We should still listen to Russian music – and there’s none greater than Shostakovich’s

That the current Russian leadership, and its lackeys, are pariahs does not – and should not – force us to reject Russia’s culture. In the Second World War, Beethoven and Brahms remained in British concert halls. Equally, during the past four years of Russian aggression against Ukraine, and although some Russian musicians no longer to perform in Europe and America, Russian music rightly remains in our concert programmes. Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and Stravinsky had no part in the present, or even the past, crimes of their country.

The London Symphony Orchestra, under Gianandrea Noseda, the leading Italian conductor, has played the 15 symphonies of Dmitri Shostakovich at the Barbican Hall; and their consistently superb performances have recently been issued in a boxed set, with excellent notes, on the LSO Live label. The release last autumn marked the 50th anniversary of Shostakovich’s death, and reminds the listener of two aspects of his life: what a fine composer he was, and how throughout the tyrannical rule of Stalin and beyond he was tormented by the Soviet leadership for not writing music they considered ideologically in keeping with the spirit of the revolution (whatever that meant: the definition changed from time to time). 

Even if he had been a middle-rank composer, which he certainly was not, his persecution by commissars should be reason enough for us to revisit and listen to his works today. It was possibly only Soviet awareness of his fame in the West that kept him out of the gulag, given the outrage it would have provoked around the world.

The problems for Shostakovich started with his First Symphony, written in 1925 when he was just 19 and first performed the following year. The acclaim it attracted was the proverbial double-edged sword: not only was the composer’s talent blindingly obvious in the 35-minute work, but it was used by critics sycophantic to the regime as a justification of the revolution’s artistic ideals – the revolution was barely eight years old when the work was written. With Prokofiev (who, foolishly, would return in 1936), Rachmaninov and Stravinsky all in exile, Shostakovich had the field pretty much to himself in the Soviet Union – but would then find himself categorised as a “political” composer, even though his motivation when writing music was not fundamentally ideological.

Music criticism had by the time of the one-movement Second Symphony in 1927 split between “modernist” and “proletarian” factions: the former felt that the idea of revolution demanded the end of all traditional musical forms; the latter wanted music that ordinary people could relate to, which meant tunes and familiar structures. The composer seemed torn between the two ideas, and that schizophrenic approach, fuelled by fear of official retribution, permeated much of his symphonic writing over the following 40 years. The Third Symphony of 1929 veered towards the proletarian, and the composer was said to be dissatisfied with it, perhaps sensing a self-imposed restraint on his creativity. By the time of the Fourth in 1936, the Great Purge was under way, and on Stalin’s orders Shostakovich had been denounced in Pravda for his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. The symphony would not be heard until 1961, after Stalin’s death.

Shostakovich immediately wrote his Fifth Symphony, premiered in Leningrad in November 1937, and it received universal acclaim; the Communist party took the popular response to the work as proof that party doctrines had prevailed in the composer’s approach. The Sixth, in 1939, played safe and was similarly welcomed; the Seventh, the Leningrad, was used in 1942 as propaganda signalling the city’s defiance against the Nazi onslaught. Overtly melodramatic, it inspired audiences to weep when hearing it; outside the Soviet Union it was regarded as tedious and, in the words of the US composer Virgil Thomson, “for the slow-witted”. The Eighth, in 1943, was a more reflective and creative affair, and remains highly regarded. The Ninth, from 1945, was intended as a symbol of the victory over Nazism; one American critic found it “childish” and some Soviet critics saw it as inadequate for its purpose.

The last six symphonies date from after Stalin’s death in 1953, though still reflected politics: the 11th, hugely popular in the Soviet Union, is titled The Year 1905, after the first revolution, and the 12th is The Year 1917, and dedicated to Lenin. The 13th sets five Yevtushenko poems about Soviet life. The 14th, dedicated to Benjamin Britten, sometimes sounds like him. Those with no liking for communism should not be put off exploring these symphonies: one suspects that Shostakovich didn’t much like it either. Most of the music is inherently good and thought-provoking, and these performance by Noseda and the LSO first class – perfect for aficionados, but also for beginners.

[Source: Daily Telegraph]