156. FOURTH MOVEMENT Classical Music and Total War: a New

156. FOURTH MOVEMENT

1941-44 Classical Music and Total War: a new era

The function of music in war has always been twofold: as a means of communication and as a psychological weapon.1 [W]hen both radio and cinema had become mature, ubiquitous technologies . . . it became possible for governments to impress the art of music wholly into their service. . . .Marches were still effective. . .and the popular song again became the vehicle for knee-jerk sentiments -- but World War II was also the first time that classical music was [comprehensively] mobilized as a weapon of war.2

The Allies co-opted a prize from the Axis by adopting as their trademark the opening notes of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 — three Gs and an E-flat, corresponding to three dots and one dash in Morse code — to signify V for Victory. That musical signature served as a recurring leitmotif in Allied films, concerts and countless other . . . propaganda. . . .Every combatant nation had musicians willing to contribute what they could to the war effort.3

As a psychological weapon, nothing generated greater support for the wartime Soviet Union than the dramatic creation and premiere-under-fire of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7:

In July 1941. . .with the Wehrmacht advancing on Leningrad, he began composing his seventh symphony between shifts as an air raid fireman and while under heavy aerial bombardment. In October the Kremlin ordered him flown out of the city to the wartime capital of Kuybyshev on the Volga River. There, he completed his symphony and dedicated it to Leningrad, which by then was under . . . siege.4

Shostakovich left Leningrad in early October 1941. But Vladimir Sofronitsky, the “genius pianist” who once lived in Rebecca’s apartment building (1919-1920), remained. Like Shostakovich and the volcanic Maria Yudina, Sofronitsky was among the artists who “supplied a cultured veneer to Soviet brutality.”5 They did so despite interior conflicts, though they also had other ends in mind.6

After graduating from the Petrograd Conservatory (1921), Sofronitsky had concertized extensively in Russia. He began teaching at the Conservatory in 1936 and was a professor by 1939. During the 1937–38 season, he gave twelve recitals spanning the entire history of keyboard music, from Buxtehude to Shostakovich. Nothing like this had been heard in Russia since Anton Rubinstein’s legendary 19th century Historic Recitals. 7, 8

Maria Yudina, Sofronitsky’s fellow Rubinstein Prize co-winner (1921), had begun teaching at the Conservatory shortly after she graduated and remained a fixture there until she was thrown out for ideological impurity (1930). By 1941 she was living in Moscow, intermittently concertizing and appearing in wartime radio broadcasts.

Musicians and the Siege

Conflicting themes of awed respect for classical musicians, acceptance of “classical music” as a necessary element of Soviet culture, and belief that persons of extraordinary talent are essential tools of the State, were all in full flower by the late 1930s.9 They crystallized in Sofronitsky’s romantic figure. From summer 1941 through March 1942 Sofronitsky lived and continued performing in Leningrad, offering through his music both a shred of normalcy for that war-stressed populace and temporary escape from its woes.

Barbarians at the gates notwithstanding, "In the best of peacetime style, the crowds pulsing round the entrance looking for extra tickets, the concert season opened at the Philharmonia on 5 October [1941]": Sofia Preobrazhenkaya sang. . . . 'Sofronitsky and Kemensky's playing on the grand piano left a nice impression.' 10 When a fund-raising concert was held a few days later, the hall was packed and the overflow spilled out into the streets. [Karl] Eliasberg conducted the Radio orchestra, with arias and overtures from Mikhail Glinka's A Life for the Tsar, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Tchaikovsky's Fifth, St. Petersburg composers all. . . . 11 7 November 1941, Sofronitsky played in Leningrad’s Philharmonic Hall.12 In the States, classical music’s patriotic role in rousing audiences also was recognized. On 19 October 1941 – within a week of Sofronitsky’s performance and a day before Eliasburg conducted the Leningrad Radio Symphony Orchestra in a broadcast [to Paris and London] of

Tchaikovsky's Fifth from an unheated Leningrad hall13 -- newcomer Anna Burstein-Bieler (among many others) was doing her part to inspire an audience, performing a Liszt concerto and Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue with the Pennsylvania WPA Symphony Orchestra at Philadelphia’s Irvine Auditorium.14

