Friday Column: Shostakovich

Last Friday, it was my good fortune to attend a performance of three of Dmitri Shostakovich's pieces at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco. The guest conductor for the set was Mstislav Rostropovich, one of the world's preeminent performers and conductors, and a former close friend of Shostakovich (who wrote his First Cello Concerto for Rostropovich).

Throughout Shostakovich's career, the composer famously tangled with the Soviet government (coming close to arrest and/or imprisonment, although exactly how close is a matter open to dispute), and the theme of the event's three works was that they were all written to get Shostakovich back into the Communist Party's good graces.

First performed was the Festive Overture, a six-minute nub of music that in its unflinching triumphantism sounded like the last thing I would have expected Shostakovich to pen. It is said that Shostakovich detested popular music meant to rouse the masses, but this is undoubtedly what the Festive Overture is. Heavy on the brass, the piece has a continually brisk tempo and a rousing melody.

It was composed in 1954 to celebrate the 37th anniversary of the October revolution, so, of course, Shostakovich daren't write anything with a hint of melancholy. He was asked to compose it at the 11th hour, and the symphony Playbill includes a quote from Shostakovich's friend, Lev Lebedinsk, who describes his method of composition:

When he wrote light music he was able to talk, make jokes, and compose simultaneously . . . He laughed and chuckled, and in the meanwhile work was under way and the music was being written down.

It sounds as though Shostakovich put about that much thought into the piece.

The second piece performed was the far more interesting Piano Concerto No. 1 in C minor. This piece was composed by Shostakovich after he was officially censured for his opera The Nose. It was based on a subversive story by Nikolai Gogol, in which a bureaucrat's nose disappears one day, goes off on its own, and assumes the bureaucrat's place in Russian society, and it's easy to see how Shostakovich could get in trouble for an opera with that as its source.

It seems that in the Piano Concerto No. 1, with it's jazz-influenced, thoroughly complex trumpet, Shostakovich was trying to find more of a balance between rousing melody and interesting music. When this piece was composed (1934) jazz was the popular music of the West, and in allowing its influence to creep into this work, Shostakovich must have known he was skirting the boundaries of the popular. Particularly in the Concerto's third movement, the trumpet sounds especially seductive and rhythmic.

However, this popular influence is definitely undercut in the piece's last movement. Throughout the piano and trumpet play in response to one another, repeating a simple series of notes that, coming from the trumpet, sounds somewhat like the famous passage from the William Tell Overture. It's so clearly facile and petty, that I can only imagine Shostakovich wrote this melody in, as a sort of ironic gesture. That's certainly how it was played. The last movement is decidedly upbeat and very, well, peppy, but it is a sardonic sort of peppiness.

Although the trumpet occupies a large place in the Concerto (Shostakovich had originally conceived it as a trumpet concerto), this is a piano concerto after all, so something should be said about that instrument. I found the second, slow movement, to be the one in which the piano came off best. About halfway through there's a brilliant solo in which the piano builds its way from quiet, soft notes to a thunderous climax before coming back down to join the orchestra. Again, at the movement's end, the piano steals the show, this time with a rising series of high-pitched notes that are repeated several times. Each time they are repeated they are spread at greater intervals, until, at last, the wait between them becomes inscrutable.

Last up was the Symphony No. 5, famously subtitled (by a critic) "An Artist's Reply to Just Criticism" (the criticism referred to being when Pravda attacked Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtzensk District). The Lady Macbeth incident is the best-known episode of Shostakovich sparring with the Soviet authorities; as the story goes, Stalin himself got up and left in the middle of a performance of Lady Macbeth (always a bad sign), and Shostakovich lived in fear for a number of months even withdrawing his ambitious, difficult Symphony No. 4, which was then in rehearsals and soon to be premiered.

If the Festive Overture was obviously for the masses, and the Piano Concerto No. 1 a little less so, then in the Fifth Symphony Shostakovich is clearly wrestling between writing something that on the outside will appease his government critics while on the inside remaining deviously complex and subversive. It is said that the final movement of the Fifth, which ends in a triumphant climax, only appears to be life-affirming, and that Shostakovich's true intent was to show someone who only affirms life because he has been beaten into doing it. This declaration of subversive intent could be applied to the entire symphony: throughout, the symphony excels at disguise, making a lot sound like a little.

The symphony's first movement starts out with slow, pensive music. It is as though our protagonist is waking from a slumber. Several attempts are made to fully "awaken," but the music continually doubles back to the pensive opening theme until, finally we reach a point in which the tempo is ratcheted up step by step to a rousing climax. The use of military-sounding drums, however, gives the climax an enforced feeling, and throughout the music remains despairing, or at best, conflicted.

The scherzo continues this, sounding like an enforced, sardonic dance. It is as though our protagonist has been whisked to a party that he does not know why he wants to attend. He downs drink after drink, going through the motions of dancing and socialization without once ever connecting with anyone in the room. As with the Piano Concerto No. 1, Shostakovich takes a peppy theme and turns it on itself.

If the scherzo is a bad party, the largo is the morning after. This is perhaps the most pensive part of a symphony in which the music frequently sounds pensive, as though musing in search of truth. Of note in this movement is a beautiful passage about four minutes in. Notes from a harp create parallel (prison?) bars of sound which a flute slaloms in an out of.

The last movement starts with a bang: flutes curl back in amongst themselves and loud drums awaken those who fell asleep during the largo. Much boisterous sound follows; finally, action, happiness! Our protagonist has found his way! But no, the music rises only to once again get bogged down in that slow pensiveness. The symphony ends resolved in a rousing conclusion, and it appears as though our protagonist has finally found the answer he seeks. Or has he?

Comments

[Michael]

Scott, a very nice review -- I really like all the context you provide for the music. Sounds like a great concert. I think I'll have to check out the PC No. 1, as well as the Gogol story.