Shostakovich Last Symphony

[Micol Cohn]

Itseems I have run across a very interesting page on my smart phone. Conductors and talented players talking about the importance of pacing a great piece of music. To thyself be true. I love and admire classical orchestras. You bring to us who listen a great joy to our lives. I bought a ticket to hear my first shostakovich in person. One of my favorites the #5. The conductor gustavo dudamel and the los angeles symphony. Located in los angeles at the fantastic looking walt disney concert hall. I love the upper mid balcony for its great sound and detail. I know it will sound just great. MY first visit there. from what I have heard about dudamel l know he can.handle this great piece of work with all the right pace and strength of emotion needed for such a beautiful symphony. at home I love my CD #5 version by the Cleveland orchestra on telarc maazel conducting. love reading your page. music listener.

During the coming year, 1966, this extraordinary Russian composer is going to be sixty years old, and we are therefore dedicating this program to him and to his lifelong devotion to his art. May it long continue.

But it's not only those mischievous wrong-note tunes of Shostakovich that make his humor, it's also his way of adding or skipping a beat here and there, where you least expect it, as in this little theme, which follows the one we just heard:

You see? It's like a ride on some mad Coney Island machine where you're whipped and flung in fifty directions, always when you least expect it. But anyway, shaken up as we are, we have reached the dominant key of B-flat, and are now ready for the appearance of the second theme. Here comes another twist. You may remember from our program on sonata form that the second theme of a symphonic movement should provide a contrast with the first theme, not only in key but also in feeling; that is, if the first theme is strong and manly, the second theme is likely to be sweet and feminine. Or vice versa. Anyway, in this case the first theme as you heard was playful and bouncy, so we are led to expect a second theme that will contrast by being sweet and smooth. And what do we get? Anything but. Because out comes a jaunty little marching tune, whistled by the tiny, tinny piccolo:

And so on. We've had another surprise. You see, most musical jokes are surprises, just as most other jokes are: You expect one thing and you get another, and somehow that tickles your funny bone. Nobody knows why. And this surprising, silly second theme is even sillier when it comes back in the recapitulation, because this time it's played not even by the piccolo but by one single solo violin, who, forcing out that squeaky little tune over the accompaniment of a whole brass section.

As you'll see when we play the whole movement, all through this section of the recapitulation which leads up to the squeaky second theme, that trombone keeps plowing in with his two notes, always in the wrong places, as though he's skipped fifty bars of music by mistake and has come in too soon:

Naturally I can't tell you all the jokes in advance; I've got to leave some for you to discover yourselves. Which I hope you will, so that you get the maximum enjoyment out of this delightful first movement of the Ninth Symphony by Dmitri Shostakovich.

The second movement of the Ninth Symphony by Shostakovich doesn't seem to be a joke at all at first. It's a quiet, sweet little waltz, actually rather sad. There is no horseplay here, as there was with the trombone in the first movement; in fact, the trumpets and trombones don't play at all in this piece, and neither does the percussion. It's all on a much smaller scale, almost like chamber music, with haunting long melodies played by solo woodwind instruments. It opens with this clarinet solo:

And so it goes on, wending its melancholy way. Later that same long line is repeated by the solo flute and at the very end by our old friend the piccolo who as you'll see, has changed from his perky personality in the first movement into this gentle, wistful one. And in between these different woodwind solos, the strings play strange, yearning waves of melody:

Now what in the world is a Spanish bullfighter doing in this symphony? Well, as I said, it's full of surprises; anything can happen. It's as though suddenly, at a party, someone grabbed the Spanish shawl off the piano, wrapped himself in it, and gave out with a wild gypsy dance. It's insane.

Good heavens, what a change! Is this joke symphony really going to pieces? What are we doing with great utterances? It's gone insane. Well, let's see what this tragic statement turns out to be: It turns out to be a bassoon solo, in a free reciting style, very mournful and very tragic:

as if to say: This is going to be a real Ninth Symphony, tragic and monumental and everything! Just like Beethoven! So he has his trombones repeat the pompous fanfare, and again he has the bassoon wail out that cadenza, only even more mournful now, and more "Russian," more emotional. And that's the end of the whole fourth movement, because, super-surprise of all, that same doleful bassoon, without so much as drawing breath from his last note slyly sneaks into a kittenish little dance tune.

