Within two years of its premiere, Lady Macbeth had achieved such popularity that the Bolshoi Theatre decided to stage a new production of the opera. It opened in Moscow on 28 December 1935 under Alexander Melik-Pashayev’s baton. Simultaneously MALEGOT toured both Lady Macbeth and Ivan Dzerzhinsky’s Quiet Flows the Don in Moscow.1 Given that Nemrovich-Danchenko’s version of Katerina Izmailova was still in production, there arose a unique situation when three sold-out productions of the same opera were running simultaneously in the same town, together with successful runs of the composer’s new ballet The Limpid Stream in Moscow and Leningrad. This surely was unheard-of fame for a composer who was still under thirty!
Shostakovich came to Moscow to be present at the MALEGOT performances, and also played his Piano Concerto in concert on 11 January 1936. Two days earlier he had written to Sollertinsky:
I am extremely tired, but not from banquets in my honour or that of MALEGOT … I am tired from the anxieties and success surrounding Quiet Flows the Don… . Here, in Evening Moscow, there was a review of Quiet Flows the Don,2 where the critic E. Kann pointed to the influence of Tchaikovsky, Blaramberg, Serov and Shostakovich. It also stated en passant that the worst aspect of the opera was the music. There is a certain truth in what Evening Moscow says.3
On 26 January 1936 Shostakovich returned to Moscow for twenty-four hours, before proceeding to Arkhangel’sk for a concert tour. That evening, he was ordered to attend a performance of Lady Macbeth in the new Bolshoi Theatre production. LEVON ATOVMYAN recalled visiting Shostakovich the day of his departure:
Lady Macbeth was on that evening at the Filial of the Bolshoi. I had come to see Shostakovich so as to accompany him to the station. The telephone rang for Shostakovich, and he was told that his presence was required at the opera that evening. Shostakovich announced that it would be difficult for him to make it, given that he was leaving that night on a concert tour.
He then turned to me. ‘Lyova, you know I have a funny feeling about this invitation. Could you go down to the Theatre and ring me from there to tell me what’s going on?’ I agreed and proposed that afterwards I would go straight on to the station. Shostakovich objected, ‘Why go to such trouble? In any case protracted farewells just lead to superfluous tears.’
When I arrived at the Theatre I discovered that several members of the Politbureau, including Stalin, were attending the opera that evening. The show was going well, but then in the orchestral entr’acte before the scene of Katerina’s marriage, the players (particularly in the woodwind and brass groups) got carried away and played very loudly. (Furthermore on that day the band had been reinforced and the brass section was just under the government box.) I glanced over to the director’s box, and saw Shostakovich walk in. After the third act he went out on stage to take applause.4 He was as white as a sheet, bowed quickly and walked off into the wings. Backstage he said to me, ‘Lyova, let’s go quickly. It’s time for me to catch my train.’
On the way Shostakovich simply couldn’t calm down and kept asking irritably, ‘Why was it necessary to reinforce the band, to exaggerate the noise level? What was all this, Melik-Pashayev with his excessive “shish-kebab” temperament? Did he have to spice up the entr’acte and the whole scene like that? I should think those in the government box must have been deafened by the volume of the brass. I have a bad premonition about this. And to boot it’s a leap year which will bring me the usual bad luck.’5
Another eye-witness account was written by the tenor SERGHEI RADAMSKY who sat in the same box as Shostakovich:
Stalin, Zhdanov and Mikoyan occupied the government box, on the right side of the orchestra pit, just over the brass and percussion instruments. The box was armoured with steel, to prevent any possible assassination attempt from the pit. Shostakovich, Meyerhold, Akhmeteli and I sat in a box opposite theirs, and could glance over to it. However Stalin was not visible. He sat behind a small curtain which did not impede his view of the stage, but shielded him from the curiosity of the audience. Every time the percussion and brass played fortissimo we saw Zhdanov and Mikoyan shudder, then laughingly turn round to Stalin. […]
When Shostakovich saw how this ‘troitsa’ [trinity] laughed and made merry, he hid in the depths of our box and covered his face with his hands. He was in a state of enormous agitation.
To our bewilderment, the greatest laughter was provoked by the love scene; in the middle of the stage [Sergei’s and Katerina’s] love-making on a straw mattress was depicted with – to put it mildly – naturalistic effect.6
Shostakovich himself gave a more telegraphic account of the occasion to Sollertinsky:
Comrade Stalin, and Comrades Molotov, Mikoyan and Zhdanov were all present.7 The show went very well. At the end I was called out (by the audience) and took a bow. I only regret that I did not do so after the third act. Feeling sick at heart, I collected my brief-case and went to the station. … I am in bad spirits. As you can guess, I kept thinking about what happened to your namesake, and what didn’t happen to me.8
This cryptic last sentence is a reference to Ivan Ivanovich Dzerzhinsky, whose name and patronymic were identical to Sollertinsky’s. While writing his opera Quiet Flows the Don, Dzerzhinsky, a composer of limited talents, had received generous assistance from Shostakovich, who had orchestrated large chunks of the opera on his behalf. Sollertinsky had all along ridiculed Dzerzhinsky’s helplessness, and didn’t disguise his opinion in an article which had recently appeared in Sovietskaya Muzyka.
Nevertheless, Quiet Flows the Don enjoyed considerable success in Moscow, and Stalin had attended a performance. During the interval Dzerzhinsky had been called to the State Box, and held conversation with the Great Leader. In contrast, the government delegation had demonstratively left before the end of Lady Macbeth (evidently after the third act).
Shostakovich was right to have gloomy presentiments about the significance of Stalin’s walk-out from his opera. With the publication on 28 January 1936 of the article ‘Muddle Instead of Music’ in Pravda, Shostakovich’s fortunes suffered a dramatic reversal. The crass criticism of Lady Macbeth was shortly followed by another Pravda article, ‘Ballet Falsehood’, a crude attack on Shostakovich’s ballet The Limpid Stream. Since Pravda was the Party’s mouth-piece, these articles were overtly political. Rumour had it that Stalin himself had written the editorial, but it is more probable that its author was David Zaslavsky, a high-ranking party official and journalist who was at home in the corridors of power. There was also foreign public opinion to consider. While Louis Aragon extolled the virtues of Stalin’s new constitution, comparing it to the highest attainments of humanity, on a level with Shakespeare, Goethe and Pushkin,9 André Malraux praised the construction of the White Sea canal as a great achievement of progressive society, no doubt little suspecting that it was built under horrendous conditions by forced labour from the growing population of the camps.
After reading of the article ‘Muddle Instead of Music’, Malraux enquired of the journalist Mikhail Koltsov what had happened to Shostakovich. This provoked Maxim Gorky to write to Stalin to defend ‘the most gifted of Soviet composers […]. Shostakovich, a young man of about twenty-five [sic] is undoubtedly very talented, although very self-confident and rather nervous. The article in Pravda has fallen like a ton of bricks on his head, the lad is completely dejected. […] “Muddle”, but […] why muddle? How and where is this “muddle” expressed? The critics have an obligation to give a technically precise definition of Shostakovich’s music. The only thing that the Pravda article has done is to provoke herds of ungifted people and all kinds of charlatan to hound Shostakovich.’10 These were brave words, but were likely to have had no more effect on Stalin than to further his growing suspicion of Gorky.
The case with The Limpid Stream was perhaps more surprising, since Shostakovich had written music that was ‘democratic’, (tuneful and accessible); it could hardly be described as ‘muddled’. In fact the accusations launched at the creators of the ballet were actually nothing to do with formalism; rather they pointed at the ‘false’ understanding of the reality of life on a collective farm in the specific geographical location of the Kuban. Situated on the north slopes of the Caucasus, the Kuban could, ostensibly, have provided ripe material both for Cossack and Caucasian dances. In the editorial article ‘Ballet Falsehood’, Lopukhov, the choreographer of The Limpid Stream, the scenarist and the composer were scolded for not having done enough ‘research’; they were unprepared for the seriousness of their theme. The meeting of two socially contrasting classes – collective farm workers (peasants) and cultural workers (artists) ignored the ‘realistic’ aspect of folklore and collective agricultural work. Lopukhov and Shostakovich could look back with nostalgia to the easier material of The Golden Age, with its ideological clash between the opposing camps of capitalism and Soviet socialism.
In fact the theme of the ‘collective farm’ in Soviet cultural politics (the rustic equivalent in social terms of urban industrialization) was a thorny one. An extant list of films that failed to pass Soviet censorship between 1929 and 1934 shows that the majority dealt with the theme of collectivization.11 It was a sensitive issue, to say the least, and events such as the forcible eviction of peasants from their land carried out during the ‘dekulakization’ campaigns and the famines that resulted when crops were not sown and animals slaughtered were all very recent history. Rosy pictures of collective farms (worked no longer by jolly peasants, but by socially aware ‘agricultural workers’) with overflowing harvests and luxurious gardens, as portrayed in films like Medvedkin’s Happiness (1934), were hardly credible. Nor was the highly flawed tragic canvas of Eisenstein’s Beizhin Meadow (1935–7), in its attempt to justify the actions of Pavlik Morozov, considered any more realistic in its perceptions.12
In 1935 Shostakovich concluded an article for the Bolshoi Theatre programme booklet with an extraordinary statement, ‘Of course I cannot vouchsafe that my third attempt [at a Soviet Ballet] will not also prove to be unsuccessful, but even if this should be so, it will not deter me from my intention of composing a fourth Soviet ballet.’ His words proved to be an empty promise; ballet was a genre which he never returned to.
Shostakovich must have felt incredibly isolated and bitter as colleagues, friends and admirers distanced themselves and looked on with fascinated horror to see how he would extricate himself from this sudden public disgrace. Those friends who faithfully stuck by him at this time became all the more valued because of it.
The Leningrad literary critic Isaak Glikman enjoyed a lifelong friendship with Shostakovich. The two men met in 1931 through their mutual friend Sollertinsky. By 1934 Shostakovich had invited Glikman to act as his secretary in dealing with his correspondence.
Shostakovich evidently enjoyed Glikman’s sense of humour, and found his company entertaining. Additionally, he much valued Glikman’s literary judgement. Indeed, in the 1950s he entrusted to Glikman the task of making the necessary changes to the libretto of Lady Macbeth.
The opinion has been voiced that Glikman’s enthusiastic admiration for Shostakovich may have made him less than objective in his perception of the composer,13 but in such times, the capacity for loyalty and devotion was a rare and much appreciated gift. The trust this evoked in Shostakovich is evident in his letters to ISAAK GLIKMAN, which were written over a period of more than thirty years:
During the 1930s it was Shostakovich’s lot to undergo extremely hard experiences, and I was filled with admiration for his bearing. It somehow reminded me of the … heroes of his symphonies and chamber works, their propensity for mournful contemplation in conjunction with an indestructible force of spirit. My views were confirmed by much of what Dmitri Dmitriyevich expressed in his letters of this period… .
The opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk brought Shostakovich fantastic and incomparable fame which has no analogy in living memory. Its productions both in the Soviet Union and abroad generated immense praise and delight. And when the triumph reached its apogee, all of a sudden the catastrophic article ‘Muddle Instead of Music’, published in Pravda in late January 1936, struck Shostakovich down from those dizzy heights whither he had been borne on the crest of the opera’s success.
The publication of the article found Shostakovich in Arkhangel’sk on a concert tour. At this critical moment in his life, the twenty-nine-year-old Shostakovich sent me an extraordinary telegram asking me to send him all newspaper reports and articles relating to his work. It was a sign of wisdom more characteristic of an experienced psychologist. After all Dmitri Dmitriyevich had never shown any interest in reviews when his works were being praised, so why this sudden need for press cuttings? I found it most disconcerting, but carried out his request: evidently he was suddenly overcome by curiosity to discover what well-known musicians would now write about Lady Macbeth.14
Alas, he was not deceived in his sombre expectations. Many of the opera’s former admirers criticized the work in various publications. Dmitri Dmitriyevich read these cuttings which came flooding in daily, and he reacted to them with his habitual restraint and self-control. As I visited Shostakovich nearly every day, we read them together; we reacted differently, I with disgust and irritation and sometimes indignation, whereas Dmitri Dmitriyevich remained silent and made no comments.
