Dmitri's Dacha

[Pat B]

According to the metronome marks the end of the fourth movement should be exactly double the speed of the beginning, so that the timpani D-A ostinato remains the same speed.

I think the performance that best illustrates Shostakovich's metronome marks is Wigglesworth/BBCNOW. Also a good one in general. Maybe one of my favourites I'm not sure. Shostakovich does not want a fast tempo for the movement; the basic tempo is quarter = 88 (although he composes in an accelerando to quarter = 126, iirc, for the second theme) and the coda is obviously half = 88. Most performers I've noticed play the movement a lot faster than he seems to have wanted.

Thanks -- I think this is a valuable post. I'm streaming the Wigglesworth now.

[amw]

update: I re-listened also and still enjoy it although I had remembered the ending as being more cold, mechanistic and brutal than it actually was (the string and woodwind articulation is not sharp and stabbing enough, the percussion not loud enough). In terms of tempo, the ending is still how it "should" be done, complete with lack of ritardando in the final bars, but a better performance is possible.

Also I mean there may be other people who play the metronome marks, this just happens to be a performance I know because it was recommended on this forum.

[Wanderer]

The slower the coda of the finale of the Fifth, the more grating those strings are.
I prefer swift(er) tempi that give an extra sense of propulsion and urgency. The recent BSO/Nelsons is particularly good in this regard.

...complete with lack of ritardando in the final bars

Thank you. This uncalled for ritardando is a huge pet peeve of mine.

[Scion7]

I had to run up to Duke University for a few days for a seminar.
While there, I ran across a ç1961 long article on Shostakovich - it was interesting, as I had not read this particular tract before, from the standpoint of D.S. still alive and kicking!

[Karl Henning]

[ Cross-post ]

In my own gradual evolution w/r/t the Shostakovich symphonies, the last two to which I was reconciled were the Eleventh and the Twelfth.  (Maybe it seems strange that I came to appreciate the Second and the Third before these.  But that was driven to a great extent by these scores dating from before l'affaire Pravda;  we have a finite number of pieces which the composer wrote when he was artistically and mentally free from considerations which after "Muddle Instead of Music" were absolutely unavoidable.  Part of the virtue of the Opp. 14 & 20, as I see it, is we have musical snapshots of the assured young composer, when he could still do as he pleased, and feel "to hell with any critic.")

Worth pointing out that, musically, I "grew up" in an environment where the general disdain for Shostakovich's music as a whole (perhaps marginally offset by grudging appreciation of this or that "exceptional" singleton work – the Piano Quintet, say, or the Fifth Symphony) as typified by Layton's essay in The Symphony was the institutional norm, but where this sleepy orthodoxy was resisted by a number of individuals, a resistance which had not yet coalesced into any musicological counter-insurgency.  Thus it was that (for instance) my conducting instructor at Wooster indirectly taught me to love the Thirteenth Symphony;  Simon Rattle led the Cleveland Orchestra in the Tenth, which was one of those life-changing musical experiences;  and I discovered the Fourteenth Symphony on my own initiative.

Still, at that comparatively early age, by perhaps a combination of the institutional prejudice having seeped in at partial unawares, and (what is the classic challenge in the case of Haydn, e.g.) the natural difficulty of coming to grips with a large and diverse œuvre, I was slow to listen to a number of the symphonies with an open mind.

So that at one point, even while I admired and enjoyed the variety over the course of the symphonies – the austere economies of the Fifth Symphony, the monumental somber tread of the Eighth, the mercurial gaiety of the Ninth, the wry song-cycle of the Fourteenth – I nevertheless "objected" to the Eleventh as something essentially unlike any of the other symphonies, for instance.  And I certainly took more or less as read that the Eleventh and Twelfth were inconsiderable "quasi-cinema" symphonies.  (I know some folks use "movie music" as praise, but half the time it strikes me as code for "there isn't enough musical logic in the piece itself.")

