Shostakovich: Symphony No. 9 in E-flat Major, Op. 70

Symphony No. 9 in E-flat Major, Op. 70

Dmitri Shostakovich
(1906-1975)

As with Hindemith, Bartok and Barber, Dmitri Shostakovich’s career exhibits unexpected shifts in critical and popular approval, uniquely affected by the political milieu in which he was forced to function, adjust, prevail, survive. Like the other composers represented on today’s concert, his reputation today is utterly transformed from the general assessment current by the middle of the 20^th century---then he was usually dismissed as a brilliant, uneven flash-in-the pan, who pandered to his masters in the Kremlin. Today his standing has never been higher.

A boy-wonder (his splendid First Symphony was begun the age of 18), the youthful Shostakovich was regarded (both within the USSR and beyond its borders) as representing the vigour and idealism of the new Soviet state. Second and Third Symphonies appeared in the late 1920s, which might be described as musical “poster art,” brilliant and innovative, celebrating the October Revolution, and the workers’ festivities on May Day. A fourth Symphony was being prepared for performance in 1936, only to be suddenly (and prudently) withdrawn----the premiere took place in 1961! The composer had just suffered an incredible shift in fortune when his opera Lady MacBeth of Mtzensk (1934), which at first had taken the world by storm, was abruptly attacked in Pravda as “Muddle instead of Music,” and overnight disappeared from view. Josef Stalin had attended a performance of the opera, was deeply offended, and may well have written the Pravda article himself. With the notorious Stalinist purge trials getting underway, the composer was in serious danger for his life. We now know that Shostakovich kept a suitcase packed with warm clothing next to the door of his apartment, just in case the authorities were to come for him in the middle of the night. That never happened, but it was a close call. After several years quietly composing piano pieces, and chamber music, Shostakovich released the powerful Fifth Symphony (1937), which bore the ironic subtitle, “A Soviet artist’s reply to justified criticism.” With the sensational success of the Fifth Symphony, Shostakovich regained his position in the Soviet musical world, although deeply shaken and embittered by his experience. And from that point onward a succession of symphonies (eventually fifteen in total) would mark the major stages in Shostakovich’s career, seen outwardly as emblematic of the successes of the Soviet state, and inwardly forming a personal witness as an artist and humanist. The most unusual “popular success” in Shostakovich’s career was his Seventh (“Leningrad”) Symphony (1941-42), composed during the first stage of the savage 900-day siege of his native city. This work seemed to symbolize the heroic Soviet struggle against the Nazis, and was the source of intense acclaim around the world----an audience in the millions heard the American premiere conductedby Toscanini in July, 1942. An Eighth Symphony followed, vivid in its darkness and unflinching expression of horror and grief, composed during the terrible period of the Battle of Stalingrad---the turning point in the war. With the eventual victory over the Nazis (for which the Soviets, justifiably, claimed a great share of the credit), there was every expectation that Shostakovich would unveil a “heroic” symphony, to round out the triptych of massive “war” symphonies. Shostakovich himself wrote to a friend that “I would like to write…for a chorus and solo singers as well as an orchestra if I could find suitable material for the text and if I were not afraid that I might be suspected of wanting to draw immodest analogies”—i. e., with the Beethoven Ninth Symphony. No such symphony ever was written. During the final year of the war, living at a safe distance from the area of battle, Shostakovich often joined his friend Dmitri Kabalevsky in reading through Haydn and Mozart symphonies in four-hand piano arrangements. In a remarkable refusal to dish up a much-anticipated “triumphal Ninth,” the new symphony turned out to be a trim, 25-minute work of Haydnesque wit and fineness of detail, utterly upsetting all expectations. After the new symphony was given a pre-concert playing-through on the piano, a typical reaction was: “we were prepared to listen to a new monumental fresco, something that we had the right to expect from the author of the Seventh and Eight Symphonies, especially at a time when the Soviet people and the whole world were still full of the recent victory over fascism. But we heard something quite diferent…We were offered a symphony scherzo, a joke almost, one might say, a sinfonietta!” The composer’s private views were recorded years later in conversation with his pupil, Solomon Volkov: “I confess that I gave hope to the leader [Stalin] and teacher’s dreams. I announced that I was writing an apotheosis. I was trying to get them off my back, but the attempt failed. When my ninth was performed, Stalin was incensed. He was deeply offended because there was no chorus, no soloists. And no apotheosis. There wasn’t even a paltry dedication. It was just music, which Stalin didn’t understand very well.

Just music? On the surface the work perhaps seems to be music of brightness and clarity. But an attentive listener may detect a subtle under-current of darkness and irony in this outwardly light-hearted work. Like many Russian artists of the years, Shostakovich was a master of the “sub-text.” A more disturbing aspect of this work might not have been lost on the workers, soldiers and survivors of the “Great Patriotic War.” There would be six more symphonies: a Tenth, kept in a locked drawer until the Great Teacher was safely dead: a profound and disturbing work. There followed the Eleventh and Twelfth, reflecting Soviet history in pictorial and ironic tones. In the more liberal 1960s and ‘70s came the Thirteenth, setting Yevgeni Yetushenko’s poetry attacking Anti-Semitism and the failures of the Soviet system, a Fourteenth, with solo voices, meditating upon death and human cruelty) and a deeply personal Fifteenth, written at the end of life, linked to recollections of a hospital intensive care ward.

