The year 1962 was a year of particular importance in Shostakovich’s life, bringing him private happiness and creative success. Early in the year he met Irina Supinskaya, a young literary editor, whom he married in November. She brought to his life the freshness and energy of youth, and stability and order to his home. As his health deteriorated, she was to look after him with tactful care and devotion.
In the spring, Shostakovich completed a cantata on Evtushenko’s poem ‘Babi Yar’. He shortly went on to extend it into a five-movement symphony, his Thirteenth, scored for bass soloist, bass chorus and full symphony orchestra. Shostakovich’s departure from the purely instrumental symphonic form (albeit his last two symphonies were tied to programmes) fulfilled a need for dramatic expression that had been stifled in the wake of the criticisms of Lady Macbeth in 1936. For Shostakovich, the choice of Evtushenko’s poems seemed most auspicious. The poet belonged to a generation young enough to be unintimidated by the years of terror. Shostakovich saw these poems as an expression of the problems of civic responsibility. Hence, in this symphony he was able to demonstrate openly his concern for the horrors and injustices of recent Soviet history.
Soon Shostakovich found himself embroiled in a political controversy on account of the texts. For him this was a further corroboration of the fact that the explicit nature of words always spelt trouble. The Party aired its ‘opinion’ on the ideological faults of ‘Babi Yar’. This had the desired effect of frightening off performers of the Thirteenth Symphony, and indeed of making Evtushenko revise the poem. However, even if the ‘Thaw’ was drawing to a close, the freedom tasted in the last few years had also given artists a new courage. In the conductor Kirill Kondrashin Shostakovich found an artist absolutely committed to his work. The authorities were unable to stop the premiere of the Thirteenth Symphony, which went ahead to wild public acclaim on 18 December 1962.
Only days after this concert, the premiere of Katerina Izmailova (the revised version of the opera Lady Macbeth) took place at the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich–Danchenko Theatre in Moscow. The rehabilitation of this work was of great symbolic importance to Shostakovich.
Although the Stanislavsky Theatre’s production of Katerina Izmailova had been sanctioned by the Minister of Culture, Ekaterina Furtseva, she had not reckoned with Khrushchev’s recent outbursts against the intellectual community and the furore surrounding the Thirteenth Symphony. It was decided to test the reactions of the officials responsible for culture at a closed performance of the opera on 26 December. For the sake of caution it was camouflaged by being billed as The Barber of Seville!
Two weeks later, under its own title, Katerina Izmailova opened officially to a triumphant reception. The opera regained its former status and popularity, and was soon staged in new productions in Western and Eastern Europe, as well as in other Soviet cities. Shostakovich, anxious for the opera’s smooth rebirth, decided to devote much of his time and attention to supervising the forthcoming productions. Not only did he attend all the rehearsals at the Stanislavsky Theatre from October 1962, but in 1963 he took an active part in the rehearsals for two new productions in London and Riga. In November he spent the best part of a month at Covent Garden, interrupting his visit there to attend the dress rehearsal in Riga, and returning for the London premiere on 2 December. Similarly he attended rehearsals and performances in Zagreb (January 1964), Vienna (February 1965), Kazan (February 1965), Kiev (March and April 1965) and Leningrad (April 1965).
The composer felt that his involvement in the rehearsal process was essential to the opera’s new life; for instance, he used his influence to tone down exaggerations in the London and Zagreb productions, where undue emphasis had been given to the erotic element. In Vienna he insisted that some proposed cuts be restored, while he categorically forbade La Scala to use the first variant of Lady Macbeth. He singled out the Kiev production directed by Irina Molostova both for the excellence of the musical side and for its superb production. Therefore the conductor Konstantin Simeonov1 and the Kiev cast were entrusted with the sound recording of Mikhail Shapiro’s 1966 film of the opera, where the ‘outsider’, Galina Vishnevskaya, both sang and acted the title role.2
Shostakovich was now accepted unquestionably in his own country as the leading voice in music, and his fame was celebrated no less abroad. The first large retrospective of Shostakovich’s works was programmed at the Edinburgh Festival in August 1962 and, in February 1964, the city of Gorky devoted its festival exclusively to his music. This was followed by other ‘Shostakovich’ festivals in Volgograd and Leningrad in 1966.
Shostakovich also continued to be busy with his civic duties, both at the Union of Composers, and as a deputy to the Supreme Soviet, in which capacity he was elected to represent his native city of Leningrad in 1962. Also in that year Shostakovich returned to teaching at the Leningrad Conservatoire, when he agreed to take on a select class of post-graduate composition students, amongst whom was his favourite pupil, Boris Tishchenko.
In 1960 Shostakovich bought a dacha in Zhukovka, a settlement thirty kilometres to the south-west of Moscow, which had been allocated to the USSR Academy of Sciences. Shostakovich’s neighbours there included some distinguished nuclear physicists, among them Andrei Sakharov. Soon Mstislav Rostropovich also acquired a dacha in Zhukovka. Here the composer’s daughter Galina recalls how her father set about choosing the new dacha.
Shostakovich enters the house and with decisive step heads straight to the bathroom. He turns on the tap, and water flows into the basin. He glances into the toilet and pulls the chain – water noisily flushes into the basin.
After this he announces, ‘I’m buying this dacha!’
He didn’t even start to look at the other rooms or go upstairs on to the first floor; neither did he look at the roof or cellar. He was only interested in one thing – a good running-water supply.
This was how the dacha in Zhukovka was acquired in 1960, where he was to live for many years. […] Father was very fussy about hygiene, and was for ever washing his hands. His attitude to water was very special!3
Shostakovich decided to return his old dacha at Bolshevo to the State. He considered this the correct thing to do with a property received as a gift from Stalin. Most of his colleagues did not share his susceptibilities.
In the meantime Shostakovich had to raise a handsome sum of money to acquire the new dacha. At this point he recalled that he had an account in foreign currency, where a small percentage of his royalties from performances abroad were credited to him.
In order to pay for the new dacha in time, Father had to change all his foreign currency into roubles. The State profited considerably from this operation, since they applied the extortionate official exchange rate.
This financial transaction led to unforeseen consequences. Aram Khachaturian rang up Father and said, ‘What are you doing?! Think what an awkward position you have put us in. We are now told Shostakovich is a patriot, that he has changed all his currency into roubles. And we’re all expected to follow suit […] If you had only told me that you needed Soviet roubles you could have borrowed from me. And any of us would have lent you roubles […]!’4
The ordinary Soviet citizen of course had no access to foreign currency, and roubles had virtually no spending power. As Galina recalled, her father was often obliged to part with his foreign-currency earnings.
When Shostakovich won the Sibelius Prize in 1958 he took his daughter with him to Helsinki for the award ceremony. They looked forward to a week’s stay in the Finnish capital, and to using his prize money to do some shopping; they needed to buy furniture, some decent clothing and a grand piano, all things that were hard to obtain in Moscow. But these hopes were dashed when an official from the Soviet delegation ‘instructed’ that ‘there existed an opinion’ that the proceeds of Shostakovich’s prize (a considerable sum of money) should be donated to the Soviet–Finnish friendship society.5
Even towards the end of his life Shostakovich was thwarted in his desire to buy a foreign car – a Mercedes – with newly accrued funds from his ever-increasing Western royalties. But again the authorities interfered, instructing him that ‘in the Soviet Union we produce cars of perfectly good quality, like the “Volga”’.6
Shostakovich’s daughter Galina, who had married Evgeni Chukovsky in 1959, gave birth to a boy Andrei in August 1960. A few months later Maxim got married, and soon two more grandchildren were born (Maxim’s son Dmitri in August 1961, and Galina’s second son Nikolai in January 1962). The flat in Mozhaisky Prospekt (which had been renamed Kutozovsky Prospect in December 1957) now seemed crowded and noisy, and Shostakovich – with reluctance – decided it would be best to move. Thanks to the efforts of his secretary Zinaida Gayamova, he was given a five-room apartment in the new multi-storey building that had been allocated to the Union of Composers in the heart of old Moscow.
Thus on 10 April 1962, Shostakovich wrote to inform Isaak Glikman: ‘I am about to move into a new apartment. The address is 23, 8/10 Nezhdanova Street, Moscow K-9. The telephone is 2.29–95–29. Nezhdanova Street used to be called Bryusovsky Pereulok; the late Nezhdanova was a coloratura soprano. It is terribly sad to be moving; so much is bound up with this apartment I’m leaving […]’7
Fortunately for the composer, the prospect of being lonely in the new apartment did not arise, for within months he was to get married. He happily shared the rest of his life with his third wife, Irina Antonovna Supinskaya.
Some time in 1961, Shostakovich met Irina Supinskaya. They were introduced by Lev Lebedinsky. Supinskaya worked as a literary editor in the publishing house Sovietsky Kompozitor, where, amongst other things, she helped prepare the published scores of Moscow-Cheryomushki and Katerina Izmailova. Irina hailed from Leningrad. She lost her parents at a very early age before the war, while her grandparents perished during the siege of Leningrad. As a seven-year-old child she was evacuated across Lake Lagoda to Kuibyshev. Brought up by an aunt, she studied at the Moscow Pedagogical Institute.
In June, Shostakovich wrote to his old friend Shebalin: ‘An event of great importance has happened in my life…. My wife is called Irina Antonovna. She has one small defect: she’s only twenty-seven years old. In every other respect she is sweet, clever, gay, simple and loveable. She wears glasses and can’t pronounce her l’s and r’s.’8
In his letter dated 2 July 1962 to Isaak Glikman, Shostakovich gave further information about his new wife: ‘Her father was Polish, her mother Jewish, but they are both dead. Her father was a victim of the cult of personality and infringement of revolutionary law.’ He went on to add that she had spent time in a ‘dyet-dom’ – a euphemism for the orphanages which housed children of the enemies of the people. ‘A girl with a past,’ he summed up.9
The couple spent part of the summer staying in the country at Solotcha near Ryazan with Irina’s aunt. It was here that Shostakovich orchestrated Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death.
In the second half of August Shostakovich attended the Edinburgh Festival with his son Maxim; he was unable to take Irina because the Soviet authorities had not provided her with the necessary travel documents. In November that year, when Supinskaya’s divorce from her first husband was granted, their marriage was formalized, and in future Shostakovich never travelled or appeared in public without his young wife.
Lebedinsky’s relationship with Shostakovich deteriorated in the years after his marriage to Irina Supinskaya. Feeling that Shostakovich was now cut off from his old friends and increasingly surrounded by officials and sycophants, Lebedinsky stopped frequenting the household. The final impulse to terminate their relationship was ostensibly provoked by Lebedinsky’s unwillingness to accept the bleak message of the Finale of the Fourteenth Symphony – ‘Death is all-powerful.’ Lebedinsky wrote Shostakovich an uncompromising letter, assuring him of his love, but declaring their friendship over. According to Irina Shostakovich, this letter provoked a laconic reaction from Shostakovich: ‘Unfortunately Lebedinsky has grown old and stupid.’10
Here LEV LEBEDINSKY recalls how Shostakovich came to meet Irina Supinskaya:
Shostakovich’s third marriage was no more considered than his second, although ultimately it worked out well for him. It was I who introduced Dmitri Dmitriyevich to Irina Supinskaya.
Our close friendship allowed us to speak to each other as man to man. Shostakovich used to complain: ‘I’m lonely without a woman. I’m afraid to approach them.’ He didn’t have much luck with women, or you could say more accurately that he had had a number of failures.
Once he said to me, ‘You know that girl in glasses, I’ve taken a shine to her. I’d like to get to know her better, but I haven’t been introduced.’
The girl in question worked as a literary editor under my charge at the publishing house. I promised to introduce her, but deliberately put off doing so. However, one night we were coming up the stairs at the Small Hall of the Conservatoire, and there she was talking to some other lady. As I greeted her, Shostakovich hovered at my side, whispering in my ear, ‘Do introduce me.’ How could I avoid it? Then he said, ‘I’ll give her my telephone number straight away.’
‘Go ahead’, I said, pleased that he was consulting me.
Soon afterwards they started meeting. I was very happy for him, although I wrongly assumed that this new relationship would only be short-lived. After all Irina was already married to an older man. But one day Shostakovich told me that he had proposed to her. He needed a woman to help him in his life.
Their marriage served as a fragile shield behind which Shostakovich hoped to hide from the cruel world. Irina took it upon herself to establish a new order in the Shostakovich household. As their life became more bourgeois, their home became open to a different class of guest, which didn’t exclude officials. For this reason our meetings became rarer, and eventually I decided to terminate our friendship, rather than give in to compromise.
However, when all is said and done, it was Irina who provided Shostakovich with stability and comfort, and who nursed him with devotion through his grave illness.11
GALINA VISHNEVSKAYA writes of the beneficial influence that Irina Supinskaya had on Shostakovich’s life:
Shortly after his grandson was born, Dmitri Dmitriyevich came to our place looking very out of sorts. At dinner, everything became clear.
‘Imagine, Galya!’ Slava said to me. ‘Dmitri Dmitriyevich tells me that he intends to get married.’
‘But that’s wonderful!’
‘That’s what I think. Dmitri Dmitriyevich is worried that she’s too young.’
‘Yes. Galya, it’s an awkward situation. She’s younger than my daughter,12 and I’m embarrassed to tell the children. There’s more than thirty years’ difference between us. I suppose I’m too old for her.’
