein+ doesn’t understand it at all+”

Modern Western performing tradition has changed. Now conductors tend to grind painfully through the ending.

Fifth Symphony: Concealed messages

Post-Volkov, commentators started looking for subversive messages in Shostakovich.

Is there a secret message in the finale? Someone noticed borrowings from a song written around the same time, setting a poem by Pushkin, entitled Rebirth. [Wilson includes this – I’m not certain if she is the originator.]

The first four notes of Rebirth are the same as the first theme of the finale, and the accompaniment of the last quatrain is reused in the symphony.

Возрождение Rebirth

Художник-варвар кистью сонной A barbarian artist with a lazy brush Картину гения чернит Blackens the painting of a genius И свой рисунок беззаконный And senselessly covers it with Над ней бессмысленно чертит. His own meaningless drawing. Но краски чуждые с летами But with the passing years, the alien colours Спадают ветхой чешуёй; Fall off like scabby scales; Созданье гения пред нами The creation of the genius emerges Выходит с прежней красотой. before us in its former beauty Так исчезают заблужденья Thus vanish illusions С измученной души моей, From my tormented soul И возникают в ней виденья Replaced by visions Первоначальных, чистых дней. Of former innocent days.

Is this a deliberate coded message? Couldn’t this verse also be used to underline the Khubov interpretation of developing consciousness?

Fifth Symphony: Concealed messages… Carmen

Having lived through one major reappraisal of Fifth Symphony in the 1980s, I was surprised to experience another in the early years of the new millennium.

I said earlier that Fifth Symphony is in the form of a classical symphony and the movements inter-relate; tied together with fragments of melody or rhythm. One of the reasons the thematic material inter-relates between movements is that it comes from a single source, the Habanera from Bizet's 1875 opera Carmen.

The story had been around for a while… Habanera was apparently first spotted in the second movement by Soviet musicologist Lev Maazel in 1967. [E Wilson in Contemplating Shostakovich p9] It was greatly extended by A S Benditski in a dissertation: “On Fifth Symphony of D Shostakovich” presented at Nizhny Novgorod Conservatoire in 2000.

The rhythms and intervals of Habanera can be found in all four movements.

L'amour... L'amour... is reused as the symphony’s opening statement

… while the four notes which start the orchestral accompaniment of the Habanera are given a different rhythm, and become the main theme of the finale. (Yes… these notes are also claimed as coming from Rebirth.)

Fifth Symphony: Concealed messages… Carmen /2

Let’s take a look at the words of Habanera. L'amour est un oiseau rebelle Love is a rebellious bird Que nul ne peut apprivoiser, That none can tame, Et c'est bien en vain qu'on l'appelle, And it is well in vain that one calls it S'il lui convient de refuser. If it suits him to refuse Rien n'y fait, menace ou prière; Nothing to be done, threat or prayer. L'un parle bien, l'autre se tait, The one talks well, the other is silent; Et c'est l'autre que je préfère; And it's the other that I prefer Il n'a rien dit mais il me plaît. He says nothing but he pleases me. L'amour... l'amour... Love... love… L'amour... l'amour… Love... love…

There seems to be a messy love affair behind the use of Habanera: Shostakovich had recently ended a relationship with Elena Konstantinovskaya. Elena went off to Spain with documentary film director Roman Carmen.

In 1935 Shostakovich had divorced Nina with the objective of marrying Elena, but when Nina discovered she was pregnant, Shostakovich dumped Elena and remarried Nina.

Shostakovich’s intimate diminutive for Elena – Lola – can be heard many many times in the finale.

So there is a hidden programme for Fifth Symphony, but it’s personal rather than politically subversive.

LISTENING NOTES: Symphony No. 5 in D minor, op 47

Written April-July 1937 Première: Leningrad, 21 November 1937, Leningrad Philharmonic, conducted Evgeny Mravinsky

Fifth Symphony was written in the aftermath of Pravda’s Muddle instead of Music, a devastating review of his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, and the failure of Fourth Symphony – a work he withdrew at the last moment as “no longer corresponding to his current creative convictions”

While Shostakovich worked on Fifth Symphony the Great Terror intensified; it was the turn of the Red Army leadership to be purged, and Shostakovich’s patron Marshal Tukhachevsky was arrested and shot. Then ordinary people started being purged, and there had been four months of blood-letting by the time the symphony was first performed

Fifth Symphony takes the form of a classical symphony – building on examples of approved masters such as Beethoven and Tchaikovsky. The movements are unified by sharing thematic and rhythmic material. The music is simpler than the withdrawn Fourth Symphony, but accessibility does not stand in the way of a profound emotional effect

Just before the first Moscow performance, Shostakovich gave a newspaper interview where he highlighted two comments which would help position the new work: author Alexei Tolstoy’s view that Fifth Symphony was about the development of a (Soviet) personality, and an anonymous comment that it represented “a Soviet artist’s creative response to just criticism” The Soviet authorities soon acclaimed Fifth Symphony as a prototype and benchmark for art music

Western listeners were given an alternative perspective on Shostakovich’s work with the Volkov Testimony affair. From 1980 performances stressed the dark soul of this work

Twenty years ago a new subversive layer was revealed in Fifth Symphony. The tight symphonic structure was built on the Habanera from Bizet’s Carmen. Shostakovich was also reflecting a doomed love affair in his symphony

I. Moderato—Allegro non troppo There are two themes – one leaping, the other gently falling As these themes are developed they become more lyrical The tempo changes into a stern energetic march, with martial side drum The movement ends enigmatically

II. Allegretto A sardonic dance movement, exploring the of themes from the first movement

III. Largo This movement is dominated by strings, and the brass section remains silent

IV. Allegro non troppo Trumpets and trombones start a stirring march, an alternative theme is proposed by a solo trumpet, and this is enthusiastically taken up The tempo drops, and, starting with a horn, the themes are mulled over Side drum and timpani bring the tempo back to a march, and a long crescendo obsessively asserts the home key

Suggested recordings Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47

A Mravinsky / Leningrad Philharmonic recording from 1954

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIumwZVqokY

And a couple of recordings with nostalgic associations for me…

Arvid Jansons / Leningrad Philharmonic recorded in the Royal Albert Hall 13 September 1971

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl_WUy8Sr5c

I was at the repeat of this concert in Manchester ten days later. The programme also included a terrifying performance of Francesca da Rimini. Jansons often visited the Hallé in Manchester. Occasionally he brought the Leningrad Philharmonic.

Karel Ancerl / Czech Philharmonic recorded in 1961

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8W3DOtORsC8

This was one of my first LPs. It’s also an excellent recording.

Terry Metheringham asserts his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.