Dmitri Shostakovich and The Fear
by Martin Chetlen
Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich (DS) (1906-1975) lived most of his life consumed by the Stalinist Terror, even after Stalin’s death in 1953. People would get the dreaded banging on their door during the night and be dragged out of their homes by the secret police only to disappear. No one dared to ask what happened to them. Stalin sent thousands to their deaths in the 1930s to his gulags (prisons) in this way. Thousands of others who weren’t taken died from starvation during the forced collectivization of farms. The actual count is not known, only estimated.
For many years DS thought he would be one of Stalin’s victims.
DS did live through tumultuous times. He was born during the end of the Czarist Russian empire in the capital, St. Petersburg, just after the 1905 uprising was brutally crushed. After the 1917 October Revolution, Petrograd (as the city was now called) was no longer the capital as Lenin had moved it to Moscow. The First World War was raging and Russia had been on the losing end since the 1914 crushing defeat of Czarist forces by Germany at Tannenberg. Russia was in chaos which continued even after the new Bolshevik rulers signed a peace treaty with Germany.
DS’s family was in critical straits. His father died in 1922. His mother had three children to care for. (DS was the middle child.) Money was extremely tight. Critically tight. DS got a job at a movie theater playing piano during the (then) silent films. Solomon Volkov, in his book Testimony, states that DS felt revulsion at this. (Musicologists have felt that this actually gave DS an intimate knowledge of movies which served him very well during his subsequent work as a film score composer. This is especially true as there were times in DS’s life where film score composing would be his only source of income.)
However, things changed. At 19 (1925) his graduation exercise from the Petrograd Conservatory (where he was a star student) was his Symphony No. 1 in F Minor, Op. 10. The work was an international sensation. The great conductor Bruno Walter led the first performance outside of the Soviet Union in 1927. Other great conductors, Leopold Stokowski, Otto Klemperer, and Arturo Toscanini also conducted it.
Yet, critical opinion has it that the works which followed were simply not up to this standard. One reason was that the Soviet state, which at first encouraged experimentation and artistic freedom, decided to start clamping down on the arts. It was now expected that artists would turn out positive Soviet works which were basically propaganda. The Symphony No. 2 in B Major, Op. 14 is in this mold, complete with factory whistle (at the start of the last movement). This last movement has a text, by the poet Alexander Bezymensky, sung by a chorus. It is a celebration of the 10th anniversary of the October 1917 revolution and is, in fact, called “To October”. The symphony and the poem were almost universally derided outside of the Soviet Union.
The Symphony No. 3 in E Flat Major, Op. 20 (“May Day”) is another propaganda outing again with a choral final. This is not to say that either symphony is not worth listening to. While DS did write a number of really “blah” works these symphonies are interesting, if done well. (See further on for recording recommendations.)
Now we get to one of the pivotal moments in DS’s life. Composed in 1932, DS’s opera Lady Macbeth of Mtensk premiered in Leningrad (the then current name of Petrograd) in 1934. It was a runaway success. Richard Osborne, in his notes to the Rostropovich recording of the opera, notes that it had over 200 performances during the next two years. On January 26, 1936, Stalin (the Soviet ruler) decided to go to the opera. When he left before the performance was over members of the audience took this as a bad sign. A very bad sign.
This turned out to be true. The next day Pravda, one of the Soviet newspapers, had an article entitled “Muddle instead of music”. In Testimony DS says that he was on a concert tour when the article came out. He read Pravda and everyone else he saw was reading it. DS knew what they were thinking: DS was now a pariah, an untouchable. When people saw him they crossed the street so as not to be seen with him. After all, the article had stated “this could end very badly”. No one doubted what that meant.
Stalin attended another DS work, a ballet called Bright Stream. This led to another Pravda attack. DS was now “an enemy of the people”. This is about when DS thought that he would disappear. He would sit outside his apartment door fully dressed with his bags packed, chain-smoking, so that his family would not be disturbed when the police came. He did this for many, many nights. However, the police never came. There is a lot of speculation as to why. The reasons that are usually put forward would also apply to others who did disappear.