‘Old? But look what a stallion you are! If I hadn’t been married to Slava, I’d have grabbed you for a husband long ago. Old? But you’re only fifty-six!’
He was delighted and showed it. ‘Do you mean that – that I’m not old?’
‘I swear it!’
‘Let me bring her by and introduce her to you, then. Her name is Irina.’
The very next day, Dmitri Dmitriyevich and Irina paid us a visit. It was the first time that they had appeared anywhere together. She was very young, modest, and sat all evening without raising her eyes. Seeing that we liked her and approved of his choice, Dmitri Dmitriyevich grew more and more relaxed and lighthearted. All at once, like a little boy, he shyly took her hand. Never had I known Shostakovich to act out of an inner impulse like that, and touch another person – man or woman. At most he would pat his grandsons on the head.
That petite woman with the quiet voice proved to be a vigorous mistress of the household, and quickly organized the life of that huge family. It was with her that Dmitri Dmitriyevich finally came to know domestic peace. He had just moved from Kutuzovsky Prospekt into our building, to the apartment next to ours – his bedroom shared a wall with our living room. His young wife got the new apartment into shape and rearranged things at the dacha in Zhukovka so that Dmitri Dmitriyevich would be spared the noisy goings-on of the young people and their growing families. Now he had his own bedroom and study on the second floor of the house. A devoted wife, she assumed all household concerns and created the ideal atmosphere for his work. Surely, she prolonged his life by several years.13
Shostakovich’s children warmly appreciated the love and care that their new stepmother gave to their father. As Maxim noted, Irina Antonovna became Dmitri Dmitriyevich’s main support as his health deteriorated. ‘She went with him everywhere: on all his trips, into hospital and sanatoriums; she was his secretary, his chauffeur, his nurse.’
Irina Antonovna adapted tactfully to Shostakovich’s changing needs, eventually acting as a guide when he found walking painfully difficult.
Galina Shostakovich recalled, ‘[Irina Antonovna ] would walk with her arm under his and say, “Careful, Mitya, here – there is a step going down, and here there is a step up.”’
When stairs became an insurmountable obstacle, a lift was put in at their Zhukovka dacha. But by Soviet law a lift could be installed in a private house only if it was to be operated by a qualified person: ‘Unperturbed, Irina Antonovna went on a course and gained her diploma as a “lift man”. And once it came in useful, when the lift – with Shostakovich inside – got stuck between floors. Irina Antonovna got a ladder out and climbed up into the attic. There with the help of the maid she turned the lift’s enormous, heavy metal wheel by hand. The lift started moving, and reached the second floor where father was released from his captivity.’14
Two of the high points of the ‘Thaw’ had been the publication of Evtushenko’s poem ‘Babi Yar’ in Literaturnaya Gazeta in September 1961, and that of Solzhenitsyn’s novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in Novy Mir in December 1962. The latter was only published after persistent pressure from the journal’s editor, Alexander Tvardovsky, who persuaded Khrushchev himself to read the story. Khrushchev’s approval secured the necessary authorization to publish from the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Party. This was in itself an unprecedented step, but it did not betoken a new or consistent policy on literary freedom. Only a few months earlier, the KGB had confiscated all the manuscript copies of Vasili Grossman’s great novel Life and Fate, which the author never saw again and assumed were lost for ever.
Khrushchev perhaps failed to foresee the enormous reaction provoked by the publication of such literature. When, in the wake of Ivan Denisovich, publishers were flooded with novels, short stories and memoirs dealing with the painful Stalinist years, the authorities took fright. In the backlash of pressure from the right wing of the Party, Khrushchev and his ideologues implemented measures to bring artists and writers into line with Party thinking, to correct this ‘over-hasty’ liberalization. Whereas Khruschev himself may have been initially sympathetic to the abolition of literary censorship, by early 1963 he had abandoned this position.
On 27 March 1962 Shostakovich completed his setting of Evtushenko’s poem ‘Babi Yar’ to music; initially his concept was to write a one-movement cantata.15 By this time Evtushenko was already being subjected to a campaign of criticism. The poet was accused of belittling the role of the Russian people, who had taken the brunt of suffering during the war years, by writing of the exclusively Jewish victims of the 1941 Nazi massacre at Babi Yar, a ravine in the town of Kiev.
By the end of May Shostakovich had decided to extend the concept of Babi Yar as a one-movement ‘vocal-symphonic poem’. As he explained to Isaak Glikman in his letter of 31 May, ‘I’ve got an idea that I could write something else in similar vein to words by Evtushenko. I have a volume of his poems and it has given me the idea of a symphony.’
Shostakovich informed Glikman that he had already chosen two more from the volume of published poems (soon he was to choose a third one) and in addition he had asked Evtushenko to write a new poem on the subject of the Stalinist Terror. In a spate of creative intensity, Shostakovich completed four more movements of the symphony in under six weeks.
Sometimes regarded as the third of a trilogy of ‘public’ narrative symphonies, the Thirteenth marked a turning point in Shostakovich’s creative life. The choice of texts of course served as an open declaration of the composer’s unequivocal stand against social injustice and racial prejudice. But the symphony also marked a new compositional departure, as if after having given an overview of his musical life in the valedictory Eighth Quartet, he could now move forward. Shostakovich admitted the failure of the Twelfth Symphony was not just due to its imposed thematic, but to the sterility of his compositional imagination.
His deep-felt response to Evtushenko’s texts produced settings that saw a return to the dramatic structure and theatrical imagery of opera, and specifically of Lady Macbeth. (It was surely no coincidence that this opera – in its revised version – was finally being revived on stage.) Furthermore, the way Shostakovich conveys the mood of the poems – with recourse to some vivid word-painting – within the symphonic cycle gives further credence to the idea that his ‘textless’ symphonies also embody concrete narrative concepts. In this case, however, it is the music that lends an extra dimension to the poems, colouring them with tragic overtones.
In effect Shostakovich set ‘Babi Yar’ as a series of scenes (The Dreyfus Affair, the Belostok pogroms, and the story of Anna Frank), which serve as extended interludes to the main refrain of the poem. This solution also dictated the compositional structure of the symphony’s first movement. The theatrical element is achieved by graphic illustration; for instance the mockery of the imprisoned Dreyfus by ladies poking umbrellas at him through the prison grate can be heard in the accented pair of quavers of mocking brass. The following grotesque G minor episode vividly depicts the Jewish boy’s terror. Kicked to the floor by the perpetrators of the pogrom, his futile pleas for mercy only goad them on to further violence committed under the slogan ‘Beat the Yids and Save Russia’. Shostakovich’s attitude to such misjudged chauvinism is made evident through musical comment, when he transforms the accompaniment of slurred crotchets into accented syncopation, creating a parody of the ‘style Russe’ of the song ‘Akh, Vy seni, moi seni’ (‘Oh my hay my hay!’). Unlike the familiar version we know from Stravinsky’s Petrouchka, it is set in the minor and in the grumbling register of bassoons and low brass.
The menacing build-up in the Anna Frank ‘scene’ illustrates the hunting down of the victims, while Anna deludes herself that she is hearing the cracking of ice in spring. (Here Shostakovich effectively pits the power of the large male chorus against the single line of the soloist.) The image of the breaking down of the door unleashes a section of overwhelming terror and violence in the orchestra, leading to the movement’s culmination with the return of the original theme in three fortes (fff) and in full tutti.
The Symphony’s other four movements can be seen as further acts in the drama, providing contrast on the one hand, and a unique concentration of emotional expression on the other. The second movement, ‘Humour’, belongs to that Mahlerian genre of mocking burlesque which Shostakovich made so much his own. He chose as one of its principal themes his Op. 62 setting of Robert Burns’s poem ‘Macpherson before his execution’ (first heard in cellos and basses at fig. 45), which provides material for a complete orchestral interlude. The irresistible energy of the music throughout the movement illustrates that, with its courage and folly, humour is irrepressible and hence eternal. (The concept of ‘laughing in the face of the gallows’ is likewise found in Burns’s above-cited verses).16
The emotional core of the symphony lies in the two adjoining Adagios of the third and fourth movements which describe two different aspects of suffering: patient endurance on the one hand, and the detrimental effect of fear on human character on the other. In the first of them (‘In the Store’) Shostakovich identifies with the suffering and humiliations of the daily drudgery of women patiently standing in line for whatever food they can find. The kind of dishonesty practised against them (cheating them of their change and underweighing their products) arouses Shostakovich’s compassion and wrath no less than racial prejudice and gratuitous violence. The movement, written in the character of a lament, concludes with a C major plagal cadence, sounding like a liturgical amen (suggested probably by the poem’s final words ‘those pious hands’). In the two concluding harmonized chords the chorus departs from its unison line for the only time in the whole symphony.
The fourth movement, ‘Fears’, marks some new departures in Shostakovich’s compositional techniques, to be further developed over the coming years. (One can note the composer’s awakening interest in serial techniques in the tuba’s opening motif, an eleven-note tone-row, played over the timpani’s tremolo.) The harmonic ambiguity of the opening helps to build up a sense of deep unease as the first lines of the poem are intoned: ‘Fears are dying out in Russia’. Shostakovich’s deep emotional response to the mood of the verse and to its specific images serve to create the most powerful indictment of Stalinism. An episode of chilling effect depicts the Soviet citizen’s conditioned fear of talking to foreigners (indeed of talking at all – even to his wife),17 with the timpani’s notes sound like warning ‘knocks on the door’ over the ghostly trilled chords of low strings. Shostakovich breaks the mood only in reaction to the agit-prop element of Evtushenko’s lines ‘We weren’t afraid/of construction work in blizzards/or of going into battle under shell-fire’. His parody (just after fig. 110) of the Soviet marching song ‘Smelo tovarishchi v nogu’ (‘Bravely, comrades, march to step’) sounds like a travesty, which amazingly seems to have escaped the attention of the authorities, although it was surely noted by Shostakovich’s younger colleague, Alfred Schnittke.18
The symphony’s final movement, ‘A Career’, starts attacca, with the intoning of a pastoral duet by flutes over the B flat bass pedal held over from the previous movement. The effect, like sunshine after a storm, throws into relief the harrowing drama of the previous movements, as life moves on in its aftermath. The poem’s easy commentary on the idea of choice – whether you choose to stand by the truth or fall to the temptations of a comfortable life – is treated with suitable irony by Shostakovich. The chorus comes into its own as a protagonist on equal terms with the soloist, and sarcastic commentary is provided by the woodwind (not least from Shostakovich’s favourite buffoon, the bassoon) and rude squawking accents from the trumpets.
Whether or not Shostakovich believed in the existence of such choice in the Soviet context is difficult to say. Certainly events in Shostakovich’s own life story had tragic resonances far beyond the moral issues of a careerist’s options.
On 20 July Shostakovich put the finishing touches to the score of his five-movement Thirteenth Symphony while staying in hospital. That very day, on being discharged, he and Irina Supinskaya took the night train to Kiev to show the score to the bass, Boris Gmyirya, an artist whom Shostakovich particularly admired. From there he went to Leningrad to give the score to Mravinsky. By mid-August, Gmyirya, under pressure from the local Party Committee, wrote to Shostakovich to say that, in view of the dubious text, he refused to perform the work.19 This rejection was followed by an even more galling humiliation: Mravinsky, the performer most closely connected with Shostakovich’s works, declined to perform the Thirteenth Symphony. Undoubtedly he too was unnerved by the ‘risky’ nature of the poems, although ostensibly he excused himself for other reasons.
It was at this point that Shostakovich turned to Kirill Kondrashin, who readily agreed to perform the Symphony.
On 1 December 1962 the Party leader, Nikita Khrushchev, attended an exhibition entitled Thirty Years of Moscow Art at the Manège. When confronted with works by such avant-garde artists as Ernst Neizvestny and Boris Zhutovsky, Khrushchev, a complete philistine in matters of art (who was advised by philistines), broke into a spontaneous tirade against these ‘abstractionists and pederasts’. Although people wondered whether he understood the meaning of either term, there could be no doubt that the leader’s attention was now focused on the unruly intellectual community.
On 17 December writers and artists were called to a Kremlin reception. Here Khrushchev and his spokesman on ideological matters, Leonid Ilyichyov, issued severe warnings against ‘contamination’ by Western bourgeois influences. Artists were urged to adhere strictly to the precepts of socialist realism and to leave the task of exposing the ‘cult of personality’ to the Party.
On that evening artists and sculptors were at the forefront of the attack. Pointing at a sculpture by Ernst Neizvestny, Khrushchev ranted:
Is this sculpture? I already asked them if they weren’t pederasts? But one is a pederast at ten years of age, and how old are you? [The leader had evidently muddled pederasts with masturbators.] … And Shostakovich – his music’s nothing but jazz – it gives you belly ache. And I’m to clap my hands. But with jazz – you get colic. Maybe I’m a man of the old regime, but I like Oistrakh. We stand for old times so we don’t give in to decadence. What are we to do with Neizvestny and Zhutovsky? If they don’t understand, let them leave the country.20
Ilyichyov gave Evtushenko a similar dressing-down for writing ‘Babi Yar’ – it was the Party who should fight anti-semitism: ‘Is this a time to raise such a theme? What’s the matter with you? And then it gets set to music. Babi Yar wasn’t just Jews but Slavs.’
At this point the poet defended an artist’s right to speak the truth: ‘It cannot be that the government should decide for us. And abstractionism, like realism, can be good or bad art. Who would deny that there are examples of great art amongst the abstractionists … Can we exclude Picasso …?’