Thus, at the point where I very much liked 13 out of the 15 symphonies, anyway, the catalyst for changing my mind towards the Eleventh was, of course, the personal experience of a friend – and, a musical friend, one who has commissioned a few works from me – who had heard the San Diego Symphony play the piece live.  It was the point at which I understood that I was being musically lazy, that I was dismissing (failing to listen attentively, and in fairness, to) the Eleventh simply because that was the attitude towards the piece in four or eight written sources which were my first indirect "knowledge" of the piece.  (And I knew, for instance, that this was my exact and personal complaint with Harlow Robinson in the case of three or six Prokofiev scores:  a critic who simply failed to appreciate the merits of a score, routinely refreshing "the conventional wisdom" that the piece was inferior.)  Shostakovich handles the musical scale (I mean, scope, not do-re-mi) and process in a different way than his other symphonies, and in a way which feels entirely and strikingly new;  and I had been slow to credit that.

I won't go on to bore anyone here.  The reason I am posting is, that last night I listened again to the Twelfth, and my opinion about the piece has ratcheted up a few notches.  The superficial differences between the Eleventh and Twelfth have always been obvious, so that my reconcilement to the Op.103 did not necessarily transfer to the Op.112.  I suddenly realized last night as I was listening to the first movement, how much it felt like Shostakovich writing a symphony movement, as if it were the Festive Overture.  (And as a result, I began thoroughly to enjoy what he was doing with the material, with the form, with the scoring.)

[Karl Henning]

[...]

I won't go on to bore anyone here [....]

Was this unintended irony? Had the Boredom Threshold already been crossed?

[Sergeant Rock]

Was this unintended irony? Had the Boredom Threshold already been crossed?

Not at all...a good read. I'm always interested in an individual's musical history especially, as here, when it includes music I too love and, in some cases (like the Leningrad), still struggling with.

Sarge

[North Star]

Was this unintended irony? Had the Boredom Threshold already been crossed?

Certainly not - an interesting read, indeed.

[Karl Henning]

Cheers, gents.

[Karl Henning]

Long as that post was, I cut it off before I was done;  I was going to illustrate a parallel between the Op.96 and the Op.112, but then a nagging voice bade me check my sources first.

Elizabeth Wilson recorded interviews on three occasions with Lev Lebedinsky between August 1988 and March 1989 as part of her impressively broad research for her oral history, Shostakovich: A Life Remembered.  My impression is that the extract below is from an oral interview, rather than from the published (or unpublished) articles cited in her bibliography.  Lebedinsky was a

... musicologist and expert in musical folklore. One of the founders and chief ideologues of RAPP [Russian Association of Proletarian Writers, founded in the '20s, and in fact the sort of organization with which the young composer would likely have butted heads].  Close friend of DDS [i.e., Shostakovich] during the 1950s.  In his capacity as editor at the Sovietsky Kompozitor [Soviet Composer] publishing house, he edited the piano score of the second version of Katerina Izmailova. [Shostakovich: A Life Remembered, pp.554-555]

"Close friend" (with no uncharity) may not necessarily mean someone in close affinity with the composer's art; and I am sure there were practical ways in which he was a close and valued friend.

The "deep background" of the Twelfth Symphony is that, with some regularity throughout his career, Shostakovich mollified the authorities with news that his next symphony was going to be "dedicated to Lenin."  That always made the people of the press happy, and he carried on with whatever he was working on.

The long-spun yarn rather caught up with him, and in May of 1958 he was reported as saying, "I am more and more drawn to the idea of composing a work dedicated to the immortal image of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" (speaking of reasons for Westerners to approach the piece with ready contempt). But . . .