Although his noble spirit was deeply wounded, he retained his dignity and composure to a remarkable degree. He did not seek support or sympathy from anybody. Some false friends harped on about ‘the sunset’ of the composer of Lady Macbeth, while sadly shaking their heads. Although self-opinion and complacency were completely foreign to Dmitri Dmitriyevich, he continued to believe unhesitatingly in his own creative powers. And I must add that these powers were unquenchable and measureless. The Fourth Symphony was close to completion, and through a magic crystal ball the outlines of the Fifth were already discernible!
It was during this very period of time that Dmitri Dmitriyevich one day announced to me: ‘Even if they chop my hands off, I will still continue to compose music – albeit I have to hold the pen in my teeth.’ This was said in a calm, business-like fashion, with no sense of drama or affectation. I was totally shaken. Goose-flesh crawled up my spine, and words forsook me. For a moment I felt as if I had crossed into some malignant phantasmagoria from Dante. Dmitri Dmitriyevich had not intended to shock me with this admission; he looked me in the eyes intently and calmly, then immediately changed the subject. That morning we had been standing opposite one another while talking, and the sun came streaming through the window of his study, lighting up his youthful figure. Shostakovich … was graced with an attractive physique, and emanated a resolute and fearless confidence.
Dmitri Dmitriyevich had no intention of attending the discussion of the Pravda article, which lasted for many days at the Leningrad Union of Composers; this was looked on by certain high-up persons as a sign of arrogance. The harrowing discussion was unsparing and hard-hitting. It transpired that there were many who lost no time in practising their rhetorical skills, and were all too happy to trample the disgraced opera in the mud.
Dmitri Dmitriyevich went to Moscow at this time and asked me to write to him describing in detail the progress of the discussions. He requested that I recount everything in a formal style, as if writing an official report and without any personal emotion. I complied with his wishes. Many years later Dmitri Dmitriyevich expressed his regret that these letters, which bore the irrefutable stamp of those times, had been lost for ever; although, to be honest, this regret was mainly rhetorical, as he never preserved any letters. But amazing as it may seem, his phenomenal memory, undimmed by the passage of time, allowed him to recall their content many years later.15
After the criticisms of Lady Macbeth and The Limpid Stream, countless public debates were called where further criticism in line with Party directives was heaped on Shostakovich. Fear effectively tested people’s loyalty. Many friends and colleagues deserted him at this crucial time, and even those who came to his defence did not always do so as unswervingly as might be expected. Shostakovich’s friends were under particular pressure to recant. Early in February, the Leningrad Composers’ Union, at the instigation of one of its senior secretaries, V. Iochelson, convoked meetings specifically to discuss the Lady Macbeth issue. At the first day’s gathering, Mikhail Druskin and Ivan Sollertinsky sat outside the main circle of the hall near the door, trying to hide their disgust at the alacrity with which certain colleagues poured dirt over Shostakovich. On the third day Sollertinsky was forced to ‘unbend’ slightly when he took the stand; he admitted that Lady Macbeth did have certain faults, and he promised to ‘review’ his opinion.16 For his support of Shostakovich Sollertinsky was dubbed ‘the troubadour of Formalism’. Prokofiev’s reported view on the subject put formalism in its place. ‘What people here dub as formalism is actually a simple matter of not understanding something on first hearing.’17 But the party line was reflected in G. Khubov’s editorial article in the March edition of Sovietskaya Muzyka, where there was a call to ‘fight a decisive battle against formalism and falsehood in music’.
According to Isaak Glikman, Shostakovich had told Sollertinsky that he should vote for ‘any resolutions’ if the pressure on him became too great. He no doubt realized that Sollertinsky would be victimized for his enthusiastic support of his music, and in particular of Lady Macbeth.18
The Leningrad Composers’ Union took an ‘unanimous’ vote in support of Pravda’s editorial article.
Sollertinsky, unable to resist mounting pressure, conceded his principles on this issue. He was not easily forgiven the fact that he had called most new Soviet music ‘provincial’. However, there was one abstention, that of the composer Vladimir Shcherbachov, who, although not a great admirer of Lady Macbeth, could not bring himself to condemn a fellow-composer.
Whereas he was sympathetic to Sollertinsky’s dilemma, Shostakovich never forgave Boris Asafiev’s treachery. Asafiev, to whom Shostakovich had considered dedicating the opera at one point, was quick to admit his error of judgement, and declared that Ivan Dzerzhinsky’s opera Quiet Flows the Don reflected all the requirements of perfect ‘Soviet’ art.19
Shostakovich did not attend the discussion at either the Leningrad or Moscow Composers’ Union. Thus, in contrast to 1948, he was not forced to recant publicly. But he undoubtedly was well informed about the proceedings, and knew who his supporters and enemies were. Such fellow composers as Lev Knipper and Dmitri Kabalevsky had never disguised their envy of Shostakovich’s success. Knipper, a nephew of Olga Knipper-Chekhova (Anton Chekhov’s widow), had to live down a politically dubious past, including service in the White Army and a two year period of exile. On return to the Soviet Union he was recruited as an agent of the OGPU or NKVD, a fact that was only recently made public,20 although no doubt his contemporaries had wind of his being an informer. Knipper had recently been praised for his ability to adapt to socialist realism, in his dealing with elements of folk song in his Fourth Symphony, and he became famous above all for his song ‘Polyushko Polye’.
SERGHEI RADAMSKY attended the Moscow Composers’ Union meeting where ‘creative discussions’ on formalism were held on 10, 13 and 15 February. As he recalled, many composers thanked Stalin for ‘opening their eyes’ to Shostakovich’s formalist errors. Knipper went one step further, accusing him of ‘anti-people’ sentiments:
This was the worst accusation that could be made. But Knipper did so, and to emphasize his point he recounted how […] on one occasion he had been asked by the Leningrad Composers’ Union to speak in front of the sailors. Everyone arrived punctually at the meeting except for Dmitri who appeared fifteen minutes late, and was not completely sober.21
At these words, dark mutterings coursed through the hall. Knipper paused significantly and then added, ‘But we are not here to hammer the last nail into Shostakovich’s coffin.’
‘You bastard!’ I cried out.
There was agitation in the hall and someone shouted out, ‘That’s enough!’ The chairman announced an interval […]22
Naturally a different version is recorded in the speeches from the meeting published in the March number of Sovietskaya Muzyka in 1936. There one can read, nevertheless, Knipper’s comments that ‘It is shameful that abroad Lady Macbeth is regarded as an example of Soviet music. But worse than Lady Macbeth is The Limpid Stream, which is an absolutely unprincipled [piece].’ Later Kabalevsky put forward the premise that success had been harmful to Shostakovich. In an underhand manner, he criticized all his most recent compositions, without mentioning either of the works that caused the scandal: ‘Shostakovich is very talented. But the atmosphere of adulation around him has led to the creation of works, which, if one did not know who had written them, could be mistaken for pieces by a very bad composer. I have in mind works like the Piano Concerto, the Twenty-four Preludes and the Cello Sonata. As for the music to the film The Girl Friends, it’s simply very bad music.’
As could be expected the former proletarians, like Lebedinsky, Zhitomirsky, Bely and others, criticized the decadent and bourgeois elements in Shostakovich’s work, and pointed to Davidenko as a model composer. Shostakovich was accused of having adversely influenced his younger colleagues, amongst whom the young Tikhon Khrennikov was cited as an example.
The pianist Heinrich Neuhaus, who was in fact no admirer of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth, put forward a different point of view: ‘The Pravda article should be seen as a blow against arrogance […] the blame should not fall only on Shostakovich but on the heads of the whole musical community, including my own.’ He suggested that the article should be seen as a joyful event, which would inspire Shostakovich to new and better paths. ‘There can be no talk of “coffins”,’ Neuhaus remarked, no doubt referring to Knipper’s outburst.23
LEVON ATOVMYAN was an exceptional case of a musician whose first thought had been to help Shostakovich in a practical manner. He went to meet him on his return from Arkhangel’sk, to find Shostakovich calm and collected, but penniless – he had lost all his money playing cards on the return journey. Atovmyan had in the meantime already addressed the Central Committee of the Party for permission to organize a concert of Shostakovich’s works at the Bolshoi Theatre:
[…] the programme of the concert was agreed as the First Piano Concerto and the complete fourth act of Lady Macbeth. But Shostakovich objected, ‘Why this need to organize a concert? Can’t you see what it will lead to? The audience will applaud of course, after all it’s considered “good tone” to show oneself on the side of the opposition. But then another article will appear with some headline such as “Unrepenting Formalist”. What will you have gained? There’s no point in being a Don Quixote.’24
Amongst the few people from whom he received unequivocal support were the composers Shebalin and Balanchivadze. To the latter Shostakovich wrote:
One must have the courage not only to kill one’s works, but to defend them. As it would be futile and impossible to do the latter, I am taking no steps in this direction. In any case, I am doing much hard thinking about all that has happened. Honesty is what is important. Will I have enough in store to last for long, I wonder? But if you ever learn that I have ‘disassociated’ myself from Lady Macbeth, you will know that I have done so 100 per cent. I doubt that this will happen soon, however. I am a ponderous thinker and am very honest in all that concerns composition.25
Vissarion (Ronya) Shebalin met Shostakovich in 1924 through Lev Oborin. At the time he was a student of Nikolai Myaskovsky’s at the Moscow Conservatoire, and a member of the group of young Moscow composers, ‘The Six’. The two young composers became steadfast friends. Here are reminiscences of their friendship by ALISA MAXIMOVNA SHEBALINA (Vissarion’s wife).
Shostakovich and Shebalin had a lifelong friendship. From the 1920s on, Mitya always used to stay with us in Moscow, and similarly Shebalin stayed with the Shostakoviches during his visits to Leningrad.
I well remember Mitya’s visits to our home in Moshkov Pereulok. On one occasion Mitya went to the bathroom to wash his hands. Suddenly he rushed out of the door in a fright. ‘What have you got in there?’ he exclaimed. Our good maid used to buy us fresh fish from a nearby fish shop in Pokrovka Street. She would then put them in the bathtub until she was ready to cook them. On that day she had bought a couple of carp which were enjoying a swim in the tub. We told Mitya, ‘Oh, that’s our aquarium.’
Mitya and Vissarion then got down to some work on music, as usual. In the meantime, as evening approached, I told our maid to get the supper ready, so she extracted the carp from the bath, cleaned them, fried them and served them. Mitya relished the dish: ‘How delicious! What wonderful fish! Where did you get them?’
I said, ‘That was fresh carp.’
‘And where ever did you get hold of them?’
‘But Mitya, you saw them in the bath, they gave you a fright!’
‘Well, well, what wheeler-dealers you are.’
Both Mitya and Sollertinsky were such frequent guests that they became part of our household. Our maid once greeted me when I came home by announcing in her inimitable language that ‘Your Leninsky-gradskyie have arrived.’26
Shostakovich was a great football fan, and often came down to Moscow specially for a match. He would send Ronya a telegram the day before to ask him to reserve tickets. On the other hand, his wife Nina (or Nita as she was called) was a boxing fan.
*
After the appearance of the articles in Pravda in 1936 attacking Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and The Limpid Stream, Shostakovich was bitterly persecuted. In Leningrad he was supported by his friend Sollertinsky, and in Moscow by Shebalin. A‘dispute’ or ‘discussion’ was organized in Moscow at the House of Writers (the so-called Herzen House), where a large number of Moscow composers gathered. All the old RAPM activists were there, their teeth bared, ready for a killing. Shostakovich was criticized, purged, disciplined and scolded by one and all on every count. Each person who spoke felt it his duty to express sentiments similar to those printed in the Pravda articles. Only Shebalin maintained silence throughout the meeting. But then he too was asked to speak; it was hardly a request but a demand; he refused all the same. A short while elapsed and again it was ‘suggested’ that he should take the stand. Vissarion then got up, but, remaining where he was without going up to the podium, he announced in a loud and clear voice for all to hear: ‘I consider that Shostakovich is the greatest genius amongst composers of this epoch.’ And with this statement he sat down.27
After this Shebalin was also persecuted; his music was no longer performed or printed and he was deprived of all material means of earning a living. For a certain time we lived in great poverty, and it wasn’t until the war started that things started changing for the better.28
Shostakovich’s recipe for preserving his sanity in the face of unfair and crass criticism was to press on with his composition. He completed the score of his grandiose Fourth Symphony in April 1936 and waited impatiently for its performance, which was scheduled in December. But at one of the final rehearsals the composer decided – with great reluctance – to withdraw the work. It would appear that he was pressurized by the Leningrad party organs and the director of the Philharmonic to take this eleventh-hour decision.
