Dmitri's Dacha

[Karl Henning]

Still haven't quite warmed up or been completely swept away with the 4th Symphony.  I don't dislike it, I just haven't developed that same 'wow' factor that I have with most of the other symphonies yet.

I was a while warming to the Fourth myself, Ray. I think my trouble may have been, that I had read so much about the piece (some of it, rather "sexed up," frankly) . . . so when I came to the actual listening, there was (probably an unfair, though unintentional) "Is this it?" factor.

[kishnevi]

Something about broken clocks comes to mind.

Are we talking about the 4th? More and more I realize that it's Shostakovich's best. Just last night I was talking about the Fourth over after-dinner drinks... how it contains all the seeds of the other symphonies that would come, from five to fifteen... and indeed all the ingredients that make Shostakovich. The Mahler, the anguish, the silence (compare last movements with 15th), the clucking, the wistful lyricism, the driving rhythmic patterns, the lumbering into power via slow movements... It's a masterpiece... and it could have gotten any composer arrested in any country, it's such a powerful condemnation of abuse of power.

You're quite correct in most of what you say there.  My first thought on hearing the Fourth was "no wonder the commissars hated it!"

I did in fact first hear it, rather early in my DSCH career (so to speak), without any advance knowledge of what it was like beyond the liner notes provided in the Gergiev recording.  I'm not sure if it's Shostakovich's best symphony--I'd probably name the Eleventh for that highly subjective honor--it's certainly one of his best (better IMO than 5,7, and 10,  other symphonies often given that honor), and I prefer it to almost any symphony I've heard by composers other than Shostakovich written after 1920  (yes, this does mean better than any of Ralph Vaughn Williams's symphonies--but please note that there's a whole swath of symphonies by Miaskovsky and others I have yet to hear even once). 

I was a while warming to the Fourth myself, Ray. I think my trouble may have been, that I had read so much about the piece (some of it, rather "sexed up," frankly) . . . so when I came to the actual listening, there was (probably an unfair, though unintentional) "Is this it?" factor.

Whereas I came upon with rather minimal foreknowledge, and got completely blown away by it.  At that point, I had heard several, but not all, of DSCH's symphonies--certainly 7, 8, and 11, and possibly 13.   Probably 5, too, although I undoubtedly had heard it on the radio several times before I ever knew much about DSCH--the only Shostakovich that wasn't totally new to me when I bought my first DSCH recording (the "Leningrad").

[Karl Henning]

Whereas I came upon with rather minimal foreknowledge, and got completely blown away by [the Op.43].

I wish I had heard it as a blank slate (which IIRC is how I heard, and got blown away by, the Tenth).

[Karl Henning]

Hm, no lack of fuzzy thought "inspired" by the Op.43:

The Shostakovich 4th Symphony is often called his first Mahlerian symphony because it lacks a musical program and its musical ideas grow to garganutan proportions.

And, drumroll, please:

The history of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 4 is now well known. It had been banned in 1935 by Stalin . . . .

[jlaurson]

Hm, no lack of fuzzy thought "inspired" by the Op.43:

And, drumroll, please:

Oh boy... and that had been an 'editorial review'? Ah, never mind. Not worth getting all hot and bothered over all the slight nonsense that's out there, even if it comes with pretense to authority.

[Karl Henning]

Oh boy... and that had been an 'editorial review'? Ah, never mind. Not worth getting all hot and bothered over all the slight nonsense that's out there, even if it comes with pretense to authority.

Oh, agreed. More amusing than anything . . . The history of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 4 is now well known. But I'm not going to trouble to consult it . . . .

[Fafner]

Oh, agreed. More amusing than anything . . . The history of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 4 is now well known. But I'm not going to trouble to consult it . . . .

Mommy, I want to be an Amazon Reviewer when I grow up.

[Karl Henning]

I had the extreme pleasure attending a live performance of the DSCH 10th, of our former Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra conductor, Andrei Boreyko, a few years ago.  It was an experience I will treasure forever.

It was an all 'Russian' concert, featuring Prokofiev's Violin Concerto and also made me fall in love with Rimsky-Korsakov's Russian Easter Overture (which is now one of my favourite orchestral pieces by any composer!) 

Must have been a wonderful concert to experience, Ray — though I've got to ask: which violin concerto? : )

[Karl Henning]

Ray, I'm hoping Sony does a super cheap box set of Ormandy's Shostakovich so I can grab that 4/10 duo, which has been on my want list since I was a college student!

I have an impression (quite possibly mistaken) that I've heard that Fourth — but I've certainly never heard that Tenth.

[Brahmsian]

Must have been a wonderful concert to experience, Ray — though I've got to ask: which violin concerto? : )

Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 2.  Gwen Hoebig (concertmaster and principal WSO violinist), was the soloist. And she is (and always has been) a fantastic violinist.

[Karl Henning]

Nice! That g minor concerto was the first of the two I heard.

[Karl Henning]

Between 10 October 1950, when the Prelude in C Major was dated, and 25 February 1951, when the Fugue in D Minor, and the cycle, was completed, Shostakovich's progress was fairly steady, averaging either a prelude or a fugue every three days or so. Nikolayeva reported that Shostakovich wrote out the pieces without corrections and that only once, in the B-flat Minor prelude, he was dissatisfied with what he had begun and replaced it.