Khrushchev expressed his reaction to these arguments by quoting a Russian proverb: ‘The grave cures the hunchback.’
Evtushenko had the courage to retort, ‘I think that nowadays it’s no longer the grave, but life.’21
These arguments may have seemed primitive and banal, but they had a direct relevance to the premiere of the Thirteenth Symphony the very next day. Despite eleventh-hour attempts to prevent the concert, the performance went ahead and the Symphony was acclaimed by an ecstatic audience. Mariya Yudina, voicing the view of the liberal intelligentsia, wrote to Pierre Souvchinsky in Paris that Shostakovich ‘is close to us once more, one of the family, one of us. […] Through his music Evtushenko’s poems have been elevated to enormous heights; but they are wonderful even in their own right for they are communicative and on the mark.’ Yudina went on to say, ‘The symphony is about us, it’s for us, but also for everybody and for Eternity.’
Her further observations were coloured by her own deep religious beliefs when she defined the symphony as ‘a prayer kneeling in front of the Holy Mother of God for those in mourning, for joy. […] Probably this did not occur to [Shostakovich], nevertheless this is the essence of the work. It is intended for everybody.’22
On the other hand the symphony was publicly met by complete critical silence, and further performances were actively discouraged.
KIRILL KONDRASHIN recounts the difficulties in getting the Thirteenth Symphony its first public performance:
In the autumn of 1962 Shostakovich rang me and said, ‘Kirill Petrovich, I’ve written a new symphony. I’m going to play it through for a few people; you’d be welcome to come too.’
Naturally, I went along. Khachaturian was there, Weinberg and Yuri Levitin, all composers and Shostakovich’s friends. Shostakovich told us that the symphony was not composed in traditional form; it used a bass soloist and chorus as well as orchestra. It was a setting of five recently published poems by Evtushenko. Before he started playing, Shostakovich read us the poems. As he played and sang through the symphony, we followed the score.
The first movement, ‘Babi Yar’, is a requiem for the Jews shot in Kiev in the autumn of 1941 at the very beginning of the war. Then comes ‘Humour’, followed by ‘In the Shop’, which tells of Russian women, heroines in their own way, who waste their lives queuing for food. The next poem, ‘Fears’, evokes the Stalinist era when everybody lived in terror of the NKVD and possible arrest. The last poem, ‘Career’, affirms that careers are made not by those who keep silent, but by those who raise their voices and sacrifice themselves, thereby becoming immortal.
The poem that provoked most conflict was, of course, the poem about the Jews. Although officially unacknowledged, anti-semitism had existed in Russia since the war. Shostakovich was much preoccupied by this problem. He was not a Jew, but he sympathized with the Jewish people, as is testified firstly by the many Jewish themes to be found in his music, and secondly, by the fact that he twice raised the Jewish theme specifically in his works. I am referring firstly to From Jewish Poetry, the song cycle written in 1948, during a period of great antisemitism. And secondly to ‘Babi Yar’, the first movement of the Thirteenth Symphony. Evtushenko’s poem had recently been published in the Literaturnaya Gazeta and at once acquired great popularity.
The Symphony had a very disturbing effect on me. On that occasion there was no mention of performance. But, two days later, Shostakovich rang me and said, ‘Kirill Petrovich, if you liked my Symphony and are agreeable, I would like you to conduct the first performance.’
Of course I was greatly honoured by this request, and immediately agreed. Usually all of Shostakovich’s symphonic works were first performed by his friend, the conductor Evgeni Mravinsky, and the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra. I was surprised that things were different this time.
Later I discovered that Shostakovich had indeed showed the score to Mravinsky, who had refused to play it under some ludicrous pretext. The real reason was that at the time the press was full of criticism for Evtushenko’s poem. They said that Evtushenko had distorted the historical truth, ascribing to the Jews alone the right to be victims of the war, whereas in fact at Babi Yar people of all races had been slaughtered, including Ukrainians and Russians. This was a lie; according to survivors, there were only Jews. There was a lot of heated discussion among the intellectuals. But it was clear that this was just an extension of an anti-semitic campaign. The official line proclaimed that it was incorrect to give such emphasis to the Jewish question.
Evidently, Mravinsky had been advised from above not to perform the symphony, and he withdrew like a coward. Shostakovich was very hurt.
Shostakovich invited me to discuss the details of the performance, including the choice of soloist.23 I suggested a young singer from the Bolshoi Theatre, Victor Nechipailo. Dmitri Dmitriyevich said that he didn’t know him, but if I recommended him, he had nothing against my choice. Grinberg advised me to get another singer to learn the part, ‘just in case’. He suggested a young singer, Vitali Gromadsky,24 who was employed as a soloist of the Philharmonia. In two or three weeks’ time, after I had started working with the singers, Shostakovich said he wanted to hear them. The three of us and a pianist went to see Dmitri Dmitriyevich. He was quite satisfied with their interpretations and had no complaints. He was usually very tactful and sparing with his criticism. This was because he was always so grateful to people for playing his music, and he trusted a good musician’s intuition.
A little incident occurred on that occasion. Gromadsky, who was a kind but not over-intelligent young man, must have been reading all the criticism of ‘Babi Yar’ in the press. He suddenly piped up, ‘Dmitri Dmitriyevich, why did you choose this poem when there is no anti-semitism in the Soviet Union? Why write about it in your symphony?’
Shostakovich was terribly upset. Gromadsky had touched a sore spot. He was almost shouting when he replied, ‘No, there is, there is anti-semitism in the Soviet Union. It is an outrageous thing, and we must fight it. We must shout about it from the roof-tops.’ His words stuck in my memory and they explain a lot in his work.
We started work on the Symphony. As usual we started with orchestral rehearsals, without the choir and soloist. Shostakovich was always in attendance. It is unnecessary to make any corrections to Shostakovich’s scores. Only minor dynamic alterations are sometimes needed, and they happen of their own accord. Dmitri Dmitriyevich never interfered with my work. He always held in his hands a box of Russian cigarettes (‘papirosi’),25 on which he noted down whatever he wanted to tell me afterwards. With great pride I remember him saying to me, ‘Kirill Petrovich, you’re a hard man to work with. Just as I write down some point, you’re already making it to the musicians!’
Occasionally I would stop the orchestra and address Shostakovich from the stage, ‘Dmitri Dmitriyevich, have you got anything to say?’
He usually replied, ‘Nothing, nothing, everything’s fine.’
Only once did he make a remark, ‘Kirill Petrovich, in the last movement the second violins have an A flat to B flat modulation. It’s very beautiful. Could you bring it out a bit more please?’ It was the only correction he ever made.
Meanwhile news reached me that, in high Party circles and in the Ministry of Culture, various functionaries were alarmed by the rumour that Shostakovich had written a symphony about Jews. They were all waiting for the first performance, scheduled for 18 December 1962. I made sure that both singers rehearsed with the orchestra so that we would be ready for every eventuality.
On the previous day, Khrushchev had given a reception for the Moscow intellectuals, where, in his unbridled way, he applied ideological pressure on the artistic community. The reception signified the end of the ‘Thaw’. Shostakovich, with his bad luck, was always the first victim of such changes, as happened in 1936, in 1948 and now again in 1962.
Shortly before writing this symphony, which provoked so much talk about ‘ideological errors’, Shostakovich had joined the Communist Party. I know that the district Party secretary was heard to complain later on, ‘This is outrageous, we let Shostakovich join the Party, and then he goes and presents us with a symphony about Jews.’
Since the theme of the Thirteenth Symphony was fraught with conflict, an order had been issued from the top to prevent the performance on the very eve of the premiere. But the authorities were afraid actually to ban the Symphony. The following day, at ten o’clock in the morning, we were supposed to start the dress rehearsal. The atmosphere was very tense and Shostakovich was extremely nervous. In the last few days some strange faces had appeared in the hall, but nobody paid too much attention, because many musicians and interested people liked attending these rehearsals.
The singer at the concert was to be Nechipailo. At about quarter to ten he rang up to say that he was ill and could not sing. I believe that this was the result of pressure put on him.26 We started looking for Gromadsky, who lived quite far from the city centre and had no telephone. As he was not scheduled to sing that night, there was no knowing whether he even intended to come to the concert, let alone the dress rehearsal.
But after about twenty minutes Gromadsky appeared. Fortunately, he had decided to come and listen to the final rehearsal. We told him that he was now to rehearse immediately and to perform that night. In former years, he had been a sailor and was a brave man. So he came out on stage and we started to rehearse. He made some mistakes, because, naturally, he was not as well prepared as our main soloist. After we had played through the first movement, the orchestral manager appeared on the stage, saying, ‘Kirill Petrovich, you are wanted on the telephone.’
I interrupted the rehearsal and proceeded to the artists’ room where the telephone was. It was Georgi Popov, the Minister of Culture of the Russian Republic.
‘Kirill Petrovich, how is your health?’
This apparent polite concern for my health was nothing more than the usual trick of our bureaucrats. First they enquire about something totally irrelevant – your health or the weather.
‘Very well,’ I said.
Then a menacing note was introduced.
‘Is there anything that might prevent you conducting tonight?’
‘No, I’m in splendid form.’
Although I realized at once what he was driving at, I carried on as if I hadn’t a clue about anything. A silence followed.
Then he said, ‘Do you have any political doubts in relation to “Babi Yar”?’
I answered, ‘No, I don’t have any. I think that it’s very timely and very relevant.’
Silence again. Then he said, ‘Tell me your expert opinion, can the Symphony be performed without the first movement?’
I said, ‘That is completely out of the question. First of all it would distort the form of the Symphony; and secondly everyone knows already that the first movement is a setting of “Babi Yar”. If we miss it out, it will cause a most undesirable reaction.’
Silence again.
Then he said, ‘Well, do as you see fit.’
After this telephone call I resumed the rehearsal without mentioning the conversation to Shostakovich. The evening’s performance was a triumph, and almost caused a political demonstration. At the end of the first movement the audience started to applaud and shout hysterically. The atmosphere was tense enough as it was, and I waved at them to calm down. We started playing the second movement at once, so as not to put Shostakovich into an awkward position.
We gave two performances. Then it was announced that a third performance was to take place on 15 January 1963. Until now, Evtushenko had been all over Shostakovich and me. But around the New Year, Evtushenko, as keen on publicity as ever, decided to publish a second version of ‘Babi Yar’ in the Literaturnaya Gazeta. You could hardly call this second version poetry – just a combination of rhymes. The poem was now nearly twice as long because he had inserted lines about the role of the Russian people and the Party. He made sure that it was seen that he had taken the authorities’ criticism to heart.
Shostakovich then asked me to come and see him. He was very confused. He said something along these lines: ‘That wasn’t a nice thing to do on Evtushenko’s part. The poem now belongs to us both, I’ve become a kind of co-author. He could at least have notified me that he was going to make these changes. What am I to do about it? If I set the new version to music, I will have to change the whole Symphony. Obviously, I can’t do that. But, they have let it be known that performances of the Symphony in its present state will not be permitted. Evtushenko has responded to criticism, while I haven’t.’
After some soul-searching, Shostakovich decided not to change the music; he just changed a few lines of the text. But the Symphony then suffered an organized campaign of silence – a positively deafening silence. After the initial two performances it was suppressed for five years.27 Of course, no official ban was published; they simply said, ‘We don’t recommend that this work should be performed.’
They left the final decisions with you, but God help you if you decided against their recommendations. You were then dealt with like a naughty Party member.28
The Siberian poet, Evgeni Evtushenko, made his name with the publication of his lyric poems in the mid 1950s. He went on to tackle controversial social themes in his verse, and to win enormous popularity through his rhetorical poetry recitations (indeed, in the Soviet Union he has performed in packed-out football stadiums).
Initially much admired for his courageous outspokenness, Evtushenko came to be identified more and more with the official line. He was accused of sometimes compromising his integrity, when, after creating a remarkable poem, such as ‘Babi Yar’, he would write on strictly ‘authorized’ topics.
His association with Shostakovich continued after the Thirteenth Symphony when the composer set his poem ‘The Execution of Stepan Razin’ to music in 1964.
Here EVGENI EVTUSHENKO recalls his meetings with Shostakovich in connection with the Thirteenth Symphony:
From childhood the name of Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich meant something eternal to me, and I never thought that I would meet him in the flesh. However we did meet. In 1962 I had been in Kiev. A university friend of mine took me to see a place called Babi Yar. I had read something about it – there was a poem by Ilya Ehrenburg and another one by Lev Ozerov with the following memorable lines:
I have come to you, Babi Yar,
Sorrow’s age can’t be told.
I must be unthinkably old–
You’d lose count, even if counting by the century.
But the true story of what had happened at Babi Yar was not widely known. My friend led me up and down those ravines, hills and gullies, where at the time you could still come across a human bone. He told me the terrible story of how the Nazis had brought here tens of thousands of Jews, Ukrainians and Russians, and murdered them without pity.29 At once I had a feeling of historical injustice. There was no monument. The next day, at my hotel, on odd scraps of paper, I wrote a poem, ‘Babi Yar’. The first line reflected my refusal to accept the injustice of history, the absence of a monument to so many innocent slaughtered people.