In Mandate Palestine, Anna’s sister Rebecca was playing that month for wounded Commonwealth soldiers, and on the PBS.15

The next month the U.S. was attacked at Pearl Harbor. It declared war on Japan 8 December, and when Hitler declared war on America 11 December 194116 joined the Allies in the war against Germany. Stalin’s frantic pleas for a two-front war that would divert German resources from the carnage on his Western Front were answered at least in theory, though it would take 12 months for the Allies to start putting boots on the ground.17

In now-famished Leningrad, the concert season proceeded. On 12* (or 14* or 23*) December 1941, Sofronitsky, 'Honored Artist of the Republic and a great pianist’18 performed again ‘for the protectors of the city’.19

Vladimir Sofronitsky. . . gave a concert at the Puskhin Theatre in lieu, as it were, of rent; together with several other artists, he was living in the theatre. ‘It was dark, cold morose,' he recalled. ‘The public in winter coats and felt boots. I played in gloves, with the fingers cut off. But frankly I have never played so well. And what a reception from the audience! This evening was one of the happiest days of my life.'20 This heroic ‘recollection’ of classical music as a sword against Fascist attack appeared in the U.S. in book form in The Siege of Leningrad (1944),21 a classic example of Soviet propaganda. It has been quoted in many variations including the passage above. However, it remains unknown if, how and with whom Sofronitsky may have shared this ‘memory,’ or what editor shaped his words.

In Leningrad, the 'season' finally came to a close.

January 11 [1942] . . . the last winter concert . . . was a literary and artistic event in the Capella, dedicated to 'six months of the Great Patriotic War'. There were readings by poets as well as music. The musicians included Sofronitsky. . .Tickets were sold to raise funds for defence, but they didn't sell . . . The audience was largely made up of sailors ordered to attend.22

By February 1942, when the Burstein flat population had been halved, Sofronitsky was living at Leningrad’s Astoria hotel with Karl Eliasberg and other performing artists. Eliasberg owed his life to being the only man left in the city who could conduct a symphony orchestra. He had been brought in by sled, too weak to walk.

The temperature in the hotel is not more than 6 or 7 degrees,' [Eliasberg] wrote.' No running water or sewerage. The complete darkness in the corridors and rooms is oppressive. Rare oil lamps don't help. But they give food here!' . . . The pianist Vladimir Sofronitsky played in the drawing room. He had run out of tobacco and he was happy to perform for papiroska cigarettes.23 On 8 April 1942 Sofronitsky was flown to Moscow. Maria Yudina recalled the event: The start of 1942 was marked by arrival of Vladimir Vladimirovich Sofronitsky, who was saved and brought by a plane from Leningrad.

Our joy cannot be described. Those of us in Moscow did not know whether to count him among the living or the dead, his first concerts here were treated as a miracle, a resurrection . . .

These concerts were guarded by mounted police so that the people striving to get inside would not bring the buildings down.

This Dionysian worship continued for many years afterward. 24

More than 70 years later the Scriabin House website describes Sofronitsky's Moscow arrival as follows: Not yet recovered from his condition of extreme fatigue and emaciation, the artist announced one concert after another

Post-Soviet historians see Sofronitsky's condition in a somewhat different light: Music was a political priority now. . . When Sofronitsky's friend meets him and others off the flight, he was surprised. 'He didn't look bad. Yes, they'd all lost weight but we'd thought it was even worse.' The Muscovite did not realize that all those on the aircraft had been on special rations.25

The Seventh Symphony

When Shostakovich completed his ‘Leningrad’ Symphony in 1942, it premiered to huge acclaim in Russia, London and New York.26

At the Moscow performance, the writer Olga Berggolts watched the slight, still-boyish composer rise to a torrent of praise. “I looked at him . . . and I thought: "This man is more powerful than Hitler.'”