Lev Lebedinsky has asserted that Shostakovich had originally wished to compose a symphony parodying, rather than glorifying, Lenin.  For this reason, then, the composer had to re-write the work at short notice, as he feared that the subversive nature of the music was dangerously transparent.  As of today there exists little evidence to support this claim, but there are also no grounds to refute it,  The story is plausible if we date the rewriting to August 1961, before Shostakovich prepared the piano and orchestral scores for performance.  Here is Lev Lebedinsky's account of the matter:

In 1961 Shostakovich made another attempt to express his true attitude to what was going on in his country.  He decided that his Twelfth Symphony was to be a satire of Lenin.  When he told me this I tried to talk him out of it.  It was too dangerous, and nobody would understand anyway.  He brushed off my advice with "He who has ears will hear" (a favorite Shostakovich expression).  Then he went to Leningrad to attend the first performance.  One evening he rang me up in a panic.  "Lev Nikolayevich, tomorrow my symphony will be played for the first time.  Can you come up to Leningrad?"

"What, right now?" I asked.

"Yes, please come."

I immediately went to the station, and tipped the guard so as to get on the night train.  I arrived early in the morning.  He was waiting for me at his hotel.  He was as pale as death.  He looked awful.  In the lobby he said to me, "I've written a terrible symphony.  It's a failure.  But I've managed to change it."

"Change what?"

"The whole symphony.  But we can't talk any more.  My room is full of journalists and all sorts of strange people."

When we entered his room, I had a feeling that we had stumbled into a lunatic asylum.  There were representatives of hundreds of organizations there.  They put some questions to him and he answered somehow.  The conversation was being recorded, and the cameras were whirring, filming this historic occasion for the cinema news.  After all, Shostakovich had written a symphony about Lenin!  Finally the ordeal was over and everybody left.

Shostakovich then explained:  "I wrote the symphony, and then I realized that you had been right.  They'd crucify me for it because my conception was an obvious caricature of Lenin.  Therefore I sat down and wrote another one in three or four days.  And it's terrible!"  With his insane technique he could do anything.  He could have written an opera in three days.

We went to the rehearsal.  He pleaded, "Sit next to me, don't leave me on my own now."  They started playing.  The music was frightening in its helplessness.  I experienced some terrible moments, and I thought I was about to go mad.  Shostakovich was holding my hand, and he kept asking, "Is it really awful?"

I knew that if I said it was awful, he would go mad too.  I restrained myself and said, "No, it's perfectly all right."

"What do you mean, all right?  It's terrible."

"Stop it," I said, "don't be so nervous.  It's perfectly passable."

My only thought was to prevent him from losing his reason.

"No one must know what I told you about this symphony's history," he said.

"God forbid!" I reassured him.

Afterwards people like Isaak Glikman and others accused me of having forced Shostakovich to write about Lenin.  They also implied that I made him join the Party -- as if my suggesting a symphony about Lenin wasn't enough!  I never condemned the Symphony because I could not betray a friend, even when he was wrong. [Shostakovich: A Life Remembered, pp.387-389]

Now, I think I made that musical connection, last night, between the Twelfth Symphony and the Festive Overture before I remembered this story.  He famously whipped off the Overture in a day or so as a generous favor to a friend in broadcasting who was in a bind.  And here, if we credit Lebedinsky, he chopped out a fresh Twelfth (we'll never know to what degree he redeemed material from the discarded satirical symphony) at about the same pace.

Okay, so Lebedinsky didn't like it.  Shostakovich's protestations are not necessarily to be taken at face value.  My wife paints quickly, and not infrequently she says she hates a painting when she has just finished it, and it is perfectly beautiful work.  Also, there was this obnoxious pressure of the public reception of A Lenin Symphony;  Shostakovich was certainly of a nervous character.

Only many years later after I had conducted the Twelfth and recorded it on LP, did I understand that it was no worse than the Fourth [...] -- it is just different from it. [Shostakovich: A Life Remembered, p.387]

Apart from any other reason for the audience (and particularly the Western audience) to be cool towards the Twelfth Symphony, its première and that of the Fourth Symphony were held in quick succession . . . so comparisons between a symphony which was ostensibly a pæan to Lenin, and another symphony which had to be withdrawn rather than be taken as an artistic protest against life in The Worker's Paradise, were not going to favor the later work.