There are no monuments over Babi Yar,
The steep precipice, like a rough-hewn tomb,
The publication of ‘Babi Yar’ provoked extremely stormy reactions, much greater than I had expected. I received an avalanche of telegrams and letters from all over the country. People came to see me to express their feelings, and they sent me flowers. On the other hand the newspaper Literaturnaya Rossiya published an immediate reply to me by the poet Alexei Markov.
What kind of a true Russian are you
When you forget your own people?
Your soul is as narrow as your trousers,
As empty as a flight of stairs.
Literaturnaya Rossiya also published articles attacking me, among other things for having forgotten the heroic struggle of the Russian people in the Great Patriotic War, obscuring it with the depiction of the mass execution of innocent but passive victims of ‘Babi Yar’. To tell the truth, these articles had a certain nationalistic and even chauvinistic flavour to them. What hurt most was that my opponents, in criticizing me, claimed the support of people like Sholokhov and Ehrenburg.
When I came back to Moscow, one day the telephone rang in my mother’s apartment where I was staying at the time. Neither the neighbours nor my mother ever used my patronymic when addressing me; they always called me Zhenya. The voice on the phone asked for Evgeni Alexandrovich. My mother replied that it must be the wrong number, because there was no Evgeni Alexandrovich here. She didn’t realize that I was being called.
The telephone rang again.
‘I would like to speak to Evgeni Alexandrovich Evtushenko. This is Shostakovich speaking.’
At last my mother realized that Evgeni Alexandrovich was her son Zhenya. I heard his amazing, inimitable voice. It was slightly hoarse, stuttering, vibrating and jerky.
‘Evgeni Alexandrovich. Shostakovich here. I’ve read your poem, “Babi Yar” in the Literaturnaya Gazeta. It’s a remarkable poem. Will you allow me to set it to music?’
I was in seventh heaven. Not only because such a request from Shostakovich was the most remarkable token of support at a difficult moment when I was being attacked from every side; I would still have been delighted if somebody just praised the poem. But Shostakovich himself was asking my permission to set my poem to music!
I replied hurriedly, fearing that he might change his mind. ‘Of course, please do.’
He said briskly and matter-of-factly: ‘Splendid. Thank God, you don’t mind. The music is ready. Can you come here right away?’
I went to his apartment where for the first time I heard his setting of my poem ‘Babi Yar’. It was not a symphony yet. What a shame that his performance then was not recorded. It was quite extraordinary. He sang in his hoarse voice. When he came to the line, ‘It seems to me that I am Anna Frank,’ he wept. The music there changed from an epic requiem to a spring-like lyricism. I was overwhelmed. I’m no expert in music. Some of my poems had been set before, but the music hardly ever coincided with the melody I had heard in my inner ear when writing the poetry. I hope it doesn’t sound like conceit, but if I were able to write music I would have written exactly the way Shostakovich did. By some magic telepathic insight he seems to have pulled the melody out of me and recorded it in musical notation. That was my feeling. He amazed me with his profound rendering of the poem. His music made the poem greater, more meaningful and powerful. In a word, it became a much better poem.
I gave Shostakovich my book The Wave of a Hand, which had just come out. We talked for a long time, not about literature or music, but about history, those past times which had caused him so much suffering. They had also affected my childish soul, because I had lost both my grandfathers, and witnessed how unjustly people were treated, and how sometimes they disappeared.
We discussed all this. I don’t remember him asking me to write something specific, but as a result of our conversation, I wrote the poem ‘Fears’. I gave it to him.
After a while he phoned me. ‘Evgeni Alexandrovich, you know I’ve concocted something really big here. Would you like to come and hear it?’
Then I heard the whole of the Thirteenth Symphony uniquely performed by the composer. I was stunned, and first and foremost by his choice of such apparently disparate poems. It had never occurred to me that they could be united like that. In my book I didn’t put them next to each other. But here the jolly, youthful, anti-bureaucratic ‘Career’ and the poem ‘Humour’, full of jaunty lines, were linked with the melancholy and graphic poem about tired Russian women queueing in a shop. Then came ‘Fears Are Dying in Russia’. Shostakovich interpreted it in his own way, giving it a depth and insight that the poem lacked before. I still regret that in the text he used some of the lines which aren’t very good, a result of my haste. In that sense I let Shostakovich down. I hope one day to fulfil my duty to his memory and to revise the poem.
In connecting all these poems like that, Shostakovich completely changed me as a poet. I would never have written ‘Bratskaya GESS’, my most important long poem, with all its varied composition, unexpected changes of rhythm, bold transitions from, say, Stepan Razin to girl Nyushka, from a rhythm of slaves to my purely personal story. I would not have had the nerve to attempt such a composition had not Shostakovich united my disparate poems in the Thirteenth Symphony.
In a sense, it is a unique symphony, making the audience cry in ‘Babi Yar’ and laugh in ‘Career’ when the soloist sings:
The Artist, a contemporary of Galileo
Was no more stupid than the latter–
He knew the Earth revolved,
But he had a family–
It was to me a great school of composition because Shostakovich proved that there are no elements in art that cannot be put together. One must be brave and try to unite what seems to be incompatible.
We became friends and I came to see him often. He was the first to hear many of my poems. We argued sometimes about history and about himself. He took me to the first performance after all those years of Katerina Izmailova. After that I wrote a poem which had the following lines:
For nearly thirty years the score gathered dust
And the music of sadness and love,
Crucified on the staves,
Strained against them during the nights,
Craving to be heard.30
I would like to mention the profound impression made by the Fourteenth Symphony. During the premiere I sat next to Shostakovich, and from time to time he nervously clutched my hand. At the end come Rilke’s words:
Death is all powerful – it is on guard.
At the hour of happiness, at the highest moment of life
It comes upon us, alive and thirsty, – it cries within us.
I think the Symphony was inspired by his foreboding of an imminent departure from life and music. For all Rilke’s greatness, I disagree with his line ‘Death is all powerful’. Over people like Shostakovich death has no power. His music will sound as long as humankind exists. Great art succeeds where medicine fails – victory over death. When I wrote ‘Babi Yar’ there was no monument there. Now there is a monument, and I am happy that Fate gave me an amazing chance to work with Shostakovich.31
ISAAK SCHWARTZ recalls the events surrounding Mravinsky’s disassociation from Shostakovich’s Thirteenth Symphony:
From the Tenth Symphony onwards, I sat in on all the rehearsals and concerts of Shostakovich’s new works, including the Eleventh and Twelfth Symphonies. Mravinsky didn’t like outsiders to be present at these rehearsals, but at Shostakovich’s insistence, he allowed me to come and arranged for the necessary pass. As I lived close to the Philharmonic Hall, I never missed a rehearsal.
The painful history of the Thirteenth Symphony unfolded before my very eyes. To the astonishment of all and sundry, Mravinsky did not perform it.
During the early 1960s, I spent the summers in Repino at the Union of Composers’ Retreat, where Mravinsky and his second wife, Inna Serikova, whom he passionately adored, also spent their holidays. His love for Inna was so absolute that he preferred to surround himself with friends and acquaintances from her circle, rather than his own. Inna and I had been students together, so his good-will extended towards me as well. He treated me kindly, although, of course, with his inherent detachment and arrogance.
Once, when the Mravinskys were in my cottage, the conversation touched on the impending performance of Shostakovich’s new symphony – the Thirteenth. It became clear from the conversation that Mravinsky had received the score, and was now experiencing certain doubts – something was inhibiting him. To start with, the nature of these doubts was unclear to me. But as Mravinsky voiced them out loud, seeking Inna’s advice, she put forward an irrefutable argument for a refusal to perform the work: Mravinsky never conducted choral works, and this symphony called for a bass soloist and a male choir.
‘You must only conduct pure music.’
I found it amusing how, in this situation, the expression ‘pure music’ acquired ambiguous overtones. This, indeed, was the explanation given to Shostakovich for Mravinsky’s refusal to conduct the Thirteenth.
At the time, and to this very day, I cannot accept such a lamentable excuse for Mravinsky’s refusal. I saw clearly that there was another reason that influenced him: despite his influential and high position in life, Mravinsky, alas, was a man of his time. He was wary of Shostakovich’s choice of Evtushenko’s verse. Inna played a decisive role here. As someone groomed in the school of Party thought (she had for a time worked in the Party District Committee [OBKOM]), she felt that Evtushenko’s verses and their settings by Shostakovich could have a pernicious effect on the career of her beloved husband. Mravinsky’s rejection of the Symphony horrified his friends and admirers, and it marked the end of my contacts with him.32
MSTISLAV ROSTROPOVICH talks of Shostakovich’s loyalty towards performers, and his views on Mravinsky’s betrayal of Shostakovich. He himself severed his connection with the Leningrad Philharmonic – both the orchestra and the institution – after quarrelling with Mravinsky:
There were two causes for my falling out with Mravinsky: the first was over the Thirteenth Symphony, the second over the Second Cello Concerto. Although Shostakovich later made his peace with Mravinsky, I nevertheless believe that he despised him as a human being for his cowardice in the whole affair of the Thirteenth Symphony. There was no excuse for such behaviour. Mravinsky must have understood what a brilliant work the Thirteenth Symphony was, as well as its importance to Shostakovich.
As for the Second Cello Concerto, I found out by chance that Mravinsky had decided to postpone the premiere without informing me or Shostakovich. We were to perform it at the opening of the 1966/67 season in September. The excuse given was inadmissible: he hadn’t had time to learn the Concerto for the opening concert of the season, which was to be in honour of Dmitri Dmitriyevich’s sixtieth birthday. I think that, after the affair of the Thirteenth Symphony, Mravinsky was left with a feeling of extreme awkwardness towards Shostakovich, and he virtually stopped performing his new works. He never conducted the Thirteenth or Fourteenth Symphonies, and only much later conducted the Fifteenth on one or two occasions. So the premiere of the Second Cello Concerto took place in Moscow with Evgeni Svetlanov conducting.33
Shostakovich later tried to reconcile me with Mravinsky, during one of my visits to Komarovo. I only remember that we all drank an awful lot, as it seemed the only way to find a common language.
This brings me to the interesting question of Shostakovich’s attitude to first performances. Dmitri Dmitriyevich had an incredible loyalty to all the first performers of his music. When he was writing his last quartets, he dedicated one to each of the members of the Beethoven Quartet, who had given the first performances of nearly all the quartets. I attended the rehearsals of these late quartets right from the start when the musicians were literally sight-reading. Dmitri Dmitriyevich would tell me, ‘You know, the “Beethovens” no longer play so well. But when I see that they are still together, it gives me a feeling of security – I know that everything in the world is still all right, because they continue to exist.’
For instance, the Borodin Quartet played a lot better than the ‘Beethovens’ in their last years, but Shostakovich was absolutely loyal to them. I knew that if he were to write something for cello, he would automatically turn to me, even if I had forgotten how to play. As far as Mravinsky was concerned, Dmitri Dmitriyevich would have trusted him with all his works till the end of his days if Mravinsky had not proved himself to be an unprincipled turncoat.34
The film and theatre director, Grigori Kozintsev, worked with Shostakovich over a period of forty years. In the last years of his life, Shostakovich was finally able to dispense with writing film music, which he had come to regard as an annoying distraction from his main life’s work. But in the last fifteen years of his life he made exceptions for his friends, writing music for five films, two each for the directors Leo Arnshtam and Kozintsev, and as a long-standing promise for the writer Galina Serebryakova.35
Shostakovich’s last contact with Kozintsev in the cinema had been in 1950, when he wrote the music for the biographical film about the noted nineteenth-century literary critic Vissarion Belinsky (1811–48). The sad fate of that film left both men with a sour taste.
But with better times Kozintsev turned to Shakespeare’s great tragedies, Hamlet (1964) and King Lear (1971). Shostakovich’s music was to be an integral part of both films. For Hamlet, the composer produced thirty-four incidental pieces, refusing, as a matter of principle, to use any music that he had written previously for two stage productions of the play.36
GRIGORI KOZINTSEV was one of Russia’s most respected intellectuals, and his artistic sensibility lent him a unique insight into the working process of the composer’s mind:
The film Belinsky was maimed by insistent demands for never-ending, absurd remakes; it was released on hire only several years after its completion. I didn’t have the strength of heart to sit through it. I left the hall and roamed the streets for a long time. After this experience, I stopped working in the cinema and transferred my efforts to the theatre.
‘I saw Belinsky,’ Dmitri Dmitriyevich said to me when we met – a similar hatchet job had been done on his music, incidentally. ‘All this, of course, doesn’t go to enhance the picture, to enhance the picture, of course.’
Our conversation took place at his dacha. Dmitri Dmitriyevich finished smoking his cigarette in silence, and then slowly and doggedly ground the butt into the ground.37
An old hack will harp about his ‘creativity’ and his ‘unique personal themes’. Shostakovich, on the other hand, is never offended when asked to write exactly one minute thirteen seconds of music, and when told that he must fade the orchestra to make way for dialogue at the twenty-fourth second, and bring it up again at the fifty-second to synchronize with a cannon shot. Art that is specially commissioned and functional does not necessarily have to be bad art!
It was in vain that I tried to get some critical response to our film Hamlet from Shostakovich. I see so many faults in it, that I wanted to test my sensations and have them reinforced by the opinions of a man whose artistic sensibility I can trust. But, alas, after seeing all the material for the fourth time, all one succeeds in eliciting from Dmitri Dmitriyevich are kind words.