However, there remains some controversy in the varying accounts of the rehearsals of the Fourth Symphony, and the reasons behind the decision to cancel its performance. Many people have laid the blame at Fritz Stiedry’s feet, accusing him of being unco-operative, even hostile towards the new music. M. S. Shak, a violinist of the Leningrad Philharmonic, describes the rehearsal process:
Our acquaintance with the score started with a string sectional, rather than a play through with the whole orchestra. In the hall sat a thin young man who in our eyes still had not got much authority as a symphonist. Even in later years, when he had reached a position of world fame, he preferred not to interfere with the orchestra’s work. But in the tangibly tense atmosphere of those times he sat there timidly and quietly. Bent low over the score, Fritz Stiedry pointed at it with his finger. Checking the text, he impatiently demanded its author: ‘Is it correct? Is this how it should go?’ The orchestra would stop and a quick answer would follow: ‘Correct, correct.’29
The conductor Alexander Gauk, on the other hand, gives the impression of professional ineptitude on Stiedry’s part:
They were rehearsing the first movement. It was a shambles. Stiedri obviously did not understand the music, and the orchestra played messily. It was quite depressing. This was a terrible period for Dmitri Dmitriyevich, when he was being demolished by all and sundry.30
According to Flora Litvinova, years later, after the Fourth Symphony had eventually been performed, Shostakovich stated that Stiedry had not prepared for the rehearsals, that he and the musicians were at sea and could not cope with the complexities of the score. He himself said to Stiedry that he needed to re-work the Symphony before it could be performed, ostensibly to save the face of the conductor and musicians.31 Isaak Glikman firmly refutes these accounts, defending Stiedry. Another violinist of the Leningrad Philharmonic, Mark Reznikov, recalled that Stiedry, who admired and promoted Shostakovich’s music, had rehearsed the Fourth Symphony very thoroughly and achieved the necessary level for performance.32
Ultimately, whether or not the final decision to withdraw the Symphony was imposed on him or taken independently, Shostakovich must have realized that for all concerned it was better to be ‘safe than sorry’.
ISAAK GLIKMAN gives a vivid account of events surrounding the Fourth Symphony:
At the end of May 1936 the world-famous conductor Otto Klemperer came to Leningrad to give two concerts. Klemperer was a great admirer of Shostakovich’s First Symphony, and also one of its first performers. The chief purpose of this visit was to acquaint himself with Dmitri Dmitriyevich’s newly composed Fourth Symphony. On 29 May I went to the Grand Hall of the Philharmonic to hear Klemperer rehearsing Beethoven’s Third and Fifth Symphonies. A handsome man, enormously tall and powerfully built, appeared on the stage with a very severe and dictatorial expression. The orchestral musicians greeted him with an ovation. They knew this wonderful musician from his frequent concert appearances in the 1920s.
Here I should point out in parenthesis that the orchestral musicians of that time behaved in a very independent fashion and were very choosy about conductors. They made it known if they were dissatisfied with the level of performance. But not only that: the veterans amongst the orchestral soloists, such as the cello section leader, Ilya Brik (a one-time artistic director of the Philharmonic), or the first-rate bassoon player Alexander Vasilyev, and several others, often did not bother to disguise their critical or sceptical attitude to certain new scores by contemporary Moscow or Leningrad composers. It is essential to bear this circumstance in mind when talking about the atmosphere that prevailed during the preparation of Shostakovich’s symphonies. Otto Klemperer’s rehearsals were brilliantly conducted, and there was no room for tedious routine or mishaps.
The evening of that selfsame spring day I told Dmitri Dmitriyevich about my visit to the Philharmonic. Shostakovich informed me that tomorrow at midday he was to show the famous visitor his Fourth Symphony, and asked me if I would come along too.
Dmitri Dmitriyevich said that it would be a hard task for him to play this enormous and complex symphony, and to show it at its best. He had great hopes for this work, for which he nurtured a great love, all the more so as it was still fresh off the stands. Later on, Shostakovich was to speak very differently about it, either completely disparagingly or with passionate approbation. But this lay ahead.
That evening he conferred with his wife, Nina Vasilyevna, and myself as to how we should entertain Klemperer after he had played through the Symphony. While we were discussing the menu for dinner, the door bell rang. Completely unexpectedly there in the hall stood Otto Klemperer in all his glory, with Ivan Sollertinsky. They told us how they had slipped away from the Maly Opera Theatre, where they had gone to see The Marriage of Figaro conducted by Fritz Stiedry. Stiedry himself had insisted that Klemperer and Ivan Ivanovich come to the show, but after the first act Klemperer had a better idea: to sneak away and go and find Shostakovich, rather than wait for the appointed hour the following day.
Dmitri Dmitriyevich did not like unexpected guests, regarding them with barely disguised hostility. But he was touched by the sudden appearance of Klemperer, who had come to Leningrad from the other end of the world to meet him with all possible haste.
The celebrated and impatient guest was received courteously and without any fuss and bother. He turned out to be a man of immense culture, a wonderful raconteur and conversationalist. By the way, Klemperer told me that in his large repertoire he had a favourite ‘Shostakovich’ programme, with which he had toured all over North and South America, consisting of the First Symphony, the Piano Concerto, the Suites from The Golden Age and The Bolt. The audience always received it favourably, ‘et toujours avec un succès formidable’. (I still recall his exact words.) The conversation was largely held in French for the benefit of Dmitri Dmitriyevich’s wife, Nina Vasilyevna.
It was after midnight before we dispersed. Early that very morning Dmitri Dmitriyevich rang me up to inform me of the happy news that very late that night he had become a father, with the birth of his first child Galina.33 Without further ado I rushed to congratulate the happy parents with a bottle of champagne tucked under my arm. By twelve o’clock Klemperer, Stiedry, Sollertinsky, Gauk, Oborin and E. Nellius, the secretary of the Philharmonic Board, had arrived for the official appointment. On hearing the glad tidings, they all immediately dashed out to buy champagne. It was then decided to send a letter of congratulations to Nina Vasilyevna in hospital. For some reason Klemperer took it upon himself to write it in French and we all added something to his note.
Dmitri Dmitriyevich, after a sleepless and anxious night, was not himself, but he, more than anybody else I knew, was capable of pulling himself together. He played the Symphony through with great élan. The score lay on the desk, and the conductors Klemperer, Gauk and Stiedry were all huddled over it. I remember that Klemperer occupied the most favourable position, using his powerful build to advantage.
The Symphony made an enormous impression. (Sollertinsky and I had heard it previously.) Klemperer and Stiedry were fired with genuine enthusiasm, and they both scheduled the work for performance in the autumn of 1936, Klemperer in South America, the latter in Leningrad in his capacity as chief conductor of the Leningrad Philharmonic. But things turned out differently.
Afterwards, at dinner, Klemperer spoke with passion, saying that the heavens themselves had granted him a marvellous gift, the chance of conducting the Fourth Symphony. Delighted as he would be to conduct it, he nevertheless had one humble request to make of the composer: to reduce the number of flutes, as by no means would it be possible everywhere to find six first-rate flautists while on tour. However Dmitri Dmitriyevich was adamant. Smiling he answered, ‘What is written with the pen cannot be scratched out with an axe.’ Sollertinsky translated this proverb, not without some effort on his part, into German, French, Spanish and English, all languages that Klemperer knew.
That evening, in an overflowing Grand Hall of the Philharmonic, Klemperer conducted Beethoven with colossal success. Dmitri Dmitriyevich, who was totally exhausted and drained after the agitation of the last twenty-four hours, did not attend the concert. Sollertinsky and I were there, and at the end went backstage to give Klemperer our warmest congratulations. He declared firmly that today the congratulations did not belong to him, but to Shostakovich, the composer of the Fourth Symphony.
*
Rehearsals for the Fourth Symphony began in the autumn of the same year (1936). Fritz Stiedry was a great conductor and musician. He had escaped from Fascist Germany, settled in Leningrad and was now chief conductor of the Philharmonic. Shostakovich had a high opinion of him. Their first working contact had been a joyful occasion, when, in the autumn of 1933, for the opening concert of the Philharmonic Season they gave the premiere of Dmitri Dmitriyevich’s First Piano Concerto, which the composer played exquisitely.
Dmitri Dmitriyevich invited me to the rehearsals of the Fourth Symphony, of which there were an impressive number. It goes without saying that Stiedry learnt the score of this massive-scale work, using all the resources of his masterful talent. I don’t know how Dmitri Dmitriyevich felt, but I sensed an atmosphere of tension and caution in the hall. The trouble was that rumours were circulating in musical circles that Shostakovich, in defiance of criticism, had written a work of devilish complexity that was chock-a-block full of Formalism.
And one fine day a secretary of the Union of Composers, V. E. Iochelson, and another official from Smolny,34 appeared at a rehearsal; Dmitri Dmitriyevich was requested to report with them to I. M. Renzin, the director of the Philharmonic. They climbed up the inner spiral staircase to Renzin’s office, and I remained in the Hall. About 15–20 minutes later Dmitri Dmitriyevich came to fetch me and we set off on foot to his flat at 14 Kirovsky Prospect.
I was confused and upset by the long silence of my dejected companion, but finally he told me, in an even, expressionless voice, that the Symphony would not be performed, that at the express recommendation of Renzin it had been cancelled, but that he had not wished to invoke his administrative authority and therefore had requested that the composer himself should take the decision for cancelling the performance.
Many years have since gone by, and a legend has grown up around the Fourth Symphony, which unfortunately has firmly established itself in all that has been written about Dmitri Dmitriyevich. Essentially the rumour is that Shostakovich, being convinced that Stiedry could not cope with the Symphony, decided to cancel its performance. It would be hard to invent anything more absurd and unfair.
In 1956 Shostakovich wrote about the faults of the Fourth Symphony. In his words, it suffered from ‘folies de grandeur’. But only five years later, on the 30 December 1961, its premiere took place in the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire under the baton of Kirill Kondrashin. I sat next to Dmitri Dmitriyevich during the concert, and when the devastating music of the introduction resounded around the Hall, it seemed to me that I could hear his heart knocking audibly in agitation. He was in the grip of an unconquerable anxiety which subsided only at the start of the superb coda.
After the colossal success of the concert, we went to his home. Under the fresh impression of what he had just heard, Dmitri Dmitriyevich told me, ‘It seems to me that in many respects my Fourth Symphony stands much higher than my most recent ones.’ A remarkable admission! Given that this statement contained an element of exaggeration, it was nevertheless provoked by his impulse to defend a composition which had suffered unjust oblivion in the last twenty-five years. During this long period, the composer himself had regarded this work with a cold and detached eye; but when it actually came to life in sound, he identified totally with the overwhelming musical force of this lost child.35
Sergei Kirov’s assassination in Leningrad in December 1934 triggered off new waves of terror and repression. An atmosphere of hostility and grim suspicion came into being. The Party referred to Stalin’s speeches, which emphasized that the class struggle was far from over, and demanded from citizens extra vigilance in uncovering the ‘enemies of the people’ and potential saboteurs. Informing was actively encouraged, and the example of the young pioneer, Pavlik Morozov, who informed against his own father (leading to his arrest) was cited as model behaviour. The year 1936 is remembered now as the first of the great purges and ‘show trials’, where Stalin’s political enemies were forced into abject confessions and humiliation prior to their liquidation. It is estimated that over seven million people were arrested between 1936 and 1939. Stalin imposed the Terror so as to transform all institutions – the Party, heavy industry and the armed forces – into obedient tools. It affected people from all walks of life.
