Happy (belated) Anniversary of the Premiere of Symphony No. 10, Dmitri Shostakovich!

Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 in E minor (Op. 93), frequently considered one of the great composer’s finest Symphonies, had its premiere on December 17, 1953 with the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestraunder conducted by the legendary Yevgeny Mravinsky.

While reading a program note on this extraordinary work, CLICK on the following link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yBaN1tQ2SA to hear a fantastic performance conducted by Mravinsky in 1955.

(This would have been posted yesterday, on the 17th, but there was a lot of Beethoven going on … so, thanks for indulging this belated celebration!)

Shostakovich was a “Soviet prodigy” – a musical genius and one of the very first composers trained entirely in the brave, new Soviet system. His first symphony, written at age 19 in 1925, was stunningly good and was an international success. Although being the Soviet prodigy allowed Shostakovich a political patronage more or less unparalleled, in many ways his life was as unhappy as many others’ in that regime. Tragedies took their heavy toll. Beginning first with the Cultural Revolution of 1928-32, and the followed by Stalin's Great Purges with the increasingly stifling political atmosphere of torture, exile and execution of colleagues and countrymen, and forever the constant threat of being watched, virtually no one was spared a wretched existence. After World War II, favor turned viciously against Shostakovich, and others, through a series of Party Dictates. These new standards demanded complete control over artistic endeavors, and singled out Shostakovich as having violated Party goals. Along with many other artists, the once "darling composer" of the State was made to suffer public humiliation on several occasions. Certainly, Shostakovich’s compositional output was terrifically challenged; that Stalin’s (and afterwards, the Soviet) influence was apparently ever present, and harmfully so, seems clear. By the end of his life, as friend and composer Kristopf Meyer said, Shostakovich’s “face was a bag of tics and grimaces.”

Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op. 93

1. Moderato

2. Allegro

3. Allegretto

4. Andante - Allegro

Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony, now widely considered to be his best, had its premiere in 1953 just months after Stalin’s death. Of its dark character, Shostakovich simply stated publicly that it represented the pain and grief of life, and the West, never quite knowing what information to trust from behind the wall of strangeness that was the Iron Curtain, accepted it at face value. And such was the received wisdom about this piece until Solomon Volkov’s 1979 book, Testimony, was published – the so-called memoirs of Shostakovich as dictated to Volkov. Testimony portrays Shostakovich as the “holy fool” who outwardly played by Stalin’s capricious rules, but subversively spoke out against the Dictator, filling his music with secret, seditious anti-Soviet codes and anti-Stalinist musical descriptions. It also challenged most of what the West thought it knew about one of the 20th Century’s greatest composers. 

Testimony’s authenticity, however, has been both validated and seriously refuted several times over, and we’re left close to where we began with Shostakovich – not knowing what information to trust. In Testimony’s aftermath, however, it has become difficult not to read more meaning into Shostakovich’s music, and this is especially true in his Tenth. Recent scholarship has uncovered several unmistakable cryptographs in Shostakovich’s Tenth, but it’s still baffling as to why they’re there, or what they might mean. Some contend that it is enough to say that the Symphony is a masterpiece on its musical merits alone.

The first movement, indeed, seems to paint the picture of the observer of a devastated landscape – perhaps actual or perhaps psychological. The tonally ambiguous motto that is first heard in the basses becomes the germ-seed which reaches throughout the whole work. The entire first movement gives an emotionally tragic message – ruined, even. Some of its more exquisite moments seem to emerge from beyond mortal inspiration, such as the quiet, tonal bridges between sections which imply prayer, or rather, to say again how Shostakovich responded to a question about whether he believed in God: “No,” he said, “and I am very sorry about it.” The ending is particularly haunting, when the piccolos play a high-pitched dirge over the hollow accompaniment of horns and timpani. Few moments are as bone chilling.

As for some codes, first there is a musical reference to a song that Shostakovich had previously set to a poem by Pushkin, “What is my name to you?” which precedes the beginnings of a drawn out musical signature of Shostakovich’s name. This signature won’t appear fully, however, until the third movement.

The second movement is a hell-fire scherzo. According to Testimony, it’s a “musical portrait of Stalin, roughly speaking” and without doubt, it has plenty of terror imbedded within it. The first three violent notes of its opening theme are derived from the Symphony’s opening. Relentless and pedantic, with at times huge orchestral forces belching clouds of poisonous volume, it’s easy to make a Stalin connection. Shostakovich even writes an orchestral scream – a high density, rising chromatic scale that’s simply awe inspiring. It may be one of his most successful movements for its sheer emotional intensity.

The third movement is a deformed waltz, pensive and troubled. Rather sprawling, it echoes those meandering middle movements of Mahler’s symphonies – a composer who influenced Shostakovich deeply. In fact, the lonely horn theme on which the movement hinges is both a borrowed Mahler theme, and also acknowledged to be a cryptographic musical signature. The Mahler theme is the “Ape’s theme” from the first movement of his Das Lied von der Erde (“The Song of the Earth”), and is an allusion to death. The theme also can be figured, using Italian solfege pitch names, and mixed with German pitch names, to spell out “Elmira” – a student of Shostakovich’s whom he reportedly fell in love with in the early 1950’s. Finally, Shostakovich completes his own musical signature in this movement – spelled as “D – Eb – C – B” (or, DSCH - in German musical pitches, spelling part of the German transliteration of D. SCHostakovich’s name).  This signature can be heard easily in the winds just when the tambourine begins to play. Near the end, after a glimpse backwards to the Symphony’s opening motto, the two signatures are played simultaneously. The allusions to death, the student, and to Shostakovich himself, lead us to a puzzling place in this work. But it seems we were being led to this place all along, so that a Finale proper, as finales so often do, will wrap everything up tidily.

The last movement finale, however, is not exactly “proper.” Beginning with a ruminative oboe solo, the orchestra explores a territory somewhere between the first and third movement’s psychological landscape. Soon, however, it unexpectedly changes character and breaks into a kind of sarcastic Gopak, or folk dance, which has all the qualities of a simple-minded buffoon – it shows up at the wrong time, is clumsy, and misses the point of everything. The beauty of this, however, is that Shostakovich creates a lot of fun with the theme and allows some levity for the first time in this otherwise dark work. At one point, it’s taken up by the bassoon which embellishes the theme garishly, which is then upstaged by the clarinet with a comical thematic yammering. A section of “Stalin’s” violent second movement is recalled, followed by the sarcastic Gopak, and then the Finale begins a mounting obsession with Shostakovich’s musical signature. By the closing bars, it’s being pounded out again and again by the timpani. If one might read anything into this, it could be that Stalin was a violent country bumpkin whom Shostakovich clobbers and thereby wins the day. If nothing else, the Finale is absolutely thrilling, and a breathtaking way to end one of the 20th Century’s truly great symphonies.

? Max Derrickson

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