Is the film faultless? Of course not. The problem lies elsewhere: what is commonly called ‘critical analysis’ is a foreign concept to Shostakovich. If he likes the essential drift of the film, then, like an ideal spectator, he is so engrossed by the life of the screen that he cannot be distracted to formulate judgements in cold blood.
Besides which, he abhors our Soviet critical terminology of ‘achievements and errors’; easy familiarity is alien to his nature. Shostakovich thereby instructs us not only in great art, but in modesty, purity and respect for other people’s work.38
*
Shostakovich’s music serves as a great example to me. I could not direct my Shakespearean films without it. What is its main feature? A feeling for tragedy? Indeed, an important quality…. Philosophy, an intrinsic concept of the world….? Of course, how can one speak of Lear without Philosophy…. But it’s a different feature that is important, and one that’s hard to describe in words. Goodness … virtue … compassion. But a particular goodness. In Russian we have a wonderful word – virulent. No good exists in Russian art without a virulent hatred of all that degrades man. In Shostakovich’s music I hear a virulent hatred of cruelty, of the cult of power, of the persecution of truth …39
Dmitri Dmitriyevich’s modesty and utter truthfulness are amazing. He is completely unable to pay compliments, and this despite his position as chairman of various unions, meetings, delegations, conferences, presidiums. He maintains his silence, then says, ‘You know, it’s marvellous.’ That’s all.
When listening to compliments, his face distorts into a grimace, and he’s unable to find an apt or polite reply. Apart from his natural modesty, he has an extreme dislike of anything smacking of superficial pomposity, exaggerated exultation or lofty words.
There are artists who, in their appearance, their manner of speech and their behaviour, resemble their own art. Such were Mayakovsky and Alexander Dovzhenko. But is there anything in Dmitri Dmitriyevich’s exterior that for a moment suggests the tragic power of his symphonies? At first glance, not so much as a hair. Nevertheless, on closer acquaintance, one particular feature, perhaps the most pertinent, manifests itself. I would call it the hypersensitivity of his skin. The power of his artistic response is revealed in his instantaneous vulnerability, the palpitating contact of his nervous structure with the outer world, and the extraordinary receptivity of his spiritual organism.
He leads two lives: the exterior life of everyday conversation and behaviour, where he notes down football results in a large accounting book, and lays out endless games of patience. Before making a speech, he indulges in cards as a way of resting and of distracting his attention from the outside world.
But simultaneously, his inner life runs like an incessantly working motor, an ever-open wound. It is impossible to define this part of his life in words. His working day is as long as a lifetime. He can be extremely weak, be morbidly vulnerable, and he finds it impossible to resist pressure. Then suddenly he produces the Scherzo from the Thirteenth Symphony.
Shostakovich has been accused of neuroticism, and much has been written about his nervous disposition. But his detractors would like our age to be portrayed in stereotyped images of the plump, red cheeks and the cute and innocent gaze of a child staring out from a soap ad.
Dmitri Dmitriyevich’s face goes into contortions when reminded of a recording of the Thirteenth Symphony sent from abroad: ‘If only you knew what torture it is to listen to a bad performance of one’s work.’40
The essence of Shostakovich’s music lies in the conflict between the spirituality of man and the inhuman forces that are hostile to this spirituality.
Such a man can withstand oppression of unprecedented power. In the Thirteenth Symphony, this force, from the first appearance of the image ‘Babi Yar’, grows and acquires an ever more mechanical character, totally devoid of spirit. But the ‘reed’ does not bend. If you like, this is how Shostakovich’s optimism is expressed. In Shostakovich’s music the ‘thinking’ reed is empowered with exceptional spiritual qualities. First and foremost with a conscience, an obsessive need to react in an almost physiological way to the suffering of others (what Dostoevsky calls ‘the compulsive response’), with a refinement and nobility of feeling. It reflects his own pure and unsullied response to life.
Then comes [the Scherzo] ‘Humour’. This, probably, is the one quality that allows Shostakovich to live. [In this movement] the merry wind of the 1920s blows in from all sides. Is this music? No, it is everything that we suffered and experienced seizing you by the throat.
I re-read Evtushenko’s poem ‘Humour’ after listening to the Thirteenth Symphony. It’s worth comparing to Shostakovich’s setting, not only in form, but in the power of the associative connections. Shostakovich produces images of ‘Humour’, and Evtushenko juggles with easy rhymes and rhythms. Evtushenko’s poem is a facile composition, graced with witty invention. Shostakovich’s setting is the fruit of suffering. His prison is a prison, his humour is fearless and joyful, a victorious, life-affirming force. Evtushenko flirts amusingly with the antithesis. In Shostakovich, each conflicting source acquires the momentous sweep of history. On the one hand, you have a talented facility, an easy game, and on the other, a Scherzo harnessed to historical tragedy.
Shostakovich was able to enrich Evtushenko’s images with strength and passion. The superficial poems, which play with words, acquire tragic depths and express veritable suffering. Shostakovich, in his exposition of all the poems, has homed in on the associations of suffering to such an extent that, on hearing the Symphony, one is totally gripped.
There is a line in Evtushenko’s poem ‘Career’ [the fifth movement of the Symphony]: ‘I am making my career by not making it.’
Many people have made careers for themselves. And there are also those who made their careers through not making them. Anything was possible. Nevertheless, none of this sordid world applies in Shostakovich’s case. And it is unpleasant to hear any such implications in reference to Dmitri Dmitriyevich. He has worked unflinchingly, because, like all great Russian artists, ‘he could not be silent.’
Music is not a profession for Shostakovich, it is the necessity to speak out and to convey what lies behind the lives of people, to depict our age and our country. Nature has endowed him with a particular sensibility of hearing; he hears people weep, he hears their low murmur of anger, the tearing of hearts, the trembling groans of despair. He has hearkened to the rumbling of the earth, the crowds marching for justice, the strikers’ whistles, the angry songs erupting in the city outskirts, a penny-harmonium screeching out trite melodies, and the wind that carries them to every corner of the earth. He introduced revolutionary songs into the severe world of the symphony. Then, when the sirens of war whined over Europe, he heard the hoarse cries and the moans, the grating and jangling of steel on the bloodied battlefields.
And in these times Idea and Thought were muzzled and yoked. Whips were cracked and Art was made to dance, to beg favours in front of petty despots; it had to guard over the Good and stamp on the Seditious.
Dmitri Dmitriyevich laboured throughout his life. Then times changed. He had to listen to laudations long overdue, was garbed in the mantle of Honorary Doctor of Oxford University; he read out speeches and reports from scraps of paper. World-wide fame had arrived.
The childish features of his face changed; the corners of his lips drooped, his eyebrows rose upwards; a mask showed through his face, the ancient mask of tragedy. His great destiny, albeit uneasy, was now defined. What kind of career could one talk of?41
Igor Stravinsky returned to his native country on 21 September 1962 after nearly fifty years of exile and unrelenting hostility by the Communist regime. Not only was Stravinsky a living legend, but a symbol of a lost culture. His visit had an enormous impact on musical life in Moscow and Leningrad, signalling the right to perform his works and those by other ‘modernist’ Western composers which had been banned to silence over so many years.
Stravinsky was received as a guest of the Union of Composers. The composer KAREN KHACHATURIAN, a secretary of the Union, was appointed by Khrennikov as his escort during the visit:
When Stravinsky made his return visit to Russia in 1962, I was at his side from the first day of his visit to the last, remaining with him from morning to night each day. From the moment he arrived Stravinsky kept asking, ‘Where is Shostakovich?’
It so happened that while we were in Moscow, Shostakovich was in Leningrad, and Dmitri Dmitriyevich returned to Moscow just as we were going up to Leningrad; so we kept missing each other. Stravinsky was most intrigued and kept saying, ‘What’s up with this Shostakovich? Why does he keep running away from me?’
Eventually, just before Stravinsky’s departure, Ekaterina Furtseva, the Minister of Culture, whom Dmitri Dmitriyevich used to call ‘Ekaterina the Third’, gave a banquet at the Metropole Hotel. There were a lot of people there, and finally the two composers came face to face. It was a very tense meeting. They were placed next to each other and sat in complete silence. I sat opposite them. Finally Shostakovich plucked up courage and opened the conversation:
‘What do you think of Puccini?’
‘I can’t stand him,’ Stravinsky replied.
‘Oh, and neither can I, neither can I,’ said Shostakovich.
So Puccini, who was completely alien to both these composers, gave them the impetus for a conversation and some kind of initial contact. But a sort of confusion set in, and these two great and complex individuals couldn’t find any real ground for contact. This was their only meeting.
Shostakovich was a great admirer of Stravinsky and loved and knew all his works inside out, starting with the Russian and neo-classical period. He particularly loved the Symphony of Psalms. Perhaps he knew the later works less well.
Stravinsky regarded Shostakovich as a composer with a brilliant gift who had started well, but who had been broken by the ‘Zhdanovshchina’. He was right from one point of view. Notwithstanding Shostakovich’s enormous resources and powers of resistance, the events of 1936 and 1948 had a profound influence on his personality and on his composition. Certainly those crass criticisms inhibited his urge to write operas – and stage works were the major preoccupation of his younger years.
Shostakovich hated being asked questions about his music and whether this or that theme represented something or had any particular meaning. When asked, ‘What did you want to say in this work?’ he would answer, ‘I’ve said what I’ve said.’ Either you had it in you to understand, or, if not, then it would be fruitless to try and explain anyway.42
Stravinsky was accompanied on this visit to the USSR by ROBERT CRAFT. Contrary to Karen Khachaturian’s evidence, Stravinsky met Shostakovich twice, both times at government receptions given at the Metropole Hotel. The first took place on 1 October 1962, the second on the eve of Stravinsky’s departure on 10 October. Craft recorded the two meetings in his diary:
This is the most extraordinary event of the trip, a kind of ‘last supper’ (for non-disciples) during which I.S. reveals his Russianness more completely than at any time in the fifteen years I have known him. Mme Furtseva presides at the centre of the table with I.S. to her right, and Shostakovich to her left; seeing the two St Petersburg-born composers so close together, one is struck by the fact that their complexions and sandy hair are exactly the same….
Shostakovich’s is the most sensitive and intellectual face we have so far seen in the USSR. He is thinner, taller, younger – more boyish-looking – than expected, but he is also the shyest and most nervous human being I have ever seen. He chews not merely his nails but his fingers, twitches his pouty mouth and chin, chain smokes, wiggles his nose in constant adjustment of his spectacles, looks querulous one moment and ready to cry the next. His hands tremble, he stutters, his whole frame wobbles when he shakes hands – which reminds us of Auden – and his knees knock when he speaks, at which time others look anxious for him, as indeed they might. He has a habit of staring, too, then of turning guiltily away when caught, and all evening long he peeks illicitly at I.S. around the nicely rounded corners of Mme Furtseva. There is no betrayal of the thoughts behind those frightened, very intelligent eyes. His new wife is beside him. An adoring pupil, perhaps, but by age, looks, and her equally shy, serious, distant manner, a daughter…
Farewell banquet at the Metropole, a happy occasion and no formality….
Shostakovich, this time at I.S.’s side, looks even more frightened and tortured than at the first conclave, probably because he thinks a speech is expected of him. He converses neutrally at first, then like a bashful schoolboy blurts out that he had been overwhelmed by the Symphony of Psalms when he first heard it, and that he had made his own piano score of it which he would like to present to I.S. Seeking to return the compliment, I.S. tells Shostakovich that he shares some of his high regard for Mahler.
Poor Shostakovich starts to melt, then quickly freezes again as I.S. rather cruelly continues: ‘But you should go beyond Mahler. The Viennese troika adored him also, you know, and Schoenberg and Webern conducted his music.’ Toward the end of the evening, and after drinking several zubrovkas, Shostakovich pathetically confesses that he would like to follow I.S.’s example and conduct his own music. ‘But I don’t know how not to be afraid.’43
MSTISLAV ROSTROPOVICH recalls Shostakovich’s conducting debut:
I was responsible for the organization of the first music festival in the Soviet Union, which took place in Gorky in June 1962. I organized it as a bet. Of course nowadays music festivals have sprouted up all over the place, but at that time there wasn’t a single festival in the Soviet Union. I had written a somewhat visionary article for the magazine Sovietskaya Muzyka,44 recounting how many wonderful festivals are organized abroad by musicians, and wouldn’t it be marvellous if we too had a music festival in our country. Then once, when in conversation with the director of the Gorky Philharmonic Orchestra, Nikitin, and its conductor, Guzman, I told them, ‘You know I’m thinking about setting up a music festival.’
They replied, ‘Thinking’s not much good, a bit of action is what’s needed.’
So I said, ‘Fine, let’s take action, let’s have the festival here in Gorky.’
‘All words, no action’ was their reply, and I fell for this bait of ‘No Action’. We laid bets as to whether it would ever happen. Effectively we agreed to organize this first festival together. When it opened, and I was driving through the main street of Gorky, which was bedecked with banners and flags, I remember thinking to myself, ‘I’ll probably finish up in jail for setting this up. They’ll say, “Just think, for some piece of nonsense we went and decorated the town with flags.”’
Some months after the first Gorky Festival,45 we organized a concert devoted to Shostakovich’s music. It took place in Gorky on 12 November of that same year and was a special event, as Shostakovich conducted the first half of the concert himself. This was the first (and last) time he ever conducted an orchestra, apart from one occasion in his student days.