The publication of ‘Muddle Instead of Music’ had found Shostakovich in Arkhangel’sk on a concert tour with the cellist and conductor Victor Kubatsky. Before returning to Leningrad, the composer passed through Moscow, where he consulted with the chairman of the Arts Committee, P. Kerzhentsev, and with Marshal Tukhachevsky as to how to react to party criticism. Kerzhentsev advised Shostakovich that his best tactic would be to ‘admit his errors’, while Tukhachevsky wrote a letter on Shostakovich’s behalf to Stalin.36
Tukhachevsky may have seemed a powerful patron at the time, but he was arrested only a year later and shot in the summer of 1937 as an enemy of the people. Shortly afterwards, another of Shostakovich’s close friends, the musicologist Nikolai Zhilyaev, was arrested because of his association with Tukhachevsky.
Shostakovich’s position was now precarious to a degree, and remained so until the successful performance of the Fifth Symphony in November 1937. The Terror was at its height, and he must have felt increasingly hemmed in and helpless as colleagues, friends and relatives were arrested and disappeared without trace. His sister Mariya recalled the shock when her husband, the distinguished physicist Vsevolod Fredericks (well known for his research in the field of liquid crystals), was arrested in 1937:
I never knew why. He was of noble character, a man of science and uninterested in everything apart from scientific matters. In his youth he had studied in Heidelberg together with Aunt Nadya, and he was going to marry her, but nothing came of it. Then, at the age of forty he married me. Our son Mitya was born and we lived well. Then our whole world crumbled around us in one night; they came and took him away under convoy. I was sent into exile, and Mama had to take care of little Mitya. Nina Vasilyevna’s mother, the astronomer Sofiya Mikhailovna Varzar, was arrested and sent to a camp in Karaganda, where she got work as a cashier and managed to survive. Danger hung over [my brother] Mitya; he feared arrest and was terrified that he would be unable to resist torture and would admit to anything [under interrogation].37
Fredericks was released before the war, but his health was wrecked, and he died before reaching home. Nina’s mother did survive, as did Shostakovich’s friend the Marxist writer Galina Serebryakova – the latter spent over twenty years in the camps. But for the most part the victims of the Terror died horrible deaths, under torture, in prison or in forced labour camps: they included Shostakovich’s uncle, the Bolshevik Maxim Kostrykin, the poet Boris Kornilov, author of the text of ‘Song of the Counterplan’, and Adrian Piotrovsky, the author of the play Rule Britannia and librettist of The Limpid Stream. His friend, the famous theatre director Vsevolod Meyerhold, was arrested in the summer of 1939, and perished in prison six months later. It is known that Shostakovich, at the request of Meyerhold’s wife Zinaida Raikh (shortly herself to be brutally murdered), wrote a letter interceding for Meyerhold. And his former mistress Elena Konstantinovskaya was arrested in 1936 but, exceptionally, she was released the following year. It is instructive to remember that this catalogue of disasters formed the background to the composition and premiere of the Fifth Symphony.
The composer GRIGORI FRIED here describes a meeting with Shostakovich at Zhilyaev’s home shortly before his arrest:
I first got to know Shostakovich in 1937. Most Fridays I used to visit my teacher Nikolai Sergeyevich Zhilyaev at home. He was a composer, musicologist and an incredible personality. He had been a pupil of Tanyeev, and in those years was an excellent pianist. He was on friendly terms with Skryabin, Prokofiev and Myaskovsky amongst others. Zhilyaev had a unique erudition and knew many languages. At the age of twenty he learnt Norwegian, and then set off to visit Grieg in Bergen. Grieg had always been his idol, and he stayed in his home for two weeks.
He counted amongst his friends Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, who had in the past been his pupil. Shostakovich wrote: ‘I met the wonderful musician Nikolai Sergeyevich Zhilyaev at Tukhachevsky’s home. I consider him to be one of my teachers. Tukhachevsky had an enormous respect for Zhilyaev, but this did not stop them from quarrelling ferociously. The three of us often met together; usually I played them something new, and they would both listen very attentively, and then make their comments; their views were often diametrically opposed.’38
Once Zhilyaev came up to me in the Conservatoire, and said, while placing his massive hand on my shoulder and, as was his wont, exerting great downward pressure, ‘Come along and see me today, it’ll be shostakovich: a life remembered worth your while.’ That evening I arrived at the familiar communal flat at 15 Chistiye Prudy. Zhilyaev occupied a small room there which seemed all the more cramped because of the profusion of books and music. It also housed a grand piano, a simple wooden table and an iron bedstead on which we usually sat. On the wall hung a large portrait of Tukhachevsky.
‘Mitya Shostakovich is about to come along,’ Zhilyaev said. I was surprised and naturally delighted. Soon, at the appointed hour, Shostakovich arrived, absolute punctuality being one of his distinguishing features. He was on his way back from a journey in the south, and later that evening was to return to Leningrad. His thin body was always in motion; later in life his quick, angular movements were to acquire an exaggerated character. He was then thirty years old. He had brought his new Pushkin Romances and the first two movements of the still-unfinished Fifth Symphony to show Nikolai Sergeyevich. The manuscript of the score was written in Shostakovich’s characteristic nervous hand, which was a testimony to the speed at which he worked. (Subsequently, I myself witnessed this amazing speed of composition, when he was composing the Preludes and Fugues for Piano at the House of Creativity at Ruza.) I did not understand the Pushkin Romances at all well, but the Symphony produced an enormous impression on me. Zhilyaev patted Shostakovich on the head with paternal tenderness, repeating almost inaudibly, ‘Mitya, Mitya …’
When Dmitri Dmitriyevich left for the station, I asked Nikolai Sergeyevich about his impressions. He answered, ‘The Romances have still retained something of his “hooliganism”. But the Symphony is quite wonderful. Mitya is a genius, a genius …’ he repeated in a near-whisper.39
The composer VENYAMIN BASNER was never officially a composition student of Shostakovich’s. However, he regarded him as his Teacher with a capital T, and received constant encouragement from him. Shostakovich will have appreciated Basner’s warm and generous personality as well as his affectionate devotion. The two men went on to develop a close and lasting friendship. Here he gives an account of Shostakovich’s near-arrest:
It is difficult to imagine with what fear and trembling we lived through the Stalinist reign of terror. Dmitri Dmitriyevich was in some ways broken by this terror. The events of 1936 and, in particular, the 1948 Decree took a heavy toll on him. One should therefore discount the articles and statements that Dmitri Dmitriyevich ‘signed’; we knew that they were meaningless acts to him, but served him as a public shield. His many courageous actions were taken in private.
But Shostakovich did also show great courage, particularly during 1936. He would never have cancelled the performance of the Fourth Symphony if it had not been for the heavy-handed hints that were dropped by ‘the bosses’. He had no choice in the matter. After all it wasn’t only Dmitri Dmitriyevich that was threatened; it was insinuated that all the performers would live to regret the day if the performance of the symphony went ahead.
Dmitri Dmitriyevich suffered tremendously after the attacks on him in early 1936. He decided the best thing to do was to go away on his own. He had some concerts arranged in Odessa, Rostov-on-Don and the Caucasus; the purpose of the tour was largely to distract himself and to avoid seeing people.
An episode of great significance occurred the next year. I know that he never confided this incident to anybody, not even to his great friend Isaak Davydovich Glikman.
One day in the spring of 1937 he received an order to appear in such and such a room at a certain hour at the ‘Big House’, the headquarters of the NKVD.40 Can you imagine how he suffered during the hours preceding this interview? He assumed that it was all over for him, yet he didn’t know for sure why he had been summoned. He assumed that it was to do with the derogatory articles in Pravda criticizing Lady Macbeth and his ballet The Limpid Stream. He arrived at the appointed hour. An investigator called Zanchevsky41 received him, asked him politely to sit down and then opened the conversation. Zanchevsky started with ordinary everyday topics: ‘What are you working at now? How are your professional affairs?’ After a while he went on, ‘Are you acquainted with Marshal Tukhachevsky?’
‘Yes I know him,’ Dmitri Dmitriyevich replied.
‘Tell me how and when did you make his acquaintance?’
Dmitri Dmitriyevich told the investigator that Tukhachevsky was a great music lover and had been to many of his concerts. Once he came up to him to offer his congratulations and they had started talking. Tukhachevsky played the violin, and he had invited Shostakovich to his house and they had made music together. (Indeed Tukhachevsky also used to make violins as a hobby.)
‘And who else was present at these meetings?’ the investigator continued.
‘Only members of the family circle.’
‘Any politicians there, by chance?’
‘No, no politicans.’
‘And what did you talk about?’
‘About music.’
‘And politics?’
‘No, there was never any talk of politics in my presence.’
‘Now, I think you should try and shake your memory. It cannot be that you were at his home and that you did not talk about politics. For instance, the plot to assassinate Comrade Stalin? What did you hear about that?’
At this point Dmitri Dmitriyevich realized that his end was nigh. The investigation into Tukhachevsky had only just started, and as yet it was not public knowledge that the Marshal was in disgrace. Dmitri Dmitriyevich fell silent. The only thing he kept repeating was, ‘No, there was never any such talk in my presence’; he refused to answer any more questions. Then the investigator said, ‘All right, today is Saturday, and you can go now. But I only give you until Monday. By that day you will without fail remember everything. You must recall every detail of the discussion regarding the plot against Stalin of which you were a witness.’
Dmitri Dmitriyevich told me that it was impossible to imagine how terrible he felt over that weekend. He had his family to protect; his daughter Galya was only a small baby. He had to try and disguise his agitated state from all those around him, although he obviously told his wife Nina the whole story. He hurriedly destroyed many of his papers and put things in order. Then, on Monday, having prepared the bare necessities to take with him, he summoned up his courage and returned to the ‘Big House’. Naturally, he assumed that this time he himself would be arrested.
As a matter of procedure, he had to announce his name to the soldier on duty before being granted admittance. The soldier looked at the list, but couldn’t find his name. He asked Shostakovich, ‘What is your business? Whom have you come to see?’
‘Zanchevsky.’
Then came the surprise. The soldier said, ‘You can go home. Zanchevsky isn’t coming in today, so there is nobody to receive you.’
It turned out that over the weekend Zanchevsky himself had been arrested and imprisoned, and thereby Shostakovich was miraculously saved.
I think Dmitri Dmitriyevich only ever told this story to me, and that was many years after the event. This fact contributes to the various reasons why I am forced to believe that the memoirs attributed to Shostakovich in Solomon Volkov’s Testimony are in fact a falsified account, as this story does not appear there. The book is full of stories that we all had heard many times from Dmitri Dmitriyevich’s own lips. I personally don’t believe that Dmitri Dmitriyevich himself told Volkov all these things, but that he heard them repeated by those in Shostakovich’s inner circle. Surely Dmitri Dmitriyevich would have included this story if he was writing his candid memoirs.42
In January 1938 Shostakovich recorded that ‘the birth of the Fifth Symphony was preceded by a long period of inner preparation. The actual process of writing down the symphony was maybe relatively short (for instance I wrote the third movement in three days.)’43 It had taken the composer the best part of a year to gather up his strength and start writing the work by which he was to stand or fall. He started making the preparatory sketches and writing the short score in the second half of April 1937. Work on the first movements proceeded rapidly, but evidently things went less smoothly with the finale. Shostakovich wrote in the date of 11 September on the preparatory sketch, and a few days later recorded in his day-by-day working notebook, ‘Today [20 September] I completed my Fifth Symphony.’ With the original manuscript score missing, we do not know whether this meant completion of the full or short score; it is probable that he completed the orchestration only in October.44 In any case by early November the rehearsal schedule with the Leningrad Philharmonic had been set, and a young unknown conductor Evgeni Mravinsky was given the responsibility of the first performance.
The triumphant reception of the Fifth Symphony at its premiere on 21 November 193745 was seen as a public vindication of the humiliating and unfair criticism Shostakovich had suffered. One of the audience, a certain A. N. Glumov, remembered how:
many of the listeners started to rise automatically from their seats during the finale, one after the other. The music had a sort of electrical force. A thunderous ovation shook the columns of the white Philharmonic Hall, and Evgeni Marvinsky lifted the score high above his head, so as to show that it was not he, the conductor, or the orchestra who deserved this storm of applause, these shouts of ‘bravo’; the success belonged to the creator of this work.46
The symphony’s success had a highly symbolic significance for the artistic community at large. Isaak Glikman recalled that many people in the hall were in tears as they listened to the Largo (third movement). The famous philologist Vladimir Shishmarev told Glikman that only once before had he experienced a similar emotion and witnessed such triumph – at the premiere of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony in the same hall.