From Shostakovich: A Life, pp. 177-178

That the Twenty-four Preludes and Fugues represented a fundamentally different direction in the composer's output from the approved "realistic" line of Song of the Forests, his recent film scores, and even the new choral work, Ten Poems on Texts by Revolutionary Poets, was immediately apparent.  Party-line activists determined that in his cycle of preludes and fugues, Shostakovich had failed to revive the Russian polyphonic tradition by infusing it with contemporary vitality.  Instead, the composer had succumbed to constructivist complexity, gloomy moods, and individualistic aloofness.  In short, the appearance of this polyphonic cycle fueled lingering suspicions "that Shostakovich has not wholly overcome all his previous errors and that some serious contradictions are still impeding his creative rehabilitation."

From Shostakovich: A Life, pp. 178-179

[Karl Henning]

. . . one after another the Union secretaries, all musical functionaries, voiced their disapproval. Among them, alas, was Kabalevsky: "This work is based on a grave miscalculation. It could not have served you, Dmitri Dmitriyevich, for instance as a preparation for The Song of the Forests."

From Elizabeth Wilson, Shostakovich: A Life Remembered (2^nd edition), p.286

[Rudneva was a writer, both of fiction, and of critical studies of Mayakovsky and Meyerhold.]

[Karl Henning]

Hm. No source referred to (they are CD liner notes, after all), but cellist Aleksandr Ivashkin remarks: Interestingly, Shostakovich did not particularly like Schnittke's music.

FWIW . . . .

[kishnevi]

I've always found it a point of interest that, having been denounced for excessive formalism in his music,  DSCH almost immediately (if I remember my dates correctly--or at least soon after),  embarked on a project which is almost the epitome of formalism--a cycle of fugues (with preludes) in all the keys,  according to the circle of fifths.
It's almost as if he was thumbing his nose at the Party apparatus.

[Fafner]

I've always found it a point of interest that, having been denounced for excessive formalism in his music,  DSCH almost immediately (if I remember my dates correctly--or at least soon after),  embarked on a project which is almost the epitome of formalism--a cycle of fugues (with preludes) in all the keys,  according to the circle of fifths.
It's almost as if he was thumbing his nose at the Party apparatus.

Well, it is a perfectly human reaction.

[jlaurson]

I've always found it a point of interest that, having been denounced for excessive formalism in his music,  DSCH almost immediately (if I remember my dates correctly--or at least soon after),  embarked on a project which is almost the epitome of formalism--a cycle of fugues (with preludes) in all the keys,  according to the circle of fifths.
It's almost as if he was thumbing his nose at the Party apparatus.

Which attack are you referring to? The ones following Lady Macbeth?

Because the Op. 34 Preludes came before that... and the 24 Preludes and Fugues Op. 87 almost twenty (ok, 15) years later.

Also: "Formalism" in Soviet art was as much (much more) a political term, as (than) it was an aesthetic one... The motivation for P&F is well known (Leipzig/Nikolayeva); whether thumbing his nose at the Party played part of it, though... That seems a rather liberal guess.

[kishnevi]

Which attack are you referring to? The ones following Lady Macbeth?

Because the Op. 34 Preludes came before that... and the 24 Preludes and Fugues Op. 87 almost twenty (ok, 15) years later.

Also: "Formalism" in Soviet art was as much (much more) a political term, as (than) it was an aesthetic one... The motivation for P&F is well known (Leipzig/Nikolayeva); whether thumbing his nose at the Party played part of it, though... That seems a rather liberal guess.

I was thinking of the Zhdanov era (1948/49)--as it turns out, two years before Op. 87--and DSCH's being forced to troop to New York and Germany as a cultural ambassador on behalf of Stalin, from which resulted the Leipzig/Nikolayeva:  Op. 87 itself  was composed very close in time to The Song of the Forests.

Nor does my suggestion mean that Op. 87 wasn't prompted by that Leipzig competition:  but having found a suitable vehicle,  I wouldn't be surprised  if the knowledge that the whole concept was rather unsocialistically unrealistic gave an extra zing in the composer's mind, although for obvious reasons he could never admit it.  But Op. 87 was not well received by the official apparatus, as the quotes posted here in the last few days  make clear.  This is, after all,  the composer who wrote a song cycle "From Jewish Poetry" during the peak of Stalin's anti-Semitism--although even that one he was forced to pad with Good Soviet Songs and keep in the drawer for a while before he felt safe in publishing it.

[kishnevi]

I didn't wish to intimate that DSCH didn't compose in direct political/emotional response to his surroundings... nor that the P&F are exempt from that... only that I have never thought of the latter in that light and that I'd also be weary of interpreting everything DSCH did in the anti-regime light; I see his gray-on-gray complexity in distinct contrast to the US- and Western preference (Volkov-perpetrated) to see a resistance movement to Stalin et al. hiding in every slow movement he ever composed.

If Shostakovich weren't complex, he wouldn't have been such a great composer.

And as Freud might say, sometimes a slow movement is a slow movement.

But I do find it curious, at least, that coming from a period when he was trying to get out from the ideological charge of "formalism"--whatever precisely that term was supposed to mean--he produced a work which is blatantly full of formalism--fugues accompanied by preludes, proceeding through the keys at a set interval--in his outer structure, overtly inspired by a most bourgeois court and church composer.     A lesser man might produce a series of Songs of the Forest, eager to show he was a good servant of the people....

Or perhaps DSCH was simply trying to prove to himself what he was capable of, even if the apparatchiks didn't want to hear it.

[Karl Henning]

No need to get all... intestinal....