Earlier that summer Galina and I had received a rather soiled-looking packet from Shostakovich containing his orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death. He had recently married Irina Antonovna Supinskaya, his third wife, and they had gone to visit her relatives in the country at Solotcha, outside Ryazan, for a holiday. And it was from there that he sent us this masterpiece wrapped up in old brown paper as an unexpected gift. Like everything he did, it was absolutely brilliant. We decided to give the first performance in Gorky.
The first half of the programme consisted of the Festival Overture and the First Cello Concerto, which Shostakovich conducted. Then, in the second half, I conducted the Songs and Dances of Death in Shostakovich’s orchestration, with Galina as soloist.
Shostakovich and I travelled together to Gorky on the night train from Moscow which arrived at about five or six o’clock in the morning. Before the first rehearsal that morning, Dmitri Dmitriyevich was particularly anxious. He turned to me and said, ‘Slava, I’m not going, I’m not going to the rehearsal.’
‘What do you mean, you’re not going. We have to go!’
‘But I can’t, I can’t.’
I said to him, ‘No, we have to go.’
‘All right, then, but let’s have a little drink together – then perhaps I’ll go.’
So an hour before the rehearsal was due to start, we polished off half a litre of vodka. Afterwards I think I had a harder time playing the cello than he had conducting.
Dmitri Dmitriyevich conducted very well, very precisely and clearly. It’s true that beforehand both Guzman and I had rehearsed the orchestra so much that the musicians could have played the notes with their eyes shut.
After the success of this concert, it was decided to dedicate the second Festival46 in Gorky totally to Shostakovich’s music.47
On 14 October 1964 Nikita Khrushchev was removed from office by a vote of the Party Plenum. His successors, Leonid Brezhnev (who assumed the position of First Secretary of the Party) and Alexander Kosygin (appointed Chairman of the Council of Ministers), seemed faceless bureaucrats by comparison to the impetuous and earthy Khrushchev, and it took some time before the new regime showed its true colours.
To begin with, the leadership established as a priority the need to reform the backward economy and to solve the inherited problem of an agricultural policy in disarray. For this purpose it sought increased contacts and investment from the West. Secondly, under the conservative influence of such ideologues as Mikhail Suslov and Alexander Shelepin, it wished to reverse the recent trend towards liberalism. Aiming to drive home the message that it was not going to tolerate either literary freedom or political dissidence, the Party decided to make scapegoats out of the writers Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky. In February 1966, at a closed and flagrantly unfair trial, exceptionally harsh sentences were meted out to the two men.
But again the authorities had miscalculated, not reckoning with the angry reaction of the intellectual community. Over sixty members of the Writers’ Union remonstrated to the Supreme Soviet against the form of the closed trial, and the poet Alexander Ginzburg succeeded in compiling a record of the court proceedings which were published in ‘samizdat’. The authorities’ policy of intimidation was beginning to backfire.
But it was events in a satellite country that finally dashed any hopes for liberalization at home. The Soviet authorities, frightened by the repercussions of the freedoms granted under Alexander Dubˇcek’s government during the brief ‘Prague Spring’ of 1968, decided to send troops into Czechoslavakia in August that year. This wilful use of force was deeply shocking to the Soviet liberal community, who increasingly felt the need to express open protest. A small group of people (including Pavel Litvinov) staged a demonstration in Red Square against the invasion, and were promptly arrested for their pains.
The appearance of ‘samizdat’48 assumed an enormous importance. Through attention in the Western press, and Russian broadcasts by Western radio stations, writers had an opportunity to reach readers, and dissidents lived in the knowledge that their cases would receive publicity, and the hope that eventually the regime would be called to task.
This period in Soviet history is characterized by the authorities’ defensive attitude to cultural policy. In a void created by the conflicting desires to show a semblance of normality to the outside world, and rigidly to control the arts, there grew up a phenomenon of a ‘non-official’ culture. Art that was officially not tolerated – exhibitions, poetry readings, theatre and concert performances – was permitted in small halls and spaces, with word of mouth and hand-painted posters the only means of publicity. At the same time, officially tolerated fringe theatres, notably Lyubimov’s TAGANKA Theatre, succeeded in staging thought-provoking performances, using sub-text and subversive interpretation as a means of outwitting the censorship. Progressively, the real Soviet culture of the 1960s and 1970s functioned in this semi-underground way.
In the musical world, the official policy saw the extension of power to the conservative faction of the Union of Composers under the leadership of Tikhon Khrennikov, who continued the long-standing ‘struggle against modernism’. But a younger generation of ‘unofficial’ composers, including Schnittke, Denisov, Valentin Silvestrov and Gubaidulina, was gradually making a name for itself in the musical community, supported by performers who in the future would play their music abroad. Shostakovich’s position was outwardly unaffected by this situation. He continued to take an active part in the administrative duties of the Union of Composers, and to voice his loyalty to the Party in public. Ostensibly a figure of the ‘official’ establishment, Shostakovich didn’t fit into this scheme of things naturally. It was blatantly obvious that he disassociated himself inwardly from the official statements he was expected to sign and parrot in public. Yet nobody questioned the inherent morality of a work like the Thirteenth Symphony. But there was a growing mood of dissatisfaction with the position he assumed amongst the younger generation of composers. As they fought the constraints of the conservative forces at the Union, they expected – and didn’t necessarily receive – support from a figure whom they could not but admire, and in whose liberal sympathies they could not but believe.
The Leningrad composer SERGEI SLONIMSKY recalls Shostakovich in his capacity as First Secretary of the RSFSR Composers’ Union in various situations:
It was an autumn day in 1964. In the morning it was broadcast on the radio that Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev had been dismissed from all his posts and duties. Later on that day I met Shostakovich on Sofiya Perovskaya Street, where his sister lived, almost next door to my home. His lips were pursed in a barely discernible ironic smile.
‘Well, Sergei Mikhailovich, now we will most certainly enjoy an even better life?’
I chuckled out loud, and Dmitri Dmitriyevich’s smile broke into a broad grin, virtually baring his teeth.
Just a few years previously, after yet another Composers’ Congress,49 Khrushchev had given a splendid banquet at the Kremlin. It was attended by a throng of people, and all the musicians pushed their way forward to be nearer to the great leader. Grouped around him were Yuri Shaporin, Vano Muradeli and Konstantin Dankeyevich. Shostakovich stood somewhat to the side, listening quietly and with apparent indifference to the interminable speeches of ‘Nikita the Corncob’.
The Leader was instructing his People: ‘Well, if the music is half decent, you know, then I can just about listen to the radio. Something like the Ensemble of Violinists of the Bolshoi Theatre, or a good tune like “You Little Stream” or some other Ukrainian folksong.’
Here he added something in Ukrainian, and, pointing at Dankeyevich, said jovially, ‘Now, Konstantin is also a “Khokhol”50 – he understands me,’ and at this the tears streamed down Dankeyevich’s wide cheeks. Muradeli froze like the Town Governor in the dumb scene of Gogol’s Government Inspector. Shaporin cleared his throat, coughed and stepped aside, and Kabalevsky immediately appeared in his place.
Khrushchev continued: ‘But, on the other hand, if they transmit the kind of music, well, how shall I put it, music that resembles the croaking of crows …’
‘Ha-ha, ha-ha!’ a Leningrad composer and democrat standing beside me whooped right into my ear, and an awkwardly suppressed chorus of chuckles echoed around the hall. Khrushchev, lost in thought, gazed around at those standing around him. Suddenly his eyes rested on Shostakovich standing in the distance.
‘Now, Dmitri Dmitriyevich saw the light at the very beginning of the war with his … what d’you call it, ah, his Symphony.’ There was a stir of commotion amongst the elite. Khrushchev approached Shostakovich and shook his hand. Dmitri Dmitriyevich smiled politely but rather drily. Applause broke out. Suddenly, from across the table, the composer of popular songs, Lyudmila Lyadova, whisked over and threw herself at Shostakovich and kissed him.
‘Oh, Dmitri Dmitriyevich, how we all love you.’ And she was followed by others, and a flood of congratulations ensued which Dmitri Dmitriyevich received with the usual polite restraint.
That same year he had become First Secretary of the Union of Composers of the RSFSR. Khrushchev persuaded him to join the Party. And only shortly afterwards the same Khrushchev was angered by Shostakovich’s ‘Babi Yar’ from the Thirteenth Symphony. At the Leningrad Party HQ at Smolny a functionary of the OBKOM informed us with a smirk, ‘I sat next to Dmitri Dmitriyevich, and I saw how his hands trembled.’ I don’t doubt but that this man’s legs would have been shaking if the all-powerful leader had bestowed on him his attention and given him a similar dressing-down.
In the spring of 1964 Shostakovich decided to change the leadership of the Leningrad Union of Composers, and proposed that it should be headed by some younger musicians. He rang me and asked me to come to his room at the Evropeiskaya Hotel, where he was with his deputies Alexander Kholodilin and Sergei Balasanyan.
‘Sergei Mikhailovich, we want to put forward Andrei Petrov as the chairman of the Leningrad Union, and you as his deputy.’
My argument seemed perfectly rational: ‘Dmitri Dmitriyevich, I would rather you didn’t; besides which, my candidature will not be accepted by the OBKOM. After all I’m a formalist!’
At this last word a slight grimace distorted the Master’s serious face.
‘We want the best composers at the head of our Union. We wish to recommend you.’
I thanked him, but soon discovered that the OBKOM had indeed rejected my nomination, although they agreed to the candidature of Andrei Petrov as Chairman of the Union to replace Vasili Solovyov-Sedoi.51
From the mid 1960s Edison Denisov started to make his reputation in the West as the leading voice of a new generation of Soviet avant-garde composers. One of his first works to be played outside the Soviet Union was ‘Le Soleil des Incas’ for soprano and small ensemble, written in 1964.
Undoubtedly Shostakovich found Denisov’s music increasingly alien, although outwardly he continued to encourage him. Here Denisov describes how sometimes Shostakovich would lose his nerve and, instead of supporting the younger composers, take sides with the Union officials:
‘The Sun of the Incas’ was the first of my works to be performed widely abroad. It was an important work for me, as it was here that I started to speak my own musical language. Before that I had not found myself, and expressed myself in the musical language of others. It was in connection with this work that I had reason to be offended by Shostakovich’s behaviour for the first time in my life.
It was at his initiative that I presented this piece at the Secretariat of the Union of Composers. To my surprise, when the piece was examined and played, Shostakovich sharply criticized it, instead of lending his support as he had led me to expect. Afterwards I asked him why he did this.
‘Well, you see, Edik, when I walked into the hall, the first person I saw was Vasili Kukharsky, and, you know, I was frightened.’ I suppose it was an honest answer.
I remember another occasion at the Union of Composers, when Dmitri Dmitriyevich lent his prestige and name to a piece of business that he could not have approved. At this meeting the composer Roman Ledenyov proposed that Kirill Molchanov [an official composer of the old guard] should be removed from the directive council of the Composers’ Union. Shostakovich then motioned a counter-proposal that Molchanov should remain in his position. He would quite often read out lists with the names of approved Party candidates, and urge that we vote with Khrennikov.
On this occasion Khrennikov got up, and announced rhetorically, his voice rising in a frenzied crescendo: ‘There are two proposals, that of Roman Semyonovich Ledenyov, and that of the Winner of the Lenin Prize, the State Prize, People’s Artist of the USSR, Hero of Socialist Labour, Professor, our universally beloved and respected Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich …’ After this bombastic performance, thunderous applause broke out in the auditorium in the packed-out Hall of Columns. Of course Ledenyov’s proposal only received fifteen votes, and the rest of the Hall voted for Shostakovich.
I remember going to see Shebalin just after this happened, and he said, ‘I can’t understand Mitya. After all he could have simply not showed up, saying that he was ill. Why does he sully his name with such things?’52
Over the years, spasmodic reports circulated to the effect that Shostakovich was writing an opera on the Soviet ‘classic’ Quiet Flows the Don, rather in the same way as he had been forever embarking on a ‘Lenin’ symphony. But from January 1964 these press reports appeared with regular persistence, stating that Shostakovich was composing an opera based on the second part of Sholokhov’s epic novel, whereas Ivan Dzerzhinsky’s earlier opera of that name dealt with events from the first part of the book.
Between 1964 and 1966 Shostakovich himself made frequent statements on this subject, saying that he was about to or was already composing the music. Indeed, a contract for the opera was drawn up between the composer and the Bolshoi Theatre which announced plans to stage it in the 1966/7 season. Y. Lukin, a Sholokhov expert, produced a libretto (on which A. Medvedyev also collaborated) which Shostakovich accepted in October 1964. The composer met Sholokhov a few months earlier and announced his intention of going to visit the writer at his home ‘to breathe the air of the Don steppes, to meet the fellow-countrymen of the novel’s characters, to hear Cossack songs in their native surroundings and to glean advice from Sholokhov himself, the author of the immortal epic’.53
While Shostakovich continued to make public assurances that this most important work ‘would take up all of 1966, if not 1967’, by April 1966 he had confided in his friend and pupil, Boris Tishchenko, that his ‘enthusiasm for the project had evaporated’.54 By the summer of that year he had decided definitely not to continue (or start) work on the opera. It appears that no sketches or music for Quiet Flows the Don have survived.