Another of Shostakovich’s friends, the artist Lyubov Yakovleva, noted in her diary that the ovations of the audience represented an ‘outraged response to the dreadful hounding that Mitya had been through. Everybody repeated the same phrase over and over again: “He’s given them his answer, and it’s a good one.” D.D. went out on stage as pale as pale can be, biting his lips. I thought he was about to burst into tears.’47
Vissarion Shebalin, who came up from Moscow to attend the premiere, was enthusiastic about the music, but feared that the ovations might be interpreted as an ostentatiously ‘subversive’ demonstration of support. He recalled that ‘Ivan Ivanovich (Sollertinsky) was very worried […] he and my wife had to use all means at their disposal to restrain D.D. from walking out on stage too often, and they dragged him away.’
Opinions amongst musicians were divided about the actual quality of the music. Myaskovsky noted in his diary that ‘the first and third movements are the best; the second is Mahlerian in character, with minuets or ländler. The finale is forceful, with a good middle section; but the ending is bad – the D major formal reply. The orchestration is devilish [in its mastery].’48 Prokofiev, who heard the symphony only later, wrote to Shostakovich saying, ‘I was extremely impressed by many parts of the symphony, although it became clear to me that it is praised not for the things that it should be praised for, which probably go unnoticed. In any case it’s good that it is praised; after “the frosts of yesterday” which we comrade-composers have experienced, the appearance of a real and fresh piece of music is a joyful event.’49 Kabalevsky came out in favour of the symphony, praising Shostakovich for not having given in to the seductive temptations of his previous ‘erroneous’ ways. His written review of the work smacks of official opinion when he concludes that ‘the composer, like a true and great Soviet artist, overcomes his mistakes and finds his new path’.50
The authorities were, on the whole, willing to accept the Symphony as Shostakovich’s offering to the shrine of socialist-realism. As such, the Fifth Symphony was immediately widely performed, and the composer’s pardon appeared to be secured.51 Incidentally, the Symphony’s subtitle, ‘a Soviet artist’s creative reply to just criticism’, was coined by a journalist, and it was first used for the Moscow premiere in January 1938. Shostakovich never officially accepted it, although at the time he probably allowed it to remain in programmes as a seemingly expedient afterthought, which could be interpreted as an admission of his errors and gesture of repentance.
Shostakovich must have known that he was on a tightrope when it came to the critics’ interpretation of his new work. The conductor Boris Khaikin recalled a conversation with the composer in late 1937:
Shostakovich told me: ‘I finished the Fifth Symphony in the major and fortissimo… . It would be interesting to know what would have been said if I finished it pianissimo and in the minor?’ Only later did I understand the full significance of these words, when I heard the Fourth Symphony, which does finish in the minor and pianissimo. But in 1937 nobody knew the Fourth Symphony.52
Between the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies, Shostakovich wrote only one serious and highly personal work, the Four Pushkin Romances Op. 46, which remained unperformed until 1940. For the rest, Shostakovich’s output during this period was chiefly limited to music for the cinema. Apart from providing a useful source of income, film music gave Shostakovich an opportunity to prove his identification with Soviet themes of actual relevance.
But the great importance of the Pushkin Romances is evident in the way that the composer uses quotations from the first song, ‘Rebirth’, in the Finale of his Fifth Symphony. The four notes which set the first three words of that poem53 form the kernel of the initial march theme, while a whole later section makes reference to the lilting accompaniment to the poem’s final quatrain, ‘Thus delusions fall off/ My tormented soul/ And it reveals to me visions/ Of my former pure days.’54 Although self-quotation was to become an increasingly familiar feature of Shostakovich’s work, its use in this symphony was totally arcane – insomuch as the Pushkin Romances were unpublished and unperformed at the time of the Fifth Symphony’s performance. Perhaps the composer hoped that in the event of the Symphony’s failure to rehabilitate his position, his private signals would be deciphered sometime in the future.
But other personal confessions are also to be found in the Fifth Symphony, which reveal Shostakovich’s skill in making music work at very many different psychological levels. Already in 1967, L. A. Maazel had noted the similarity between the first movement’s second subject and the refrain in the ‘Habanera’ of Bizet’s opera Carmen, where the protagonist sings, ‘L’amour, l’amour’. More recently the musicologist and pianist Alexander Benditsky has discovered a further set of connections with the ‘Habanera’ theme in the first movement and the opening theme and coda of the finale of the Fifth Symphony, demonstrating not only the melodic similarity, but associations of pitch, rhythm, key and thematic structure.55
All this supports the idea of a ‘muse’ lying behind the inspiration of the Fifth Symphony, in the same way as in the future both the Tenth Symphony and the Fifth String Quartet were to be inspired by women to whom Shostakovich was drawn.
In this case there is no doubt that Shostakovich had in mind Elena Konstantinovskaya, with whom he had had a love affair in 1934–5, and with whom he had carried on an intense correspondence. Konstantinovskaya had been arrested in 1936 and, after a brief spell in prison, was released and went to Spain. Here she married a certain Roman Karmen, and thus came to bear the name of ‘Carmen’. This gives the hidden key to Shostakovich’s music, and Benditsky concludes that we can interpret the Fifth Symphony as ‘a hymn to love, to the “freedom to love”, and the freedom to be a human being, a citizen, a personality’.56
Mravinsky, more than any other musician, is identified as the authentic interpreter of Shostakovich’s symphonic music. Even when, in the early 1960s, relations between the two musicians deteriorated with Mravinsky’s refusal to perform the Thirteenth Symphony, Shostakovich continued to acknowledge Mravinsky’s supremacy in the interpretation of his music.
Here EVGENI MRAVINSKY writes of the preparation of the Fifth Symphony, thereby giving an insight into his own and the composer’s working methods:
I had my first genuine contact with Shostakovich and his music in 1937, when I started working on his Fifth Symphony. Of course, I knew his work already, and I was also acquainted with him personally. After all we had both been students at the Leningrad Conservatoire in the 1920s. But although I was three years older than Dmitri Dmitriyevich, circumstances were such that I only succeeded in entering the Conservatoire in 1924, when he was already on the fifth-year course. Therefore we had hardly any social contact at that time.
In the following years I would meet Dmitri Dmitriyevich at concerts and at the theatre, and I observed him at the rehearsals of his ballets The Golden Age and The Bolt at the Kirov Theatre, where he was then working. But there was no close rapport between us, although we shared many friends in common, including Ivan Sollertinsky.
And then in 1937 I, a young conductor with no ‘name’, was given the task of preparing the newly finished Fifth Symphony by Shostakovich for a concert dedicated to the ‘Decade of Soviet Music’. Until this day I cannot understand how I dared to accept this proposal unhesitatingly, without giving it much thought. If it was put to me now, I would think it over for a long time, undergo many doubts, and finally perhaps refuse to undertake it.
For what was at stake was not only my own reputation, but, much more important, the future of a new and as yet unknown work by a composer whose Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk had recently been subjected to cruel attacks, and who had been forced to withdraw his Fourth Symphony from performance.
But I can be excused by reason of my youth and my ignorance of the ensuing difficulties and the responsibility which fell to my part. Besides which, I very much relied on the composer’s help.
However, my first meeting with Shostakovich shattered my hopes. However many questions I put to him, I didn’t succeed in eliciting anything from him. In the future I encountered this reticence in regard to his other compositions. This made his every meagre comment all the more valuable. In truth, the character of our perception of music differed greatly. I do not like to search for subjective, literary and concrete images in music which is not by nature programmatic, whereas Shostakovich very often explained his intentions with very specific images and associations. But one way or another, any remark on his own compositions that you can wrest from a composer is always of enormous value to a performer.
Initially I could get no information about the tempo indications in the Fifth Symphony. I then had recourse to cunning. During our work together I sat at the piano and deliberately took incorrect tempi. Dmitri Dmitriyevich got angry and stopped me, and showed me the required tempo. Soon he caught on to my tactic and started to give me some hints himself.
The tempi were soon fixed with metronome markings and transferred into the score. They were reproduced in the printed edition. But now, when I check them with recordings of performances, I realize that in many cases the metronome indications in the Fifth Symphony have proved to be incorrect, and the long life of this symphony has in itself brought about essential changes to the tempi that we marked down at that time.
(Incidentally, I suspect that it is precisely these incorrect tempi markings in the score that prevented Toscanini from realizing his intention to perform the Fifth Symphony. Evidently he could not accept the indicated tempi, but at the same time considered them to be authoritative, and did not dare deviate from them.)
Eventually our work on the Symphony reached a successful conclusion. On 21 November 1937 the first performance took place in the Hall of the Leningrad Philharmonic. The work was received with enormous enthusiasm by the public. And the greatest reward for me were the lines written by the composer and printed a few months later after my winning the All-Union Competition for Conductors. Recalling our work on the Symphony, Shostakovich wrote that to start with he was frightened by the conductor’s working method: ‘It seemed to me that he was delving into too much detail, that he paid too much attention to the particular, and it seemed that this would spoil the overall plan, the general conception. Mravinsky subjected me to a real interrogation on every bar, on my every idea, demanding an answer to any doubts that had arisen in him. But by the fifth day of our collaboration, I understood that his method was undoubtedly correct. A conductor should not just sing like a nightingale.’
Always retaining a friendly manner, and with the same close rapport, but with no fewer difficulties, we worked together on all the following symphonies up to and including the Twelfth… .
Every time I start learning a new Shostakovich score with the orchestra, I am amazed by the detail with which he can hear the sound of his own music in his head. Everything has been heard in advance, lived through, thought out and calculated.
Over the many years of our collaboration, I only once ever made a suggestion to retouch a detail of orchestration. In the Eighth Symphony, where the daring of the orchestration matches the innovation of the music, there was one place in the second movement where the doubling of the woodwind by trumpet was called for, and similarly in the third movement by the horns. These changes were accepted by the composer, although not immediately, and have been incorporated into the printed edition of the score. But I have to repeat that this was exceptional. One could say that Shostakovich had perfect orchestral hearing. He heard everything in the orchestra as a unity and at the same time each instrument separately, both in his head and in the real sounding.
I remember a specific occasion. We were rehearsing the Eighth Symphony. In the first movement, not long before the general climax, there is an episode in which the cor anglais has to go up quite high into the second octave. The cor anglais is doubled by the oboes and the cellos and is almost indistinguishable in the general sound of the orchestra. Taking this into consideration, the player decided to put his part down an octave, so as to save his lip for the important long solo which comes straight after the climax. It was almost impossible to hear the cor anglais amidst the overpowering noise of the orchestra and to expose the player’s little trick. But suddenly, from behind me in the stalls, Shostakovich’s voice rang out, ‘Why is the cor anglais playing an octave down?’ We were all stunned. The orchestra stopped playing, and after a second of complete silence applause broke out.57
In the years preceding the Second World War, the composer MIKHAIL CHULAKI was director of the Leningrad Philharmonic. Chulaki moved in official circles, and as such in 1948 joined the persecutors of Shostakovich, criticizing him for Formalism. He was however respected as a competent composer and a good teacher. Undoubtedly, he was much more cultivated than the average party functionary or union official. In these reminiscences Chulaki recalls how Soviet bureaucrats assessed the Fifth Symphony:
It is difficult to convey the enthusiasm with which the Fifth Symphony was hailed by the general public. Mingled with genuine appreciation of this outstanding musical composition was a feeling of enormous relief that Shostakovich’s new work possessed all the qualities essential to his being rehabilitated as a composer at this tense time. It was simple in language, was full of extended melodies, and what was particularly important, it finished with victorious fanfares whose ‘outspoken’ nature could not be called into doubt. In other words, it was accessible to professional listeners without making concessions to the pretensions of the general public – that same general public which so bombastically referred to itself as ‘the People’ (or took it upon itself to speak in the name of ‘the People’). It was a real joy to observe how the ‘general public’ was indeed delighted at the appearance of a new work. It understood that at this moment the fate of a young talented composer was at stake, and it had come to love this composer not just as a musician, but as a man of crystal purity.