The symphony is laid out in five movements, the final three heard without pause--the fourth movement, Largo, acting as an interlude between the lively third and fifth movements. The work calls for the same orchestral forces as the Bartok concerto, with the addition of a solo piccolo.

Stepping forth with a crisp, Haydnesque little tune in the violins, the opening movement projects an air of confidence and cheerful disposition. The second subject, led off with a blaring note in the trombone, is a cheeky little skipping tune in the piccolo over an oompah background in pizzicato strings. The exposition is repeated in the classical manner, and the music strides forward into a development which becomes more forceful and determined in putting the first subject figure through its paces. Soon becoming more serious than one might have expected, the piccolo melody comes in for attention from the full orchestra (fortissimo), now anything but “cute” in character. The recapitulation emerges out of this turbulence, the light-hearted opening melody now hammered out in unison strings. As it progresses an intrusive A-flat is heard in the trombone (a return of that “blaring” mentioned earlier), with unrelenting repetition (six times in a row), on the seventh blast finally wheeling the orchestra around to bring in the second subject in the key of A-flat. This time the piccolo ditty is given to the solo violin. The movement is rounded out by a short coda which bashes the opening notes of the “ditty” into submission, the trumpet bringing the movement home with a final teasing tootle on the opening notes of the movement.

The slow movement (Moderato) pushes aside any notion of this symphony being merely light entertainment. Set in the murky key of B Minor, the principal subject is a limping waltz theme in the solo clarinet over a skeletal bass-line. (The music “limps” because of rests which break the melodic flow, resulting in periodic shifts from three beats per bar to four). The second clarinet enters, the melody passing to the flute, doubled by a bassoon three octaves lower. The atmosphere is glassy calm, cold, slightly sinister. The flute hangs on to the melody, surrendering it to the clarinet to bring in a contrasting section for the strings in F Minor---as remote from B Minor as can be imagined, and even darker in tone. This heavy-footed, dragging music is soon joined by horns, then the penetrating sound of high oboe and clarinet in unison. Other winds are added, a great shrillness achieved by six instruments in a high register in unison (flutes, oboes, clarinets). This painful cry is quickly dispersed, the violins drawing the music back to B minor, and a return of the primary subject, now in the flute. The horns gently lead in the secondary subject, again in the strings, but now in a glowing B Major, richly harmonised and riding into the brighter colours of the higher register of the upper strings. A consoling single line high in the violins carries the music back to earth, with a relaxed coda based on the initial melody, spun out in the solo piccolo.

The scherzo (Presto) is another of those sardonic, brightly-coloured, sharp-edged pieces which Shostakovich made very much his own. Opening with skirling jig-like figures in the winds, answered by scherzando patterns in the strings, the music whirls onward, reaching a unison restatement of the opening melody in the strings, with the bright, primary colours of winds and brass predominating. A breathless, slightly tarantella-like trio section arrives in F-sharp minor, highlighted by a festive trumpet tune sailing out over the buoyant rhythmic background. The opening section returns for a last time, only to falter and pull back from what one would expect to be a brilliant conclusion. Instead the music settles downward into the strings and comes to a complete standstill.

The fourth movement can be heard both as an interlude between two quick movements, or as a portentous slow introduction to the finale proper. It consists of two extended recitative-like passages in the solo bassoon, each introduced by a menacing, Musorgskian passage in the lower brass. The atmosphere is tense, hushed, deadly. Without hesitation the bassoon puts on a wry smile, and reverts to its traditional role as clown (like most clowns concealing pain and loss deep within), and the fifth movement is underway.

The finale is a free rondo structure, with the quirky opening bassoon melody (A) taken up by the strings, quickly countered by (B) a sinuous tune in the oboe (accompanied by a pair of undulating clarinets), vaguely “oriental” in character, promptly rejoined by the A theme in upper winds. A contrasting “episode” (C) follows, with a new melody in C minor heard in the violins over a pattering ostinato pattern in the lower strings. Becoming progressively developmental , (and a bit Tchaikovskian in character as well--- note the little brass fanfares!), the C minor melody becomes more impassioned and pathetic in mood. The bassoon tune reappears deep in the lower strings, rising into a higher register the melody is joined by a soft ostinato rumble in the timpani. Quite unexpectedly this outwardly festive music becomes grim and uncompromising, especially when the “oriental” tune (stripped of any exotic trappings) becomes an unrelenting grind in the strings and music begins to rise to a powerful climax. At that moment of recapitulation the bassoon tune is thundered out by all the lower instruments (notably the brass) soon joined by the C minor episode melody as well. The effect is of grim triumph. (Perhaps Shostakovich’s music actually did reflect the terrible victory over fascism after all!) A sudden silence ushers in a coda in a quicker tempo, rhythmically lopsided, garishly coloured, theatrical romp flying all the way to the end. It can be heard as fun and games – or (according to the sub-text?) as merriment achieved at a price.