Although during the 1950s Shostakovich had been employed by the Bolshoi Theatre as a consultant, his work was never staged there in his lifetime, with the exception of the short-lived production of Lady Macheth (December 1935–January 1936), which incurred the wrath of Stalin. Even in the 1960s the Theatre preferred the idea of commissioning a work that was ‘ideologically’ safe than of reviving his previous operas. Here the director, BORIS POKROVSKY, expresses his indignation at the Bolshoi Theatre’s blinkered attitude to Shostakovich’s operas:
I got to know Shostakovich in 1943, when I came to Moscow to work with the Bolshoi Theatre. I soon got in with a group of artistic people, including the conductor Samosud and the artists Vladimir Dmitriev and Pyotr Villiams. They introduced me to Dmitri Dmitriyevich. To start with our relationship was quite formal; Dmitri Dmitriyevich was very kind to me, and being a self-confident young man, I assumed this was normal. Only later did I realize how fortunate I was.
Before long, I felt that Dmitri Dmitriyevich had somewhat cooled in his attitude towards me. Then suddenly, one evening at a party, he came up to me, embraced me and seemed to be almost apologizing. Later I asked Dmitriev what all this was about. It turned out that Shostakovich had made enquiries about me: Dmitriev had vouched for me, saying, ‘Pokrovsky’s a very decent person.’
Dmitri Dmitriyevich exclaimed, ‘A decent person! How simply wonderful.’
Shostakovich’s greatest mistake – indeed it was a crime – was to leave his opera The Gamblers unfinished. I have staged the marvellous fragment that exists at the Moscow Chamber Theatre – it constitutes about a third of Gogol’s play.
Shostakovich wrote The Gamblers because he felt like it – it wasn’t commissioned and there was no project to stage it. However, in the Bolshoi Theatre there were persistent rumours, even firm assurances, that Shostakovich was writing an opera, Quiet Flows the Don, to celebrate some anniversary – or as a gift for the October Revolution. In fact the newspapers also carried these reports. One of the Bolshoi’s senior directors, Iosif Tumanov, told me many times that he was to direct it, and that Shostakovich was already composing it. Then Vishnevskaya would appear and say, no, Shostakovich was writing a quartet! I don’t think he ever wrote a note of this opera – but he did write forty minutes of music to The Gamblers!
After Shostakovich’s death I put on Katerina Izmailova at the Bolshoi Theatre, and I consider it the best work I ever did. It enjoyed considerable success with the public. But the reviews were damning. What’s more they were written by the so-called friends and heirs of Shostakovich – composers and musicologists who took upon themselves the right to judge. These included people I know myself, like Isaak Glikman and Yuri Levitin. The latter wrote an article accusing me of ‘destroying Shostakovich’s concept’. And there was a general outcry from these self-appointed heirs because I ‘demolished the Shostakovich tradition’ by staging the orchestral entr’actes in the same way as I staged the entr’actes and intermezzo in The Nose. Shostakovich approved these mise en scènes, saying that it gave a marvellous impetus and a unity of movement throughout the opera. He gave me his support, and I think, had he been alive, he would have allowed me to apply the same principle in Katerina Izmailova.
Those people who surrounded Shostakovich in his later years, who visited him in his home and today publish memoirs claiming the closeness of their relationship, these are the enemies of Shostakovich, not Stalin and Zhdanov. When it comes to understanding Shostakovich’s music, a sixteen-year-old boy with talent understands it more than any of the ‘friends’. You need a gift to understand Shostakovich, just as you do to understand Mozart, Bach or Beethoven.55
Shostakovich wished to return to the medium of chamber music. In a letter to Glikman dated 18 November 1961 he reported that he had completed a new string quartet : ‘Being very dissatisfied with it, in an excess of healthy self-criticism I burnt it in the stove. It’s the second case in my “creative practice” that I have pulled this trick: the first was in 1926, when I burnt all my manuscripts.’56
A year later Shostakovich talked in a radio interview of his current work on a new quartet, where he was evoking such images of childhood as ‘Toys and Excursions’.57 However the Ninth Quartet, as we know it, came into being only in May 1964. When Tsyganov asked Shostakovich if this was the same quartet as the one he had referred to two years ago, ‘he answered, “No; it’s a completely different work!”
‘“And what happened to that other quartet?”
‘“It’s in the waste bin,” Shostakovich replied.’58
A short fragment of a quartet movement recently discovered in the archives has now been identified as a sketch for a first movement of the intended ninth quartet.59 It is not known whether it dates from 1961 or 1962, and whether it refers to the ‘burnt’ manuscript version or the one ‘chucked in the bin’. We cannot even be sure if there were two or one ‘incompleted ninth quartets’. This first-movement fragment, edited and completed by Roman Ledenyov, was premiered by the Borodin Quartet in Moscow in January 2005.
It is becoming apparent from the number of unfinished manuscripts and working sketches coming to light in the archives that, contrary to the accepted legend, Shostakovich did not always write down his compositions as completed works, fully orchestrated and in need of no further correction. Like most composers he needed to work on his material and hammer it into shape. Many of the discovered manuscripts are ‘rough’ working sketches where Shostakovich initially jotted down in musical shorthand a skeletal outline of a work, noting the structural plan of a movement, or even of a whole composition. A working sketch of a complete symphony might fit on to one single page, where the composer sketched out the main themes, elements of a harmonic plan. Other sketches were more elaborate; some ‘unfinished’ manuscripts refer to extensive first versions of work in progress, which later were abandoned. Once he held the whole work in his head, he could write out the finished version into full score remarkably quickly.
The ninth quartet fragment opens with a loud unison theme of viola and cello, and a contrasting staccato theme in first violin. The homophonic writing and spare textures are generally uncharacteristic of the composer’s writing at the time. Apart from the main key of E flat, it bears little resemblance to the existing Ninth Quartet (Op. 117), which is one of the most ambitious of all Shostakovich’s five-movement chamber works. Shostakovich dedicated it to his wife Irina Antonovna, while its ‘partner’, the Tenth Quartet (completed in July 1964, two months later), was dedicated to Moisei Weinberg (who was keeping pace with Shostakovich in his quartet writing).
Both quartets are interesting for being transitional works, pointing to some of the stylistic developments in the composer’s late style. They are characterized by the cyclic element of thematically linked movements. Indeed the two works show a remarkable similarity in their actual themes, constructed with close intervallic spacing on the one hand or using large interval spans (sequences of fourths or fifths for instance) on the other. This latter device brings Shostakovich well on the road to creating twelve-tone rows as a melodic element in constructing themes or motifs. For him this proved the most attractive aspect of serialism. (Indeed towards the end of the finale of the Tenth Quartet, a new theme that is introduced (at fig. 76) is to all effects and purposes a twelve-tone row. Its thirteen notes include one repeated note.)
Atonality is increasingly an option hinted at, and with greatest effect in the fourth movement Adagio of the Ninth, where the creeping semitones of the first violin create an uneasy ambiguity until they transform themselves into the opening theme of the following movement. The Tenth Quartet sees a similar thematic link between the last movements, for here too the finale’s opening theme grows out of the previous Adagio (a magnificent passacaglia of elegiac melancholy).
The finales of both works are summings up, but of very different character. While the Allegro finale of the Ninth starts as it finishes, with enormous drive and energy, the Tenth’s fourth and last movement Allegretto starts in pianissimo, evoking a predominant atmosphere of restraint. In the coda he creates an aura of quiet, tender reminiscence, as themes from the whole work pass by in shadowy allusion.
Shostakovich’s muse was making up for the fallow year of 1963. Early in 1964 he had composed the score for Kozintsev’s film of Hamlet, and by September of that year he had completed a cantata for bass, chorus and orchestra, The Execution of Stepan Razin.
As far back as May 1963, the composer had stated his intention of writing a work using Evtushenko’s texts dedicated to the theme of man’s conscience. 60 His choice of text settled on excerpts of Evtushenko’s epic narrative poem The Bratsk Hydro-Electric Station, which dealt with Stepan Razin’s revolt and execution.
Shostakovich did not accept Evtushenko’s poem uncritically. He wrote to Isaak Glikman: ‘Its interesting that when I composed my Thirteenth Symphony, I was in absolute agreement with the poet’s every word. In The Execution of Stepan Razin there are lots of verses which stir up protest in me; it is as if I enter into polemics with this poetry.’61 Although Shostakovich discarded some lines, Evtushenko did not agree to his suggestions for actual changes in his verses.
The Execution of Stepan Razin was first performed under Kondrashin’s baton, in Moscow on 28 December 1964. History repeated itself on that occasion, when the bass soloist, Ivan Petrov, without any prior warning, failed to turn up at the morning dress rehearsal. Again it was Vitali Gromadsky who stepped in and sang that night. Although the cantata did not evoke the public furore of the Thirteenth Symphony, its official reception was cool, and its performance was met by total silence in the Soviet press.
Shostakovich’s new quartets fared better. The Beethoven Quartet gave the premiere of both the Ninth and Tenth Quartets in Moscow on 20 November, and in Leningrad the day after. The ‘Beethovens’ had come into Shostakovich’s life long before he himself started writing string quartets. It was a natural choice for the composer to give them the premieres of all his quartets; the two exceptions were the First, which they played six days after the Glazunov Quartet first performed it, and the Fifteenth.
Tsyganov recalled that in 1960, when rehearsing the Seventh Quartet, he informed Shostakovich that the recording company Melodiya
‘wishes us to record your last quartet.’
‘Last quartet?’ exclaimed Shostakovich. ‘When I’ve written all my quartets, then we’ll talk about my last quartet!’
‘And how many do you intend to write?’ enquired Tsyganov.
‘Twenty-four,’ he answered. ‘Haven’t you noticed that I never repeat a key? I’ll write twenty-four quartets, so as to have a complete cycle.’62
After more than thirty years together, changes started to take place in the ‘Beethovens” original formation. In 1964 the viola player, Vadim Borisovsky, retired. The following year the second violinist, Vasili Shirinsky, died. They were replaced by Fyodor Druzhinin and Nikolai Zabavnikov.
After Vasili Shirinsky’s death Shostakovich emphatically insisted that the Beethoven Quartet should carry on its existence at all costs, as it had acquired the status of a national institution. He himself responded to the loss of his friend and colleague by writing the Eleventh Quartet (completed on 30 January 1966) in Shirinsky’s memory. After that each member of the original ensemble received ‘his own’ quartet. Shostakovich dedicated the Twelfth Quartet to Dmitri Tsyganov, the Thirteenth to Vadim Borisovsky and the Fourteenth to the cellist, Sergei Shirinsky. With the latter’s death in 1974, during a rehearsal of the Fifteenth Quartet, the ‘Beethovens’ were unable to tackle the premiere, and it was given by the Tanyeev Quartet of Leningrad.
FYODOR DRUZHININ joined the Beethoven Quartet in 1964. Here he recalls his working relationship with Shostakovich:
I first heard Shostakovich’s music when I was a boy in Moscow during the war years. In the freezing Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire he played his Piano Quintet with the Beethoven Quartet. The audience were wearing fur coats. The hall was fairly empty, and I sat in the first balcony with my father, who had just returned from the Front after being wounded. Brought up on Mussorgsky, Glinka and Tchaikovsky, I listened to this new music as if under hypnosis, and my only wish was for it to go on for ever. From then on I tried never to miss a concert with a new work by Shostakovich, particularly his quartets and symphonies.
While still a schoolboy, I was present at the famous meeting at the Grand Hall of the Conservatoire in 1948, the most shameful moment of our cultural history. The civic punishment of such artists as Shostakovich, Shebalin, Prokofiev, Akhmatova and Zoshchenko, with ignorant nonentities cast as their executioners, had been prophesied in Shostakovich’s music. It’s our good fortune that, thanks to the abstract nature of music, they were unable to put the composer before a firing squad.
People who lived in Shostakovich’s epoch have no need to dig in the archives or to marvel at the evidence of repressions and executions and murders. It is all there in his music. Following the best traditions of Russian art, the murky and ugly side of terror, repression and suffering lead us finally to the tragic apotheosis of the Finale of the Fifth Symphony, and to the mysterious transformation into eternal light and conciliation in the Third Quartet and the Viola Sonata.
During the 1930s, fear became the uppermost emotion for Shostakovich and for our intelligentsia. It was a fear not only for their personal existence, although that was real enough, but a fear for their families, their work and their whole country.
When, after Stalin’s death, the lid was slightly lifted off our hellish cauldron, Dmitri Dmitriyevich went through an ordeal that was even more terrible for an artist: temptation by official fame and flattery, and identification with the prevailing ideology, which was alien to him.
Then the heavy hammer of official honours, belated glorification, dealt Shostakovich a much more terrible blow than all the criticism of the 1930s and 1940s. Taken under the aegis of the watchful Party eye of the Union of Composers, Shostakovich underwent the most anguished period of his life and art. He was painfully torn between a sincere desire to repay all the unsolicited honours through his work, and his real artist’s view of what was going on in the country.
It seemed to me that Shostakovich’s already battered and morbid psyche would buckle and shatter under this collective onslaught of ‘progressive forces’. And he was also beset by illness and old age, thoughts of death and the pointless waste of time entailed by his official duties. But fortunately, in the early 1960s, he met and married a charming and intelligent woman, Irina Supinskaya, who played a purifying and resurrective role for him throughout the rest of his life. It was at this time that I became a member of the Beethoven Quartet.
When my teacher, Vadim Borisovsky, became so ill that he could no longer play, I was asked by Dmitri Tsyganov to help them out by reading through with them Shostakovich’s two new quartets, the Ninth and the Tenth. Tsyganov told me that Shostakovich was impatient to hear what he had written. He gave me the copied parts at the Conservatoire at around lunchtime, and I was to come that evening at seven o’clock to the flat of Sergei Shirinsky for a play-through.