But there was another category of persons who had a particular allegiance to art – the bureaucratic stratum. They formulated the judgements of the authorities through writing official reports in which they tried to divine what the ‘bosses” opinions on the matter might be. And for God’s sake, should you get it wrong, it could cost you your position. Their anxiety to be ‘more Catholic than the Pope himself’ was motivated by the wish to ensure their own safety. They therefore assessed compositions by the quantity of dissonances and their deviations from the standard ‘norms’ of folk and classical music. (The ‘norms’ were established, and were therefore safe.) It was even possible in certain instances that some of the ruling comrades, not being specialists, might not have insisted on such categorical limitations had it not been for the ‘authoritative’ judgements of these ‘artistic’ bureaucrats, who were responsible for formulating the rulers’ judgement and defining their taste. All this led to the appearance of such pseudo-musicological articles as ‘Muddle Instead of Music’ and ‘Ballet Falsehood’, and, what was worse, such official decrees as ‘About the Film The Great Life’, or ‘On Muradeli’s Opera The Great Friendship’. These were to determine the development of Soviet art and literature for many years to come.
This bureaucratic stratum also attempted to interfere with the fate of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony. As I have already said, the first performance had a tremendous, unparalleled success. The public (‘the People’) filled the hall of the Leningrad Philharmonic to bursting, and at the end demonstrated its enthusiasm for over half an hour. Eventually, the conductor, Mravinsky, lifted the score in both hands and waved it in the air. This provoked an even greater ovation.
Nevertheless, this generally accepted gesture provoked extreme displeasure in official circles, since it was seen as an explicit comment in regard to the criticism expressed on the pages of the Party press.58 Surely, the composer could not have ‘restructured’59 his outlook and created a 100 per cent Soviet symphony in such a short space of time? And what is more, no official opinion on the symphony had yet been formulated. So what did this mean – a demonstration?60
Immediately two high-up officials from the committee responsible for the arts, V. N. Surin and B. M. Yarustovsky,61 were sent to Leningrad. They were present at one of the next performances of the symphony. Their brief was to find out how it was that the concert organizers had managed to inspire such a loud and demonstrative success. Yarustovsky in particular was most assiduous. After the concert, standing next to Surin in the choir stalls, having just personally witnessed Shostakovich’s unheard-of triumph, he made a constant stream of snide remarks, shouting to make himself heard over the noise in the hall: ‘Just look, all the concert-goers have been hand-picked one by one. These are not normal concert-goers. The Symphony’s success has been most scandalously fabricated,’ and so on in this manner. In vain did I, as director of the Philharmonic, try to convince the rabid official that the public attending the concert had bought tickets at the box office in the normal manner. Yarustovsky, supported by the silent Surin, remained implacable. Having made a negative assessment of this matter, the representatives of ‘the centre’ made off to Moscow.
For some time, echoes of the ‘symphonic scandal’ stirred up by the two officials continued to reach Leningrad. I had to write explanations, fill in questionnaires and prove the absence of a criminal. Then these passions died down. And in the meantime the symphony continued its life, and was widely performed, invariably exciting a lively and enthusiastic response from its audiences.
But what was to be done about the ‘official opinion’, which would at some point in time have to be formulated by the big-wigs so that it could filter downwards?
At last the Leningrad District Party Committee showed interest in the Symphony. Evidently the bosses had decided that for a start it was necessary to define their relation to this ‘answer by Shostakovich to the criticism of his work by the Central Organs’ (i.e. Pravda).62 A special performance of the Symphony for the Leningrad Party Active should be arranged. In my capacity of director of the Leningrad Philharmonic, I was called up by the local committee responsible for the arts to see a certain Rabinovich, a very decisive, butch lady. I can reproduce the following dialogue exactly, as it is imprinted on my memory word for word. It took place in Rabinovich’s study at Smolny.
‘They tell me, Comrade Chulaki, that Shostakovich has written a good symphony.’
I affirmed that this was so.
‘It must be shown to the Party Active.’
I expressed my willingness to organize a performance.
‘You will put together a concert programme and present it to us for approval.’
I went away to fulfil this task, and within twenty-four hours I reappeared in Rabinovich’s study with the following proposal:
GLINKA
Overture and Arias from Ruslan and Lyudmila
TCHAIKOVKSY
Fantastic Overture Francesca da Rimini
Interval
SHOSTAKOVICH
Symphony No. 5
Rabinovich did not like it.
‘What’s all this, symphonies and more symphonies? No, Comrade Chulaki, this won’t do. We need something for the People (?!). And besides, what’s this “Franchyoska”?’ she asked, looking at the proposal.
I tried to explain to her the nature of a Fantastic Overture, and added that it didn’t last too long.
‘Now then, Comrade Chulaki, you must play both symphonies in one part of the concert, both the “Franchyoska” and the Shostakovich, and in the second part, you will play something for the People, for instance, a performance by the Red Army Ensemble …’
I interrupted her flow by explaining that the Ensemble was on tour in Paris. Her confusion was only momentary: ‘Or the Piatnitsky Choir.’
In a state of furious disbelief, I started to argue the principle on which I had constructed the programme. But soon I had to take recourse to a more devious form of argument; instead of proving the anti-artistic nature of mixing diverse genres, I started to give the practical reasons, which someone of Rabinovich’s mentality was better able to grasp.
‘You understand,’ I insisted, ‘that Shostakovich’s symphony consists of four movements, each lasting about fifteen to eighteen minutes. “Franchyoska” ‘(I retained her pronunciation so as not to confuse her) ‘is nearly the same length, just a little longer. Therefore the listener may get confused as to where one work ends and another begins.’ (It turned out I was predicting the future as if through ‘a crystal ball’.)
I could see that my argument was getting me nowhere. ‘You see, one and a half hours of symphonic music without any interval is very tiring. The People won’t stand for it.’
‘Our People can put up with anything!’ Rabinovich interrupted.
In the end I was forced to agree that the second half of the concert would be given over wholly to the Moisseyev Ensemble of Folk Dance. In this instance it seemed to me preferable to have dances rather than songs.
After confirming her approval of the whole programme, Rabinovich proceeded to the details. First of all she wanted to know which orchestra the Moisseyev troupe would dance to. I explained that they used their own special orchestra.
‘And how many people are in their orchestra?’ asked Rabinovich.
‘Forty-five’, I answered.
‘One hundred and five,’ I answered, without guessing what she was driving at.
‘No, Comrade Chulaki, this won’t do, they will dance to your orchestra.’ Rabinovich was adamant in her desire to secure the maximum quality of this concert she was organizing.
I had the answer this time: ‘When our orchestra is in place on the stage they occupy all the space, and there will be no room left for the dancers.’
‘Well, put your orchestra in the pit!’
Due to the absence of a ‘pit’ (!) in the Philharmonic’s concert hall, the Ensemble of Folk Dance were eventually allowed to keep their own orchestra.
And so this memorable concert for the Leningrad Party Active took place with the programme dictated by the authorities.63 As a postscript I should note that, after the extremely long first half, only about a quarter of the hall overcame their exhaustion and stayed on for the second half, the part designed ‘for the People’.
Soon after these events, the official lady, Rabinovich, called the director of the Leningrad Union of Composers, Isaak Osipovich Dunayevsky, to see her in the District Committee office. She asked him if he had known Comrade Chulaki for a long time. Having received an affirmative reply, she then put it to him directly: ‘And don’t you think that this Chulaki is a saboteur?’ In those times the fashionable accusation of sabotage could lead to the most tragic consequences.
Many years later, as fate would have it, Shostakovich and I were being treated in the same clinic in Granovsky Street. We recalled that mammoth concert put together for ‘the People’ by the official lady, Rabinovich. Shostakovich told me how he had been walking up and down in a state of agitation in the so-called ‘blue’ foyer outside the hall. There you could hear everything perfectly. Francesca da Rimini was coming to an end, and his hour of agony was approaching. Just as the clapping started, after the end of the so-called ‘Franchyoska’, the writer X, the nicest and kindest of men, and one of the country’s most well-loved and read writers, came running into the foyer.64 Throwing himself on Shostakovich’s neck with tears of gratitude in his eyes, he exclaimed, ‘Mitya, I always knew that you were able to write beautiful and melodic music!’ Shostakovich was so touched by this show of friendship and loyalty that, as he told me laughingly, ‘I didn’t have the heart to tell him that it was Tchaikovsky.’65
The success of the Fifth Symphony no doubt served to re-establish Shostakovich’s public standing. But the composer played safe and kept making public announcements that he was working on a grandiose symphony dedicated to Lenin.66 His Sixth Symphony, completed in October 1939, was anything but such a work. And if audiences were expecting something along the lines of the Fifth, they were in for a surprise. This three-movement symphony did not follow the traditional symphonic layout: the long and static first movement, written in a spirit of introspection, gives way to demonic energy in the Scherzo, and an almost flippant hilarity in the finale.
ISAAK GLIKMAN recalls the successful premiere of the Sixth Symphony:
The Sixth Symphony was scheduled for the opening of the 1939 autumn season of the Leningrad Philharmonic. It was impatiently awaited.
Long before the premiere Dmitri Dmitriyevich showed the Symphony to Ivan Sollertinsky and me. He played the Finale through twice, and, against his custom, praised it himself: ‘It’s the first time I ever wrote such a successful Finale. I think even the most fastidious critics won’t have anything to pick at.’ He said nothing about the first and second movements. But we spoke enthusiastically of the majestic beauty of the first movement, the Largo, the brilliance of the scherzo and the overwhelming and intoxicating finale. I immediately fell in love with it, and, with little regard for the composer’s self-effacing modesty, I enthusiastically expounded, ‘If Mozart and Rossini had lived in the twentieth century, and had collaborated in writing the finale of a symphony, it would have turned out like this… .’
The premiere of the Sixth Symphony took place on 5 November 1939 under Mravinsky’s baton, and it enjoyed an enormous success. The finale was encored – a rare occurrence at a premiere of a symphonic work – but the enthralling atmosphere that pervaded the hall at the premiere of the Fifth Symphony was lacking. That particular concert had been a unique event, even unrepeatable, you might say, had not Shostakovich gone on to write the Seventh, Eighth and Fourteenth Symphonies, which all had a similar force of inspired revelation.
For very grave reasons, Dmitri Dmitriyevich was unable to attend the Moscow premiere of the Sixth Symphony. He asked me to go in his stead to attend the rehearsals and the concert and to write to him with my impressions. I did so, remaining in Moscow for quite a protracted stay. I would write the letters in the evening and send them to Leningrad with somebody travelling by the night train, so that Dmitri Dmitriyevich already had them in his hands next morning.
Naturally, I hid from the composer the inevitable musicians’ talk. With rare exceptions, it drove me to despair. Some musicians held that the conceited young composer, having dared to break with the tradition of the symphonic cycle, had produced a formless piece in three movements. Others maliciously implied that Shostakovich had locked himself away in an ivory tower, and no longer knew what was going on around him; the result was that the opening Largo was so dull and inert as to bring on a stupefied torpor. And a third group just laughed goodheartedly, saying that the finale was nothing more than a depiction of a football match with its successes and reversals of fortune. This vulgar and trivialized opinion has unfortunately persisted and gained widespread credence.
However, all these discussions were swept aside at the premiere of this brilliant work, when it was played at the Grand Hall of the Conservatoire. But, strangely, when I returned to Leningrad, I could not rid myself of the memory of these conversations for a long time.
After the Sixth Symphony, which aroused so much censure, Shostakovich wrote his Piano Quintet in the summer of 1940; it was received with great acclaim by public and critics alike, and opinion was unanimous. Each performance by the wonderful Glazunov and Beethoven String Quartets with the composer at the piano were hailed as great events in the musical life of Leningrad and Moscow.67
According to his original plan, Shostakovich informed me that he intended to write a second string quartet. Why did he change his plan? Dmitri Dmitriyevich explained to me that it was governed not so much by artistic reasons as by practical ones. ‘Do you know why I added the piano part to this quartet? So that I could have the chance to perform myself and thereby travel on concert tours. Now the “Glazunovs” and the “Beethovens” won’t be able to do without me – and I’ll get a chance to see the world.’