And the tune gradually gathers momentum, as little by little the whole orchestra picks it up, until soon we're galloping away into the fifth and final movement, which is a brilliant, breathless rondo.

An article by scholar J. Daniel Huband suggests that we view his works less through the prism of his life, and that by looking at the construction of the Fifth Symphony through the dispassionate eye of the musicologist, we might find that Shostakovich actually stuck to his guns, compositionally speaking, at least:

For me, this is a defining moment in the symphony, determined by the entirety of the last movement, and even the journey of the entire piece. I hear the last movement as a gradual acceleration of forces, an increasing sense of hysteria and loss of control until things break down and the fanfare (like the theme) becomes almost nightmarish in sound.

NPR features a collaboration with conductor Marin Alsop, which has an excellent multimedia page which includes famous musicians discussing Shostakovich, including Alsop (on the Fifth Symphony), David Finckel, Mstislav Rostropovich, Valery Gergiev, and Leon Botstein.

Shostakovich was only 26 when he completed Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (1934). The opera featured a racy plot set to avant-garde music and premiered to critical and popular acclaim. Two years later, three different productions were running in Moscow.

Then Stalin himself went to a performance. The next morning the state newspaper Pravda condemned the work, saying it corrupted the Soviet spirit. The opera disappeared overnight and every publication and political organization in the country heaped personal attacks on its composer.

Unsure about its reception, Shostakovich rejected his own Fourth Symphony while in rehearsal. Instead he premiered Symphony No. 5, obsequiously subtitled "A Soviet Artist's Response to Just Criticism." As required, the work displayed lyricism, a heroic tone and inspiration from Russian literature. Still, many hear a subtext of critical despair beneath the crowd-pleasing melodies.

Instead of writing in the approved ultra-nationalist style, Shostakovich wrote his Fifth Symphony on the model pioneered by Beethoven; he begins his symphony with a sonata, albeit with a hesitant feel. By the third bar of the piece things goes wrong. The music breaks off abruptly and shrugs its way downward to a dead end in an implacable repetition of three notes.

The next theme is derived from a folk song recognizable to the Soviet audience. By changing just one note, however, Shostakovich shifts the meaning of the music. He fulfils the official mandate of celebrating Slavic culture, but the minor shift suggests emotional shadings beyond simple admiration.

More drastic changes of mood come from cutting between extremes of range and instrumentation. The piano and basses lurch in with a version of the dead end theme, followed by winds, brass and percussion. The music becomes militaristic and drives forward. The strings and winds burst out with the sad tunes they played at the beginning. The brass and percussion hammer home what seems to be the ultimate dead end.

The second movement of Symphony No. 5 is drawn from the same goofy, ironic material as his film scores. The movement is a spoof on waltzes. Shostakovich draws a musical picture of a dance floor. There are peasants in their heavy boots, a wise guy on his squeaky clarinet, and a deluxe dance master with his little kit violin.

In the period of Stalin's brutal purges, authorities interpreted crying in public as criticism of the regime's actions and a punishable offense. Despite this, the third movement of the Fifth, a requiem, made many weep openly at its premiere.

An oboe soloist, accompanied by a shiver of strings, plays the loneliest tune in the symphony. The full force of the lament bursts out as the double basses shriek. Then the rest of the orchestra screams into the noise, coming at last to another dead end. As in the first movement, the music wanders its way back to an exhausted close.

Shostakovich lost three close family members to the prison camps. In 1937, Shostakovich himself was summoned for interrogation. Ironically, Shostakovich only escaped because his interrogator was arrested before his appointment came. For the rest of his life Shostakovich had to issue condemnations of other composers, just as they had of him. Often he wrote a piece that mattered to him, only to hide it for years.

With his fate hanging in the balance, Shostakovich had to come up with an upbeat ending for his Fifth Symphony. Concluding with the melancholy of the third movement was not an option. However, the celebratory mood of the fourth movement sounds forced to some ears.

Finally, with a great deal of effort, Shostakovich reveals his triumphant ending. As in the first movement, there is one expressively altered note, though. Not B natural, confirming the happy major version of the scale, but B flat, which delivers the sad minor version.

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