That was small potatoes compared to the symbolism of the Seventh’s premiere in Leningrad that summer:

[The] German guns were less than seven miles from the Philharmonia Hall as Dmitry Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony was first played in the city to which he had dedicated it in the late afternoon of Sunday 9 August 1942. Leningrad had been besieged since the Germans cut the last land route out of the city [in] September 1941. The music's greatest resonance, though, it truest defiance of the Nazis. . . could come only when it was played in battered and bleeding Leningrad itself. Orders were given that "by any means, this must take place." 27

In 1943, Yudina, then on the Moscow Conservatory faculty, was flown into still-besieged Leningrad to appear as pianist -- and “to give aid to the city's inhabitants in all areas of life.” This accorded with her own self-image, which regarded her talent as “given in service and self-sacrifice to God, music and humanity, especially suffering people and those in the greatest need.”28

By that point, her former classmate Bertha, and Bertha’s children Irene and Oscar, were out of harm’s way in Tashkent.

That year Sofronitsky was awarded a State Prize of the First Degree.29

Skomorovsky, Siege of Leningrad, Sofronitsky ‘recollection’: “. . . Suddenly I realized that in the days of this terrible war we artists are needed more than ever. . . .I wanted through my music to extol heroic deeds, to call for struggle and victory.”

1 William R. Trotter, "The Music of War," Military History Magazine, June 2005 Blog 6/12/2006, see http://www.historynet.com/the-music-of-war.htm

2 But see also Chap. ___ (“First Movement”) above.

3 Id.: “In the United States, everyone from Frank Sinatra to Leopold Stokowski gave War Bonds concerts and made recordings exclusively for the armed forces.”

4 Trotter, op. cit.

5 Moynahan, op.cit., p.301.

6 See, e.g., Shostakovich’s Testimony (ed. and ‘as related to’ Solomon Volkov; tr Antonina Bouis; Harper & Row, NY, 1979), in which the composer posthumously described much of his wartime and post-War oeuvre as a veiled attack on Stalinism and the Soviet system. Russian intelligence services and others made efforts to discredit the composer’s memoir from its first appearance through (and past) the collapse of the Soviet Union. Those efforts now seem largely to have been themselves discredited.

For a short summary of the 30-year controversy over the memoir’s authenticity, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testimony_(book). For the apparent resolution, see Allan B. Ho & Dmitry Feofanov, “The Shostakovich Wars (Southern IL Univ, rev 2014), http://www.siue.edu/~aho/ShostakovichWars/SW.pdf (all accessed 5-2016).

7 See http://www.naxos.com/person/Vladimir_Sofronitsky/43886.htm

8 "In the history of piano playing, only the celebrated “historical concerts” of A[nton] Rubinstein can be compared with this daring venture. Within seven months Sofronitsky played works of Buxtehude, Handel, J. S. Bach, C. P. E. Bach, Scarlatti, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Borodin, Balakirev, Glazunov, Rachmaninoff, Medtner, Scriabin, Mayakovski, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Kabalevsky, Bogdanov-Berezovsky, and Goltz." http://arbiterrecords.org/catalog/scriabin-chez-scriabin-live-at-the-scriabin-museum-1960/ (accessed 5-27-16).

9 See Chapter ___ (“First Movement”) above; Sharon A. Kowalsky, Review of Nelson's Music for the Revolution, op.cit., pp 102-105

10 Id., p. 165.

11 Id, pp. 165-66.

12 http://arbiterrecords.org/catalog/scriabin-chez-scriabin-live-at-the-scriabin-museum-1960/ ( 6/6/2009 posting)

13 see n 35, Chap. __ (“The Siege") below.

14 See Chap __ ("Fresh Starts") below; Review: Wm. E. S[teinberg]., PhiladephiaLedger: "Music -- Anna Burstein-Bieler Scores" 21 October, 1941: "Superior piano playing by Anna Burstein-Bieler as soloist in Liszt's A major concerto and Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue" afforded special pleasure at yesterday afternoon's concert....The audience was the largest for any of the organization's concerts thus far and acknowledges the soloists; accomplishments with enthusiastic applause, she scoring a decided and deserved success....