[snyprrr]

I I remember David Diamond being very unhappy with Bernstein's performance of his Symphony No. 4, but that was a great performance IMHO despite what the composer thought.

you get around



I lent the gruff old guy Inbal's 5th... as an experiment... he came back,... he thought the music was "too baroque" for him, and he liked more "classical stuff" like the 1812. So, that's how normies react to, say, DSCH,... probably could have been anyone...

[nathanb]

Since this thread has a non-specific title, can we feel free to convert it to the Dmitri Kourliandski thread as we please?

[Karl Henning]

[ Cross-post ]

My first experience of Shostakovich was when I was yet in high school, hearing the New Jersey All-State Band playing a transcription of the finale of the Fifth Symphony.  Loved it from the get go . . . but I certainly had no idea of the riches yet awaiting me . . . .

[amw]

I heard the uh... I want to say Moscow Trio? perform the Trio No. 2 when I was about ten~ish, paired with Dvořák's Dumky Trio. Found the latter boring as shit, but was transfixed by the Shostakovich immediately from the glacially cold opening notes. The moment that made the greatest impression on me was proooobably Figure 91 in the finale, which in a properly histrionic Russian interpretation is one of the most shattering climaxes in music, yet avoids bringing a sense of relief due to the sweeping arpeggios in the piano part that immediately take over. I'm afraid to say that I proceeded to imitate that particular moment (not very skilfully) in a number of attempted or completed compositions, the last of which dates from when I was about sixteen. >_> Also the ending though, which did legitimately make me cry when I first heard it.

I've always retained at least a level of interest in Shostakovich as a result despite then around age 17~ish going through a period of hating him, which eventually mellowed to being mostly indifferent to his work apart from a few pieces. Certainly I care about him a lot more than I do about other artists in the same "mostly indifferent" category. Lol

Nathanb please create a Dmitri Kourliandski thread w/any information you have on him. Definitely interested to find a way into his work, which sounds interesting for sure, but not something I've got much out of beyond surface.

[North Star]

[ Cross-post ]

I am not sure how much Shostakovich I had heard before hearing Natalia Gutman play the Cello Concerto no. 2 with Anna-Maria Helsing and Oulu Symphony Orchestra. I certainly wanted to explore further, after that. Got her signature on the program, too, as she sat a couple of seats from me for the second half.

[vandermolen]

I had an interesting Shostakovich-related experience on Saturday. My older brother who was a student at Cambridge university (unlike his not-so-clever younger brother  ) invited me as his guest to a series of lectures for Cambridge graduates and one of those related to DSCH. An academic called Marina Frolova-Walker gave a lecture on 'Stalin's Music Prize' (she has written a book of the same title). This including some interesting research on Stalin's own musical taste (Red Army Choir, folk songs etc). Anyway she had found the draft list of Stalin Prize winners during these years including Stalin's own marginal annotation. At one year, when Shostakovich had not been nominated Stalin had written 'Shostakovich?' In other words querying why Shostakovich had not been included. Elsewhere he had written 'HA-HA' in the margin where a Latvian composer had been nominated. In 1940 or 41 Shostakovich and Miaskovsky both achieved a Stalin Prize with the same number of votes from Agitprop (30 each). It was a First Class prize, which was much coveted as it carried the most money. As far as I recall Shostakovich was awarded it for his Piano Quintet and Miaskovsky for his eloquent Symphony 21. Then there was a second lecture by Elizabeth Wilson the author of 'Shostakovich: A Life Remembered' which, coincidentally I happen to be reading. I hadn't realised that she was a cello student of Rostropovich (who arrived six hours late for the lessons) and she had met Shostakovich. Her book is excellent. Her talk was about the pianist Maria Yudina (Stalin's favourite pianist although she was critical of the regime). There was some fascinating archive film of Shostakovich playing the piano part in his Piano Quintet and at other times. However, the highlight was at the end when three very talented young Cambridge music students played the last two movement of Shostakovich's Piano Trio No.2 live - it was worth being there for that alone.