DS was thus given the opportunity to make amends. He withdrew his Symphony No. 4 from performance. (He considered it too avant-garde and thought it would get him into more trouble.) It was not performed until 1961. In the oft told story, his next symphony, the Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47, would be the deciding factor as to whether or not he would be rehabilitated. Its subtitle is “A Soviet Artist’s Reply to Just Criticism”. DS, already a nervous, chain-smoking wreck became even more so knowing that his entire future was bound up in this work. He was too nervous to even sit in the concert hall in 1937 when the work was premiered in Leningrad. When he heard the cheering he felt that he had been saved. The reviews were ecstatic.
This was hardly the end of DS’s adventures. Perhaps another time.
Recordings of some of the DS works mentioned:
DS ended up writing 15 symphonies. It is now quite common to have complete sets released. I really don’t favor the “big name” recorded sets by Bernard Haitink and Mstislav Rostropovich. I like the WDR Symphony/Rudolf Barshai set on the Brilliant Classics label. Be aware that while this set has excellent notes it has no credits for any of the performers other than the orchestra and no sung texts. The individual CD releases do have the credits and I got the information through the internet.
Individual Recordings:
There are a lot of recordings of the First Symphony. The one I like the best is the New York Philharmonic/Leonard Bernstein recording originally on Columbia now on Sony Classical. It seems that critics prefer his rerecording with the Chicago Symphony on the DG label. I like that one too, but prefer the earlier, NYP, one.
Lady Macbeth of Mtensk is a terrific opera, a 20th century masterpiece. In 1962 the Soviet authorities allowed a shortened, revised version to be performed as Katerina Ismailova. According to Osborne’s notes for the Lady Macbeth recording:
One of the last things DS had said to Rostropovich was: “If you perform Lady Macbeth please do the first version”.
This was before Rostropovich was allowed to go to the West with his wife, soprano Galina Vishnevskaya. When he got to the West, he let it be known that he was interested in becoming associated with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. (Another story worth telling is what happened with that.) According to Osborne, Rostropovich found the original version, in of all places, the Library of Congress. Apparently, the great conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos (Bernstein’s immediate predecessor as Music Director of the NYP) had used it but was unused since.
The recording with Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya was made in London for EMI (now Warner Classics). It is a terrific recording of a great opera. Be aware that the opera does have a sex scene and could be rated X (which was probably one reason Stalin hated it).
The Symphony No. 5 is probably DS’s most popular work. There are lots and lots of recordings. The great recording of this work is the NYP/Bernstein one, originally a Columbia LP, now a Sony classical release. It was recorded in Boston in 1959. This occurred as the orchestra returned from a European tour. The original LP cover showed a photograph of DS onstage with the NYP and Bernstein after a performance during the tour in Moscow. DS was in the audience and reportedly really enjoyed the performance.
Zuill Bailey is going to perform DS’s Cello Concerto No.1 with the VSO. Again, there are many recordings of this work. The one I like best is the one made with cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and the Philadelphia Orchestra/Eugene Ormandy. Originally a Columbia LP it is now on the Sony Classical label. (Yes, the same Rostropovich cited before. He is considered one of the greatest 20th century cellists. He was also a pianist and a conductor, but it is as a cellist that he is best remembered.) This recording was made in 1959 in Philadelphia with the composer in attendance. The work was dedicated to and written for Rostropovich. (He, his wife, and DS were close friends.) The original LP cover showed Rostropovich, Ormandy, and DS during the recording session. DS is uncharacteristically photographed laughing, but characteristically with a cigarette.
I’ve also cited Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich as told to Solomon Volkov (Harper & Row, 1979. Translated by Antonia W. Bouis.) This is a controversial work. Why? Because of the debate over its authenticity. Did Volkov really have these conversations with DS? If so, did he transcribe them faithfully? This was a popular book in the West when it was first published because it solidified the Western idea that DS was a rebel, a martyr, who hated the Soviet system. Further, that while his works were supposed to conform to Soviet ideology, they were in fact about Soviet repression and terror. The controversy remains. DS’s own son, Maxim, has stated that he feels that it is not authentic. He first said this while still in the Soviet Union so his remarks were considered to be along the lines of “Of course he said that. What did you expect?”. However, once Maxim emigrated to the West he still maintained that the book was not authentic. Scholars are still divided over its authenticity.