“In the Gershwin Rhapsody, Mme. Burstein-Bieler displayed...skill, playing the solo part in "concert style" rather than as a "jazz " pianist. Understandably, certain idiomatic touches and intangibles of accent were not altogether attained, these probably requiring longer exposure to indigenous "popular" American music than has been the case with Mme. Burstein Bieler. However this need not worry such a well=endowed artist and musician, and she is to be commended and congratulated for her approach, attitude, and receptiveness."

15 See [Rebecca Concerts]

16 Under the “mutual aid and protection” provisions of the Reich’s Axis pact with Japan. See, e.g., _____.

17 Authors’ note: First in North Africa (Operation Torch, Nov. 1942) to create a platform for the invasion of Italy before the direct invasion of occupied France in Operation Overlord (June 1944) See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Torch; http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/world-war-two/war-in- north-africa/operation-torch/; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Overlord; http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/battles/dday/ (all accessed 5-31-16). See also, e.g., Rick Atkinson, The “Liberation Trilogy,” http://liberationtrilogy.com/ (same).

18 Boris Skomorovsky and E. G. Morris, The Siege of Leningrad\: The saga of the greatest siege of all times as told by the letters, documents and stories of the brave people who withstood it (Dutton, NY, 1945) p. 95.[copy on file with authors]

19 (* An internet picture of Sofronitsy performing from Russian state files documents the concert date at 23 December 1941. We have found no confirming evidence.) See photo: http://sputnikimages.com/en/site/gallery/index/id/634886/context/%7B%22q%22%3A%22634886%22%2C%22 orientation%22%3A%22all%22%7D/#634886 /.

But see also, http://arbiterrecords.org/catalog/scriabin-chez-scriabin-live-at-the-scriabin-museum-1960/: " . . . on 12 December his concert for the protectors of the city took place in the hall of the Pushkin Theater. “At the Pushkin Theater there were three degrees of frost,” he wrote afterwards. “The audience, the defenders of the city, sat in their fur coats. I played in gloves with the tips of the fingers cut out. But how they listened, and how I played! What treasured memories those were. When it became clear to me why I must play, I felt it was absolutely necessary for me to play. Many of the pieces which I had previously loved began to seem very small. Something greater was required, music of heroic feeling, a call to fight. It was perhaps only in these days that I fully understood and perceived the greatness of Beethoven’s Appassionato or the mighty invocatory power of the Third Sonata of Scriabin.”

20 Brian Moynahan, op. cit. p. 245. The quote is from Albert Pleysier, The Blockade and Battle of Leningrad (Univ. Press of America: Lanham MD, 2008) p. 91.

21 See photo, Skomorovsky, p. 95.

22 Moynahan, p. 277. The thin audience may be explained by the fact that more than a million Leningraders were dead or dying at this point. Id., pp.___.

23 Id., p. 301.

24 Maria Yudina, remarks at Sofronitsky funeral, op.cit.

25 Id. p. 397.

26 Trotter. op.cit. p. __: "Worldwide interest in the new work ran high. The orchestral score was microfilmed and flown to the West in a dramatic odyssey that included top-secret stops at Tehran and Cairo. Arturo Toscanini and Leopold Stokowski nearly came to blows as they vied for the right to conduct its North American premiere.

Toscanini ultimately outmaneuvered his rival. . . American audiences received it ecstatically. . . .Its opening movement, featuring a hypnotic 13-minute crescendo depicting the relentless Nazi advance, is a gripping musical impression of mechanized warfare, and its concluding movement is a thrilling paean to victory. In terms of generating political, emotional and financial support for the Soviet cause, that one piece of music was worth three or four Murmansk convoys."

27 Moynahan, op.cit., p. 1.

28 See, e.g., http://mugi.hfmt-hamburg.de/en/artikel/Maria_Judina Marina Lobanova, tr. David Babcock. January/March 2009, mugi.hfmt-hamburg.d, Hochschle fur Music und Theater Hamburg

29 See: http://arbiterrecords.org/catalog/scriabin-chez-scriabin-live-at-the-scriabin-museum-1960/ and http://www.sofronitsky.ru/en/publications/publication-03.html(accessed 5-28-16). A subtitled Russian TV program on Sofronitsky provides more detail. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuF7tX3gsNc