We both burst out laughing.
‘Are you joking?’ I asked.
Dmitri Dmitriyevich answered, ‘Not in the slightest! You are an inveterate stay-at-home, while at heart I’m an inveterate traveller!’ But from the expression on his face it was impossible to tell if he was joking or not. We had this conversation in the summer of the year preceding the war.68
Shostakovich was an awkward figure for the authorities to pin down. In his music and life he remained a non-conformist, although outwardly his music corresponded to the precepts of Soviet ‘socialist-realism’. As a prominent public figure, he had to justify his every creative step verbally and in print. Thus his candidature and election as a deputy to the Leningrad City Council in March 1939 were necessitated by the need to appear involved in ‘community’ work. This was undoubtedly a factor in his decision to accept a teaching post at the Leningrad Conservatoire in the spring of 1937, and to increase his involvement in the administrative affairs of the Leningrad Branch of the Union of Composers.
Initially Shostakovich was given two students, Georgi Sviridov and Orest Evlakhov, for he decided to limit his hours at the Conservatoire. While he believed that teaching was not his vocation, Shostakovich, with his strong sense of responsibility and his wide-ranging professional knowledge, turned out to be an excellent teacher. Demand to join his Conservatoire class grew quickly, attracting the most talented composers from all over the Soviet Union. He was made a full professor in May 1939.
In his own composition, Shostakovich was increasingly drawn to chamber music. The first in his magnificent cycle of quartets was composed in July 1938, a work of transparent purity and innocence. This was followed by the Piano Quintet (completed in September 1940), which achieved immediate popular success.
In 1939 Shostakovich turned his attention to re-orchestrating Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov. He was no doubt inspired by the centenary celebration of the composer’s birth that year, when there was ample opportunity to hear much of Mussorgsky’s music. On completion of the score, Shostakovich gave his only manuscript to Samosud at the Bolshoi Theatre, which had announced its intention of staging a new version. Samosud hesitated about committing himself to Shostakovich’s version; but he also didn’t return the manuscript to Shostakovich, thereby holding up the composer’s negotiations with the Leningrad Kirov Theatre. Ultimately, Shostakovich had to wait twenty years to hear his orchestration of Boris Godunov, which was eventually staged at the Kirov in 1959.
In 1958 Shostakovich was commissioned to re-orchestrate and edit Mussorgsky’s other masterpiece, Khovanshchina, for a film version. A few years previously he had already orchestrated a few scenes from this opera at the request of the conductor, Boris Khaikin. Four years later Shostakovich turned again to Mussorgsky, making an orchestral version of The Songs and Dances of Death.
Shostakovich believed that a composer should be able to use his skills in any sphere. Apart from the music he wrote for film and theatre, he demonstrated his eclectic tastes in making numerous orchestral transcriptions of other composers’ works. Whether dealing with a popular American song, as in ‘Tahiti Trot’ (1927), or pre-classical music, as in the ‘Two Pieces by Scarlatti’ (1928), or in a miniature by Johann Strauss, Shostakovich left his unmistakable imprint on the orchestral colouring of all his transcriptions, injecting zest and sparkle into the original scores. The orchestration of J. Strauss’s ‘Pleasure Train Polka’ (Vergnugungzug) was commissioned for a production of The Gypsy Baron at the Leningrad Maly Theatre (MALEGOT) in 1940.
Although BORIS KHAIKIN was best known as an opera conductor, he frequently performed Shostakovich’s symphonic music. He himself disclaimed any close friendship with the composer, but he obviously enjoyed his trust as a man and musician of integrity:
I myself never conducted a Shostakovich opera, but on two occasions I had a working contact with him in the theatre.
The first of these was in 1940, when we put on The Gypsy Baron at MALEGOT. The production promised to be most interesting; it aimed at widening the musical potential of operetta by using a large first-rate orchestra and a mixed choir. Wonderful costumes were to be created by the best designers. In the third act, the director, A. Feona, had decided to add a choreographed number, a polka, to be performed by the talented caricature actress G. Isayeva. I went to the library of the Leningrad Philharmonic to choose a Strauss polka. The librarian said, ‘Take your pick, we have about two hundred of them.’ Leaving aside the most famous and popular, I found a very attractive polka, and the librarian had a copy made. Soon a very charming dance had been choreographed by B. Fenster.
Then the time came to try out the polka with orchestra. I went again to the Philharmonic Library to collect the orchestral parts, but it transpired that there weren’t any, they only had the piano score, two pages of it including the obligatory ‘da capo’. What were we to do? I phoned Shostakovich and told him of my problem. He immediately came to the rescue. I showed him the polka, and incidentally pointed out to him an augmented seventh which I considered to be a misprint, as the edition seemed a very dubious one. Shostakovich said nothing, took the piano score away, and in parting said, ‘I’ll be back tomorrow.’
The next day he appeared with the score completed. I glanced at it and what I saw was a composition by Shostakovich. He had not changed a single note of Strauss’s. He had left the dubious chord as it was, and did not consider it to be a misprint. And I too soon stopped regarding the chord as something out of place, but rather saw that it added a special charm. And Shostakovich’s orchestration, as always, was so distinctive that the brilliant Johann Strauss paled beside him.
… Even in such a trifle as this Strauss ‘polka’, whose orchestration will have only occupied a couple of hours of Shostakovich’s time, it was simply amazing how everything just came to life. The orchestral musicians broke into smiles playing it; and these were the same musicians who had played in the premieres of The Nose and Lady Macbeth.69
Shostakovich talked of himself as an ‘inveterate traveller’. He certainly enjoyed performing concerts as an excuse for travel, and also did much of his composing away from home. Before the war he and Nina made regular trips to the Crimea, usually in the spring. As Shostakovich grew older, he found heat difficult to bear so preferred to spend the summer months in the cooler climes of North Russia. ALISA SHEBALINA recalls one of the spring trips to the Crimea:
In May 1941, shortly before the start of the War, I took my fourteen-year-old son Nikolai to the Crimea to recuperate after a bout of pneumonia. We were allocated a place in the sanatorium that was attached to the House of Scientists in Gaspra. We arrived there to discover Mitya and Nina staying in the next door room.70 It was a very cold May that year, and Mitya sat in his room freezing, while Nina went off trekking in the mountains with two artists who were paying court to her; apparently she also found them attractive.71 Mitya was bored and lonely, and often came to see me in my room. If it wasn’t raining, he would sometimes go down to the volleyball pitch and climb up on the referee’s platform to umpire matches between teams made up of holiday-makers. This was one of his occupations. One day he came to my room, saying how cold it was and how we must find a way to keep warm. ‘You know, Ronya once treated me to a wonderful vodka at your dacha in Nikolina Gora made from juniper berries. Do you know that I’ve just seen some juniper bushes in the park near the sports ground? Let’s go and collect some berries and marinate them in vodka – we need some vodochka to warm ourselves up.’
Indeed, our rooms had no heating in them as they were only intended for summer accommodation. We went down to the park and found the bushes with the most enormous berries hanging on them, as large as cherries. We collected several handfuls and came back to Mitya’s room. There was an empty water carafe on the piano; he sprinkled a couple of fistfuls of berries into it and said, ‘I’m off to buy the vodka.’ He went to the nearby village and soon he was back with his acquisition, which he poured over the berries.
‘Do you think it’ll be ready soon? How long does it need to stand? I’m dying to try it,’ he kept asking me persistently.
I said that it wouldn’t need that long, seeing that he had used so many berries. We waited a while, and then he decided to taste the brew. He poured some into a large tea glass. I said, ‘You go ahead and taste it.’ Mitya took a gulp, and the next moment I saw him clutch his throat, while his eyes stood out on stalks. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ ‘Try it and you’ll see.’ I only ventured a sniff, but that was enough to make me reel. It was pure turps. For some reason those berries were resinated and incredibly powerful. Mitya put the carafe back on the piano and said, ‘Never mind, I’ll invite those artist friends of Nina’s for a drink. That’ll teach them!’
A few days later we left Gaspra together. The Shostakoviches were given a car, so Mitya and Nina gave us a lift to the station at Simferopol, thirty-odd kilometres away. We had hardly started the journey when one of the tyres went flat. The driver, who was a local, changed the wheel and we drove off. We travelled a certain distance and then another of the tyres went flat. This time there was no spare. Our driver turned around and asked us, ‘Have you got a five kopeck coin?’ Mitya produced one and the driver promptly used it to block the puncture, then pumped air into the tyre, and off we drove. Shortly afterwards another tyre went flat, and the same operation was repeated with another five kopeck coin. I don’t remember how many coins we had, three or four, but we barely managed to reach Simferopol, as the tyres kept puncturing. Just as we were arriving at the main square in front of the station, we had yet another puncture. Mitya had run out of coins, and there was no time to spare, the train was due to depart in a few minutes. The driver drove on with the flat tyre, the wheel clattering and rattling across the cobblestones. We arrived on the platform just as the final bell rang. We just managed to get ourselves and our baggage on the train as it pulled out of the station. Mitya was in a state of terrible nervous anxiety – it was unbearable to witness his agitation. I suffered terribly on his behalf. Nina sat in the compartment calmly, apparently indifferent to the situation, while Mitya paced up and down the train corridor for a long time, pale as a sheet and unable to calm down.
He and Nina were travelling in ‘international’ (first) class, whereas Nikolai and I were in ordinary second class. In the evening Mitya came down to invite us to join them in their compartment. As we were sitting and talking, Miron Polyakin, the wonderful violinist, suddenly walked into the compartment. He was on his way back to Moscow after a concert tour. He produced a large box of chocolates which he offered all round. Then Polyakin and Mitya started playing cards. I didn’t join in as I personally have always hated cards and the attendant quarrels and noise. That evening Mitya was on a winning streak; now it was Polyakin’s turn to get nervous. He was in such a terrible state that after a while I turned to Mitya and said, ‘Don’t torture him any more, stop playing.’ So the party broke up for the evening, and we all went off to our various compartments.
In the morning we arrived in Moscow. I looked out of the window to see if anyone had come to meet us, and what did I see? Mitya was rushing up and down the platform like a wounded animal, his face as white as a sheet. I realized that something had happened. I told Nikolai to wait and rushed out on to the platform. I asked Mitya what the matter was. ‘Polyakin is dead.’ It turned out that he had been sleeping in the compartment next to Mitya’s. When the train reached Moscow that morning, Polyakin appeared to be still asleep. The person sharing the compartment called the attendant. They then discovered that he was dead.
The worst lay ahead. Mitya was hauled off to the Militia Point at the station. The carriage attendant had testified that the deceased had been sitting in Mitya’s compartment all through the previous evening, and therefore Mitya had been the last person to see him. The implications were frightening. They kept Shostakovich there for one and a half hours interrogating him. I decided to go and help. When necessary I am quite good at making a point. I decided that assertive tactics were called for. ‘Are you out of your mind? Do you realize to whom you are talking? This is the People’s Artist, our most famous composer, Shostakovich. If you need any details about him I can give them to you. He is resident in Leningrad at such and such an address; just now he is coming to stay at our home in Moscow.’
I eventually succeeded in getting them to release Mitya. He was unbelievably upset, firstly because of the shock of Polyakin’s death, and secondly because he had been suspected of playing some part in it. We went back to our flat, and Mitya stayed on with us for a few days. He had been anxious to hurry back to Moscow for a football match, so I said to Vissarion, ‘Take Mitya along, he needs to unwind,’ and they went off together to the match. Such was the end of that awful day.72
1 The tour lasted from late December 1935 through the first part of January 1936.
2 5 January 1936.
3 Letter dated 9 January 1936 (Lyudmila Mikheeva, ‘The Story of a Friendship’, Part 2, p. 78).
4 Evidently Atovmyan was mistaken, Shostakovich went out after the final act.
5 Atovmyan’s reminiscences in Muzykal’naya Akademiya, no. 4, 1997, p. 71.
6 S. Radamsky, Der verfolgte Tenor: Mein sängerleben zwischen Moskau und Hollywood (Munich, 1971), pp. 214–15.
7 The date for Stalin’s visit to Lady Macbeth is usually given – incorrectly (by Sofiya Khentova, amongst others) – as 26 December 1935, when he is alleged to have attended the MALEGOT production in Moscow. Had this indeed been the case, an explanation is needed of why the Party organs took over a month to voice his displeasure.
