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SHOSTAKOVICH, BRITTEN & PROKOFIEV From his teenage years until his late twenties, of the subject matter and Shostakovich’s Shostakovich’s music was a riot of invention advanced musical language. Two days later, CELLO SONATAS and non-stop productivity, employing current the now notorious Pravda editorial appeared avant-garde styles imported from the West as describing Lady Macbeth under the headline well as home-grown Russian and Soviet elements, ‘Muddle instead of Music’ as a ‘discordant, Cello Sonata in D minor, Op.40 Dmitri Shostakovich (1906 – 1975) all shot through with his own growing voice as a confused stream of sounds … the music cracks, 1 i. Allegro non troppo [12.16] composer. Three symphonies, film scores (silent, grunts and growls’. Soon after, his ballet, 2 ii. Allegro [2.56] talkie and animated), operas, ballets, incidental The Limpid Stream, which was in the repertory 3 iii. Largo [7.02] music, masterpieces such as the Piano Concerto of the Bolshoi Ballet at the time, fared no better No.1, Piano Trio No.1 and the Jazz Suite No.1 and under the banner, ‘Balletic Falsehood’. Although 4 iv. Allegro [4.15] the Cello Sonata were cementing his reputation now seen as preposterous and philistine, at Cello Sonata in C major, Op.65 Benjamin Britten (1913 – 1976) as the pre-eminent composer of the new the time these were unprecedented articles. 5 i. Dialogo [6.18] generation. He was certainly hot news and Pravda, the official organ of Soviet Communism, his views were sought on all sorts of matters disapproved in language verging upon the violent; 6 ii. Scherzo – Pizzicato [2.22] musical and otherwise. But cold reality was to bite the ‘cheap clowning’ of Lady Macbeth being 7 iii. Elegia [5.28] bitterly. In 1934, the same year he composed his chillingly described as ‘a game of clever ingenuity 8 iv. Marcia [1.56] only cello sonata, the 27-year-old Shostakovich that may end very badly.’ The party had spoken – 9 v. Moto perpetuo [2.35] had a runaway, international success with his this music was not to be imitated and the works in opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, question disappeared from the repertory forthwith. Cello Sonata in C major, Op.119 Sergei Prokofiev (1891 – 1953) which was regarded as a high-water mark in 0 i. Andante grave [9.54] Soviet opera and was praised by the authorities Nobody in the Soviet Union was immune to q ii. Moderato [4.27] as ‘the result of the general success of Stalin’s Great Purge in the late 1930s. Neither w iii. Allegro ma non troppo [7.54] socialist construction’. But, in 1936, with the the poorest citizen-comrade nor the highest arts now centralized under the control of the ranking party officials could escape Stalin’s Total timings: [67.26] All-Union Committee on Artistic Affairs, the clunking fist as he sought to consolidate power tide was turning against any composers with by ‘cleansing’ the Communist Party, and the so-called ‘formalist’ tendencies. Stalin attended country at large, of so-called dissidents, JAMIE WALTON CELLO a performance of Lady Macbeth in January of undesirable anti-revolutionaries and other DANIEL GRIMWOOD PIANO that year and was offended by the forthrightness ‘enemies of the people’. Ethnic minorities were www.signumrecords.com - 3 - deported, peasants and professionals and ostinati and prickly, high spirits – all qualities 1930s in the USA and France, where much as cultural spokesman Andrei Zhdanov led the party apparatchiks too far to the left or too far which would sustain his music, at least, through he tried, he failed to emulate the popularity of latest purge, in 1948, which all but made the to the right were imprisoned and killed on the times good and bad. Rachmaninov in America or Stravinsky in Western pair ‘un-persons’ in the eyes of the authorities, flimsiest of evidence or the cruel expedient of Europe. Although also a Russian composer under the so-called Zhdanov Doctrine which the forced confession. Many hundreds of Although the ramifications of the editorials were abroad, Prokofiev had neither fled nor left the held that ‘The only conflict that is possible in thousands were killed and millions more not immediately clear, the aftershocks rippled Soviet Union without official permission, had by Soviet culture is the conflict between good and consigned to labour camps. The arts were under rapidly through Soviet culture. With Stalin gearing no means ever severed ties with his beloved best.’ This meant sticking very closely to the party intense scrutiny for any perceived modernism up for the first of the infamous Moscow show Russia and, indeed, spent extended periods line on all matters creative. In practical terms, and a good many writers, artists and composers trials later in the year, and the Great Purge hot there on a number of occasions in the early 1930s. the second denunciation meant having to repent paid dearly in the process. One of the major on their heels, everyone had to watch their step. By 1936, he had moved his family permanently publicly for being off-message and the unofficial buzzwords of the time was ‘formalism’, which Shostakovich had been working on his colossal, from Paris to Moscow, where he was allowed cessation of performances for those works was essentially a charge against a work that modernist Fourth Symphony for some time, but two more tours of Europe and the USA before labelled as being of a ‘formalist’ bent. Family was not considered to appeal directly to the it no longer suited the mood of the times and he his coveted passport, a rare allowance, was privileges were also withdrawn and many masses. On this matter, Shostakovich was was forced to withdraw it during rehearsals, in removed on a technicality, and somehow never were forced into a more or less hand-to-mouth adjudged to have failed his country and comrades December 1936. Neither the Fourth Symphony returned. Whether his initial motivation was existence. During one of the interminable by producing works lacking in Socialist Realism – nor Lady Macbeth would be heard again for some concerned with his stated desire to return to his conferences where composers were coerced a serious breach of the party line. 25 years. The golden boy of Soviet music had own country, to ‘see the real Winter again’, or into delivering official apologies, Prokofiev was become a degenerate corrupter. Although he to indulge in the privileges attendant on a stunned to hear that his first wife had been Shostakovich knew nothing of the attack until eventually worked his way back into the party’s celebrated Soviet composer returning home arrested on suspicion of spying. These days later when he happened to buy a copy of favour, these were difficult times for anybody from the corrupting influence of the West, he trumped-up charges earned her eight years in Pravda at a railway station after performing his showing the merest modicum of dissent, artistic would remain for the rest of his life as an artist a labour camp, and Prokofiev would die three Cello Sonata Op.40 in Arkhangelsk with his close or otherwise. of the USSR and a musical servant to the years before she was released, in 1956. friend, the cellist Viktor Kubatsky. The sonata man with whom he would share his very dying is dedicated to Kubatsky, who gave the world All the stranger then that Prokofiev should have hour – Stalin. One of the few rays of light in this dark period premiere, with the composer accompanying, in chosen to return to his homeland in 1935, despite for Prokofiev was his collaboration with the Leningrad on Christmas Day, 1934. Written prior the various musical organisations inexorably A dozen years after the first great condemnations, spectacularly talented young cellist Mstislav to the condemnations, the work is generally coming under Communist Party control. After many a career nosedived with further charges Rostropovich (1927-2007). The composer had positive in tone, whilst retaining the composer’s leaving the evolving Soviet Union in 1918, of ‘formalism’ being aimed at both Prokofiev heard Rostropovich play his long-neglected trademark caustic wit, soulful expanses, insistent Prokofiev spent most of the 1920s and early and Shostakovich, among others. Stalin’s Cello Concerto Op.58 in 1947 and was so - 4 - - 5 - amazed by the performance that he resolved Gone are the more abrasively dissonant young man’s first concert suit. That both of Baroque-hued evidence, he had assumed Britten to re-write the work for the cellist. The trigger techniques often so thrillingly prominent in Shostakovich’s concertos were written was a composer from a previous century and for Prokofiev’sCello Sonata Op.119 was likewise his works and the harmony, rhythm and specifically for Rostropovich is testimony enough fell into a fit of laughter on being introduced occasioned by another Rostropovich concert, accompaniment are uncluttered and direct in to the esteem in which the composer held the to him. On realising that this was no practical this time playing a sonata by the composer’s utterance. The cello is employed particularly cellist. In his last years, Prokofiev and joke and Benjamin Britten was indeed standing long-time friend Miaskovsky. The great pianist successfully in its lower register, joyful and Rostropovich, now in his mid-twenties, became before him, he immediately set about imploring Sviatolsav Richter, who not only accompanied movingly lyrical by turns. The whole effect is fast friends, spending a number of summers the composer to write something for him. Rostropovich in the first performance of the satisfying and positive, hardly bereft of struggle, together at the composer’s dacha in Nikolina sonata, but also conducted the first performance but up-beat rather than downcast.