THE LIFE, TIMES AND MUSIC OF DMITRY SHOSTAKOVICH SYLLABUS

SHOSTAKOVICH AND STALIN (9:30) In 1936 Shostakovich, then the Soviet Union’s most acclaimed composer, turned 30. That year his life and his music were profoundly altered when he was caught up in both the regime’s cultural clampdown and the terror unleashed against “internal enemies”. We will hear excerpts from two of S’s works of this period, the 5th and 6th Symphonies, along with commentaries from two noted American exponents of S’s music: Leonard Bernstein and Michael Tilson Thomas. SHOSTAKOVICH AND WAR (10:45) When Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June, 1941, S was teaching at the Leningrad Conservatory and working on his 7th Symphony. He took part in the early stages of the defense of Leningrad as a volunteer fireman, but was evacuated in the fall with his wife and two children to the USSR’s temporary capital at Kuybishev. He completed the “Leningrad” Symphony early in 1942, and it instantly became a world-wide symbol of resistance to aggression. We will hear excerpts from this work, as well as from his 8th (1943) and 9th (1945) symphonies, which were musical masterpieces, but increasingly “off-message” for the regime. Commentary will be by Valerie Gergiev, Russia’s leading conductor and good friend of Vladimir Putin. LUNCH (11:45-12:15) SHOSTAKOVICH’S SELF-0BITUARY (12:15) On July 19, 1960 S wrote to a close friend regarding his just-completed Eighth String Quartet “I started thinking that if some day I die, nobody is likely to write a work in memory of me, so I had better write one myself. The title page could carry the dedication: ‘To the memory of the composer of this quartet’”. Although relatively brief at 23 minutes, the work conveys powerful messages about S’s inner world and the course of his life. The recording we will hear was made in 1987 by the Borodin Quartet, whose cellist, Valentin Berlinsky, had worked closely with Shostakovich.

SHOSTAKOVICH AND RUSSIAN ANTI-SEMITISM (1 PM) For two decades beginning in the war years, S regularly used Jewish themes in his music in solidarity with Jewish victims of Stalinist terror, German genocide and rising anti-Semitism in Russian society. We will hear excerpts from his vocal music, including “From Jewish Folklore” and the “Babi Yar” symphony, as well as chamber music, such as the Second Piano Trio. SHOSTAKOVICH AND SHAKESPEARE (2 PM) S regularly drew on Shakespeare and other giants of world literature for inspiration and to sharpen his critique of the injustices he witnessed. We will see an excerpt from a film version of Hamlet for which he wrote the score, and hear his dramatic settings of works by such poets as Rilke, Apollinaire and Blok.

SOME SUGGESTED READING

Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century, Picador, 2007

Galina Vishnevskaya, Galina: a Russian Story, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1985

Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate, New York Review Books, 2006

Wendy Lesser, Music for Silenced Voices: Shostakovich and His Fifteen Quartets, Yale University Press, 2011

John Hodge, Collaborators, Grove Press, 2013

Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, Penguin Books, 2006

Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, Basic Books, 2010

Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope: A Memoir, Random House, 1970

David Remnick, “Watching the Eclipse”, in The New Yorker, August 11, 2014