[violadude]

I have a question about Shostakovich's 1st symphony.

I was doing a bit of light research on this symphony and I discovered this quote on Wikipedia (not the most reliable source, I know..but...)

"The work begins with an introductory Allegretto section, which is developed from a duet between solo trumpet and bassoon. This leads into the first subject proper, a lively march-like Allegro reminiscent of the vaudeville and theatre music Shostakovich would have encountered during his time as a cinema pianist. The second subject is ostensibly a waltz, with the flute melody finding its way around several sections of the orchestra. The development section features a return to mock-comic grotesqueries, although the sonata-form structure of this movement is entirely conventional".

Is this how everyone else interprets the symphony's structure? Because I perceived it in a completely different light. Unlike the author of this wikipedia article, I thought the sonata form in this movement was quite unconventional and, in fact, interpreted it as a parody of a sonata form structure (which would fit the expressive quality of the piece anyway).

I don't see the point of calling the opening an introduction when it is fully integrated into the movement. I interpreted the movement as a sonata form with three themes/key areas (the opening/the march/the waltz). This idea appealed to me especially as it related to my sonata form-parody idea, because it would make it so that the first theme starts away from the main key area (f minor) and goes toward it leading into the second theme (which is in the main key), the exact opposite  harmonic motion of a traditional sonata form.

Also, it always seemed apparent to me that the recapitulation presents all three themes in backwards order from which they were represented in the exposition. Hardly what I would call "entirely conventional". Did they miss that? Or do I just suck at interpreting forms?

What are your thoughts?

[Madiel]

The Petrenko box of symphonies appears to basically agree with Wikipedia, in that it talks about the "First theme" being on the clarinet after the initial idea on trumpet. And describes the conclusion as "a paraphrase of the introduction".

I'll try to have a listen myself sometime today. I don't know the piece well enough to immediately tell you what I hear in its structure.

[Madiel]

Turns out I had some time to listen to it now...

I don't know about all this "parody" stuff, but I'm leaning towards your point of view. There are clearly traces of that "introduction" that appear in other parts of the movement.

At the same time, I can understand the other point of view as well, because it's perfectly possible to get a regular exposition-development-recapitulation out of the the other two groups on their own. During that, the first theme only ever comes back as a bit of an accompanying figure. It never asserts itself as the main event except at the very beginning and the very end.

[Heck148]

I have a question about Shostakovich's 1st symphony.

I was doing a bit of light research on this symphony and I discovered this quote on Wikipedia (not the most reliable source, I know..but...)

"The work begins with an introductory Allegretto section, which is developed from a duet between solo trumpet and bassoon. This leads into the first subject proper, a lively march-like Allegro reminiscent of the vaudeville and theatre music Shostakovich would have encountered during his time as a cinema pianist. The second subject is ostensibly a waltz, with the flute melody finding its way around several sections of the orchestra. The development section features a return to mock-comic grotesqueries, although the sonata-form structure of this movement is entirely conventional".

Is this how everyone else interprets the symphony's structure?

First - Shost #1 is one of my favorite "1st symphonies" - a remarkable creation by the still student composer, that already shows the unique genius that was to mature. I love listening to it, and it's a real blast to perform!!
OTTOMH, without consulting the score again - I don't think the beginning is really a separate "introduction" - tho it doe lead into the Allegro non troppo Clarinet solo.
I also don't think the wonderfully diabolical 2nd mvt is a "waltz" - it's a great scherzo, in 4/4 meter. great movement - and the spooky flute duet in parallel 5ths is esp effective in contrast to the devilish scurrying about of the main scherzo ideas...
mvts 3 and 4 are dynamite as well!!