8 Letter written from Arkhangel’sk, dated 28 January 1936 (Mikheeva, ‘The Story of a Friendship’, Part 2, p. 79).
9 In the journal Comune, August 1936.
10 From ‘Two Letters to Stalin’, Literatrunaya Gazeta, 10 March 1993.
11 See Mikhail Trofimenkov, ‘Light-Minded Spirit of Tragedy’, programme book of Bolshoi Theatre’s 2003 production of The Limpid Stream, pp. 32–4.
12 Interestingly enough The Limpid Stream came into being just after the creation of Igor Savchenko’s film of what was effectively the first Soviet musical, Garmon (a play of words on harmony and ‘garmoshka’, accordion), which was released in 1934.
13 In January 1990 I visited Mikhail Druskin in St Petersburg, who emphasized Glikman’s touching adoration of Shostakovich, but added, ‘He regarded him as the Sun in his life. But what do you actually see if you look at the sun?’
14 Elena Konstantinovskaya remembered how Shostakovich visited her after her release from prison early in 1936, and showed her an album filled with derogatory press cuttings in the wake of ‘Muddle Instead of Music’. His comment to her was, ‘You see how fortunate it is that you didn’t marry me’ (Sofiya Khentova, ‘Dmitri Shostakovich: We Live in a Time of Stormy Passions and Actions’, p. 13).
15 Isaak Glikman, Letters to a Friend, pp. 8–10.
16 From a private interview with Mikhail Druskin, Leningrad, January 1990.
17 I. Nestev, Life of S. Prokofiev (Moscow, 1973), p. 386.
18 Glikman, Letters to a Friend, pp. 321–2.
19 Boris Asafiev, Selected Works, vol. 5, p. 67.
20 Anthony Beevor, The Mystery of Olga Chekhova (Penguin Books, 2005), which provides details of this fascinating story.
21 In the recorded version of his speech, Knipper accused Shostakovich of not writing a promised work for the Red Army, and of not turning up at all for a sailing on the Aurora (Sovietskaya Muzyka, no. 3, 1936, p. 24).
22 S. Radamsky, idem, pp. 215–17.
23 It is known that Neuhaus wrote to Shostakovich in the early 1960s after the staging of the second version of the opera, apologizing for his words against the opera in 1936.
24 Atovmyan’s reminiscences in Muzykal’naya Akademiya, no. 4, 1997, pp. 71–2.
25 R. Tsurtsumiya (ed.), Andrei Melitonovich Balanchivadze: Collection of Articles and Material, pp. 15–16.
26 An ingenious play on words: ‘Your Lenin-y Town-y folk have arrived,’ or ‘Lenin-burghers’.
27 G. Khubov pointed the finger at two composers who failed to speak at the Union of Composers’ discussions: ‘Shebalin wriggled out of making any statement, and Litinsky, that self-confessed formalist, who for some misunderstanding is still responsible for the musical education of our youth, kept silent.’ Editorial article in Sovietskaya Muzyka, no. 3, 1936, p. 13.
28 Alisa Shebalina: recorded interview with EW.
29 Sofiya Khentova, Shostakovich: Life and Work, vol. I, p. 439.
30 Alexander Gauk, ‘Creative Contacts’, in L. Gauk, R. Glezer and Y. Milstein (eds), Alexander Vasiliyevich Gauk: Memoirs, Selected Articles, Reminiscences of His Contemporaries, p. 223.
31 Flora Litvinova, article commissioned for this book.
32 Mark Reznikov, Reminiscences of an Old Musician, p. 70.
33 Galina Shostakovich was born on 30 May.
34 Smolny: the headquarters of the Leningrad party administration.
35 Glikman, Letters to a Friend, pp. 10–13.
36 Ibid., p. 317.
37 From an interview in S. Khentova, In Shostakovich’s World (Moscow, 1996), pp. 51–2.
38 N. I. Koritsky, S. M. Mel’nik-Tukhachevsky and B. N. Chistov (eds), Marshal Tukhachevsky: Memoirs of His Friends and Comrades in Arms, p. 159.
39 Grigori Fried, Music, Contacts and Destinies, pp. 48, 49.
40 NKVD: the acronym for the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs, or, in other words, the security organ, later renamed the KGB.
41 In his version of the story Krzysztof Meyer gives the officer’s (interrogator’s) name as ‘Zakrevski’. K. Meyer, Shostakovich: Life, Work and Times (Kompozitor/DSCH, St Petersburg, 1998), pp. 194–5.
42 Venyamin Basner: recorded interview with EW.
43 DDS, ‘My Creative Response’, Vechernaya Moskva, 25 January 1938.
44 In Shostakovich literature the dates of the composition are usually given as 18 April–20 July. It is now clear that these dates are inaccurate, but given the loss of the original manuscript, where Shostakovich always marked in the dates of completion of each movement, it is difficult to establish them with certainty. The composer himself often thought of his works as complete (and dated them accordingly) when he had finished work on the short score, before writing the full score.
45 The Symphony formed part of a programme of new Soviet music, which also included Aram Khachaturian’s Piano Concerto.
46 A. Glumov, Unwiped Out Lines (Moscow, 1977), p. 316.
47 Inna Barsova, ‘Between the social commission and music of great passions’, in Lyudmila Kovnatskaya (ed.), D. D. Shostakovich: Anthology of Articles for his 90th Birthday (St Petersburg, 1996), p. 127.
48 Olga Lamm, Pages of Miaskovsky’s Biography (Moscow, 1989), p. 265.
49 Quoted in Khentova, Shostakovich in Moscow (Moscow, 1986), pp. 81–2.
50 D. Kabalevsky, ‘Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony’, Sovietskaya Muzyka, 29 December 1937.
51 Mravinsky performed the symphony eight times during that same season, and in Moscow Alexander Gauk conducted the premiere in January 1938, which was ecstatically acclaimed; he gave a further four performances within the next three weeks.
52 Boris Khaikin, Discourses on Conducting, p. 89.
53 ‘A barbarian painter with his somnolent brush/ Blackens the genius’ painting,/ Slapping over it senselessly/ His own lawless picture.’
54 David Rabinovich (in Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer) was the first to recognize the significance of the quotation from the last quatrain of ‘Rebirth’. Dorothea Redepenning and Gerard McBurney have also written (separately) about the connection with the opening of the poem in the initial theme (Khudozhnik Varvar – A Barbarian Painter).
55 Benditsky also points out allusions in the symphony to other music from Carmen: for instance the ‘Seguidilla and Duet’ at figure 14 of the first movement and figure 119 of the finale; ‘The Gypsy Song’ at the opening of the finale; the ‘Habanera’ and the trumpet/trombone fanfares of bar 327 in the finale; figure 14, bar 523, and the theme of Fate at the opening of the Allegretto second movement; the oboe theme at bar 523 of Carmen with figure 53 of the second movement Allegretto and so on. Carmen’s teasing retort (Act 1 scene 9 or figure 165) – ‘Tra la la, mon secret je garde et je le garde bien’ – resonates in the horns’ solo just after figure 54 of the Allegretto second movement.
56 Manashir Yakubov’s article, ‘Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony. Assessment by the composer and his critics’, in DSS, New Collected Works, vol. 20, acknowledges A. Benditsky’s unpublished thesis, On D. Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, written in Nizhni Novgorod in 2000. See pp. 118–29.
57 Evgeni Mravinsky, ‘Thirty Years of Shostakovich’s Music’, in L. V. Danilevich, Dmitri Shostakovich, pp. 111, 112–14.
58 ‘The chairman of the Leningrad branch of the Union of Composers, I. Dunayevsky, wrote to the governing commission of that institution, warning against the dangers of excessive success, in a letter written in dreadful ‘bureaucratese’ dated 29 January 1938: ‘The beating of drums and blowing of trumpets that heralds the composer [Shostakovich] and his new work drowns the healthy – or at least justified – sentiments of doubt and negative criticism, which even the most talented work must provoke… . The brilliant mastery of the Fifth Symphony … does not preclude the fact it does not by any means display all the healthy symptoms for the development of Soviet Symphonic Music’ (In Declaration by I. Dunayevsky, Chairman of the Leningrad Composers’ Union on the definition of the role of the Praesidium in the creative work of composers. 29.01 1938: RGALI, F. 2048, op. 1, ed Khr. 160).
59 The Russian word used (‘perestroilsya’) of course refers to the concept of Stalinist ‘Perestroika’. When Mikhail Gorbachev more recently coined the expression, he gave it different connotations. In this instance, the implication is of repentance for errors, and the wish to be ‘restructured’ with Party guidance.
60 Alexander Gauk, who gave the first Moscow performance of the Symphony, also attended the premiere in Leningrad. He returned to Moscow immediately to conduct a rehearsal next morning: ‘Shatilov, the director of the Musical Department of the Repertoire Committee was in attendance. I heard him recounting to another official his version of the Symphony’s Leningrad premiere. He belittled its enormous success, saying that it had been a put-up job arranged by Shostakovich’s Moscow friends, who had gone up to Leningrad for this very purpose. At this point I interrupted and said that I too had been at the concert, and that six or seven-odd people from Moscow could hardly have been capable of inciting the 2,500-odd Leningraders present’ (Gauk, ‘Creative Encounters’, in Gauk, Glezer and Milstein, Alexander Gauk, p. 129).
61 Surin and Yarustovsky, in their capacity as Party officials, acquired some notoriety for the harm they brought to Soviet music. Their hounding of Shostakovich was repaid by the composer when he wrote Rayok. In the pseudo-preface, he distorts their names to Srulin and Yasrustovsky, both of which thereby assume lavatory connotations. Another legendary story about the latter used to delight Shostakovich. Yarustovsky, the author of a tendentious biography of Stravinsky, met his subject when he returned to Russia in 1962. Stravinsky refused to shake his hand, but proffered his walking stick instead.
62 A reference to the subtitle ascribed to the Fifth Symphony early in 1938.
63 It was after this concert that the Party formulated the Soviet definition of the Fifth Symphony as an ‘optimistic tragedy’ (Khentova, Shostakovich, vol. I, p. 455).
64 This story refers to Mikhail Zoshchenko.
65 Mikhail Chulaki, ‘Today I Will Talk about Shostakovich’, pp. 190–92.
66 In Sovietskoye Iskusstvo, of 20 November 1938, Shostakovich stated that his Sixth Symphony was to be devoted to Lenin’s memory, which would consist of ‘no less than four movements’. Here he stated his intention of using texts by Vladimir Mayakovsky, the Kazakh poet Dzhambul Dzhabayev, and the Dagestan poet Suleiman Stalsky. Subsequent reports in Soviet newspapers (i.e. Leningradskaya Pravda, 28 August 1939, 1 and 20 January 1940; Moskovskii Bolshevik, 14 November 1940, etc.) stated that the Seventh Symphony was to be dedicated to Lenin’s memory.
67 D. Y. Mogilevsky, the cellist of the Glazunov Quartet, recalled their interpretation of the Piano Quintet with DDS: ‘We, the string players, wanted to “sing”, to play with more emotion. Shostakovich accentuated the constructive, motor elements and achieved his effect through clarity and the flow of the music. The emotional restraint of his playing led to a certain contradiction with the nature of strings. He demanded the minimum use of vibrato. The fast tempi excluded in themselves any possibility of emotional exaggeration and an “open” cantelena’ (Khentova, Shostakovich, vol. I, p. 504).
68 Glikman, Letters to a Friend, pp. 13–15, 19–21.
69 Khaikin, Discourses on Conducting, pp. 90, 91, 92.
70 The Shostakoviches stayed in Gaspra from 28 April to 20 May.
71 Unlike her husband, whose interest in sport was that of a spectator, Nina Shostakovich was an excellent sportswoman. She was a good skier and enjoyed mountaineering.
72 Alisa Shebalina: recorded interview with EW.