I arrived at quarter to seven, worried that I might be too early. However, when I entered the room, to my horror I saw not only all the other musicians in their places, but Shostakovich in an armchair right next to my empty place. This modest ‘sight-reading session’ turned out to be a three-hour endurance test. Not only was I replacing my teacher in the Beethoven Quartet, but I was having to sight-read sensing the presence of the composer beside me – and I mean sensing, as I didn’t dare look at Dmitri Dmitriyevich.
When we had played the last chord of the Ninth Quartet, Dmitri Dmitriyevich said in a satisfied voice, ‘Masters are playing.’ Thus my place in the Quartet was assured for the forthcoming premieres of these two quartets. From then on, most of our meetings with Dmitri Dmitriyevich took place during our lengthy rehearsals either in Sergei Shirinsky’s flat, or in Shostakovich’s study – his flat was in the same building.
The relaxed atmosphere of these rehearsals had a very beneficial effect on Shostakovich. He reacted painfully to the point of anguish to any external or alien presence. When he was amongst strangers, especially if there were present people ill-disposed towards him, his critics, other composers, or simply someone he didn’t know, his nervous tension never slackened. His body kept twitching, his mouth drooped dolefully, his lips trembled and his eyes exuded such oppressive tragic energy that he was frightening to look at. When we were alone he was a different person. (Guests were only invited at a later stage of rehearsal, when the work was almost prepared.) He was calm but concentrated, ready to smile and joke.
When we were preparing the Eleventh Quartet, dedicated to the memory of Vasili Shirinsky, we played it through to Dmitri Dmitriyevich in his study and then stayed on for a meal. This was early in 1966 and Shostakovich could still drink. At the table we drank to the memory of Vasili Petrovich.
A few days previously the funeral of Anna Akhmatova had taken place, and Shostakovich spoke warmly of her poetry. We all stood up to honour her memory. Then Dmitri Dmitriyevich suddenly changed the subject. Greatly agitated, he burst out, ‘What I want to say is that everyone writes music as well as he can, but why play dirty tricks on other people? They say we should never speak ill of the dead. But what I want to say is that certain people should be dug out of the grave so I could spit in their face, spit in their face!’ Then he thumped the table with his hand as if to indicate that this conversation was closed.63
Throughout his life Shostakovich suffered from bad health. His fragile constitution had been undermined in childhood and adolescence by cold and hunger, and by a bout of tuberculosis. With his sensitive, almost neurotic disposition, he tended to react physically to the outward circumstances of his life. Even before the first symptoms of a debilitating illness manifested itself in 1958, the composer spent much time in hospitals and sanatoria for cures and check-ups. Shostakovich spent much of 1957 and 1958 giving concerts, performing his
Second Piano Concerto in the Ukraine in December 1957, in Bulgaria in January 1958, and in Gorky on 4 and 5 May, and with further performances programmed in Paris later that month. He wrote to Glikman complaining, ‘I am playing the Second Piano Concerto here, and I’m playing it badly. For some reason my right hand seems to be dragging behind.’ After travelling to Rome, where on 12 May he was invested as a member of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Shostakovich went on to Paris where he performed and recorded his two piano concertos with André Clutyens in the last days of the month. The weakness of his hand caused him acute anxiety, and he had to overcome considerable pain to go ahead with the performances and recording. His difficulties were attributed to some form of muscular strain or tendonitis, a common enough complaint for a concert pianist. But when the problem didn’t go away, Shostakovich was admitted to hospital at the end of August, and kept there for observation for the best part of six weeks. On 6 September he wrote to Isaak Glikman describing his symptoms:
My right hand has become very weak. I often have pins and needles. I cannot lift heavy things. My fingers can grip hold of any suitcase, but I cannot hang a coat up on a hook. I find it difficult to brush my teeth. When I write, my hand gets tired. I can only play [the piano] slowly and pianissimo. I noticed this condition in Paris, where I was barely able to play my concerts. I just took no notice. The high priests of medicine are unable to answer my question as to what name to give this illness; they have condemned me to a stay in hospital.64
It was the first of many long stays in hospital (this time in the government clinic in Granovsky Lane in central Moscow). The treatment included massage to the hands, injections, and tedious exercises involving writing out infantile phrases like ‘Masha eats Kasha’. Unfortunately it had little effect, not least because the doctors were unable to make a diagnosis. The tedium of hospital regime was alleviated by reading, dreaming of hearing his ‘banned scores’ [Lady Macbeth and the Fourth Symphony] and, for two weeks of Shostakovich’s stay, by the company of Aram Khachaturian who was undergoing treatment for stomach ulcers.
During a further month’s treatment in hospital between February and March 1960, Shostakovich complained bitterly that ‘hospital life is intolerably boring’, all the more so since, for the rest, he felt completely well. He was beginning to be quite sceptical about the healing powers of the medical profession. On 11 February he wrote to Glikman, ‘I have lost the last iota of hope that my hand can be cured.’65 Two weeks later his optimism had returned, for the hand seemed to be getting better. ‘But if I get depressed or anxious,’ Shostakovich wrote, ‘then the sensation of weakness returns. Answer: avoid getting depressed and anxious.’66 At this stage he started to entertain serious doubts about his continued ability to perform the piano in public.
Later that year, at his son’s wedding in early November 1960, Shostakovich suffered a further calamity. His left leg suddenly gave way under him, and he fell and fractured it badly. He was now condemned to another long stay in hospital, returning home only on 27 December on crutches and with his leg in plaster. In February he was back for another two weeks’ treatment for his leg. Recovery was painfully slow. When, seven years later, he broke his other leg, Shostakovich remained visibly lame for the rest of his life. After this second fracture he reported stoically to Glikman: ‘We’re 75 per cent there: my right leg is broken, my left leg is broken, my right hand is damaged. All it needs is for me to hurt my left hand, and then 100 per cent of my extremities will be out of order.’67
Shostakovich’s health situation was further complicated by a series of other medical problems. He came to resent more and more the tedious stays in hospital, as well as the humiliations of illness, which made it difficult to walk and use his hand.
It was only towards the end of 1969 that the Leningrad doctor D. K. Bogorodinsky diagnosed Shostakovich’s condition as a rare form of poliomyelitis. In fact, as the composer’s son Maxim subsequently learnt from doctors in the USA, his father was suffering from a rare but devastating illness, ALS (or SLA in non-English-speaking countries), namely amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which is also variously identified as Charcott’s disease, Lou-Gehrig disease or motor neuron disease. In the early stages, the illness is very difficult to diagnose, and specifically in those days diagnosis could be achieved only through evaluating clinical records of the patient and excluding other hypotheses.
In effect ASL is a neuro-muscular pathology causing the destruction of the motor neurons, the nerve cells that govern movement. This results in the progressive weakening of the muscles of the extremities and later of the body trunk, and can lead to eventual paralysis, even effecting speech and swallowing. However, only certain physical muscles are affected, while the cognitive and sensorial faculties are left intact. Also the function of the principal organs (such as the heart, kidneys, bladder, intestines, and the sexual organs) remain unaffected. Given that ALS usually progresses very quickly, leading to death within five to ten years, Shostakovich showed remarkable resilience. With the help of his doctors and the devoted care of his wife and family, he bravely struggled with his infirmity, and remained mentally active, continuing to compose until the very last.
In view of the deteriorating condition of the right hand, from the early 1960s Shostakovich virtually stopped playing the piano in public. In February 1964 he played the Intermezzo of his Piano Quintet with the Borodin Quartet in Gorky. Then he decided as an exception to accompany the singers Galina Vishnevskaya and Evgeni Nesterenko at a concert in Leningrad on 28 May 1966 devoted to his own works, which included the first performances of ‘Five Romances on Texts from Krokodil’, and the ‘Preface to My Collected Works and a Short Reflection upon This Preface’, as well as the Leningrad premiere of the Eleventh Quartet. As the date approached, Shostakovich became increasingly nervous as to whether his right hand would cope with performing. Vishnevskaya remembers that on the night of the concert, Dmitri Dmitriyevich ‘was not only nervous, he was afraid – terrified that his hands would fail him.’68 Isaak Glikman remembers that the weather was unseasonably hot and humid, and that the hall was stifling. In addition, Nesterenko, himself suffering from nerves, twice failed to come in at the right place during the performance, causing the composer visible distress.69
The nervous strain had been too much for Shostakovich. The following night he suffered a serious heart attack. He spent the following two months in hospital, and on being discharged he was sent for further treatment and observation to a sanatorium outside Leningrad in Melnichny Ruchei for the month of August. By sheer coincidence Shostakovich was allocated the rooms that were once occupied by Andrei Zhdanov. On return home, he was forced to observe an invalid regime, and there were further hospital stays. Describing such a visit to Glikman, Shostakovich displays a mixture of stoicism and black humour worthy of Zoshchenko:
During my stay in hospital I was examined by Professors Michelson (a surgeon) and Schmidt (a neurologist). They are both extremely satisfied with the condition of my hands and legs. After all, the fact that I cannot play the piano and that I can walk up steps only with the greatest of difficulty has no importance. One need not play the piano, and one can avoid going up steps and stairs. One can just sit at home, there’s no need to traipse about slippery pavements and steps. Quite right: yesterday I went for a walk, fell over and banged my knee. Had I stayed at home this wouldn’t have happened. And as for everything else, things are also going excellently. As before, I can’t smoke or drink. There have been temptations. But my foolish terror is stronger than any such temptations.70
The composing process was so much part of his nature that Shostakovich was able to adapt to any surroundings, and continued writing in hospital. If the doctors forbade him to compose, then he read avidly, regarding reading as an active process of mental exercise, and not just a pleasant pastime. Many texts for his works were chosen while in hospital, including the verse set in the ‘Seven Romances on Poems by Alexander Blok’, and the poems used in the Fourteenth Symphony.
Shostakovich enjoyed celebrating birthdays and anniversaries. During the early months of 1966, looking towards his own sixtieth birthday, Shostakovich wrote three works – the Eleventh Quartet, the ‘Preface to My Collected Works and a Short Reflection Upon This Preface’ and the Second Cello Concerto. In the ‘Preface’ Shostakovich takes Pushkin’s ‘Story of a Rhymer’ as a starting point, and in a mood of subversive caricature goes on to cite a long list of his own titles and duties, delighting in self-parody. Aforetaste of this work can be found in the ‘Five Romances on Texts from Krokodil’ which, according to Isaak Glikman,71 were composed in one sitting and completed on 2 or 3 September 1965. These settings of aphoristic communications from the satirical journal Krokodil72 are full of skittish humour, having their antecedent in such works of the 1920s as Alexander Mosolov’s ‘Newspaper Announcements’. Shostakovich reported to Glikman that the songs made references to such varied sources as folklore, Tchaikovsky and the Dies Irae. As an ironic afterthought he wrote that it was written ‘according to the precepts of socialist realism’.73
Shostakovich saw the New Year of 1966 in at Zhukovka together with a close circle of friends, including Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya. While indulging in a game of ‘my favourite tune’, Shostakovich played a street song originating from Odessa, ‘Bubliki, Kupitye Bubliki’, which was to make an unexpected appearance in a new work later that year.74
The Eleventh Quartet was written during January 1966 and was completed on the 30th of the month. It is an apparently simple and accessible work, characterized by transparent textures (the predominant dynamic is piano) and the aphoristic nature of the themes. Through limiting and linking the thematic material, Shostakovich achieves the effect of hermetic reticence. Basically there are three thematic groups, the first with a prevalence of large intervals (fourths, fifths and sixths), the second based on the tight intervallic cluster of ascending semitone and descending tone, and the third being a staccato theme ending in a long upwards glissando. In the chorale theme that pervades the work Shostakovich appears to be awakening the ghost of Stravinsky (his Three Pieces for string quartet), and also the ghost of his own past, for the chorale is overlaid by the reappearance of the DSCH intervals (bars 5 and 6 of fig. 2 in the first movement). Many of the thematic motifs of the Eleventh Quartet find their way into the Second Cello Concerto, although transformed through added emotional weight and irony.
In its suite-like form of seven short movements the Eleventh Quartet is linked with two other chamber works: the early Op. 13 Aphorisms for solo piano, and the composer’s final Fifteenth String Quartet. It would seem that the titles of the two quartets are consciously borrowed from the Aphorisms – Recitative, Etude, Elegy are found in the Eleventh; Elegy, Serenade, Nocturne and Funeral March in the Fifteenth.
After completing the quartet, Shostakovich got down to composing a larger scale work. On 16 February he wrote to Glikman that he had started writing a Fourteenth Symphony, and wished to retire to Repino outside Leningrad so as to work undisturbed. Mercifully this would mean he missed the forthcoming Plenum of the Composers’ Union in Moscow, which he was expected to attend. In reality the symphonic work turned out to be his Second Cello Concerto, Op. 126, conceived for the ‘fabulous Rostropovich’.75 Later Shostakovich stated that the concerto could be described as a kind of ‘fourteenth symphony with solo cello part’.76
The three-movement concerto was completed on 27 April at the Nizhnaya Oreanda Sanatorium at Yalta in the Crimea.77 While the First Cello Concerto with its extrovert virtuosity was the perfect vehicle for Rostropovich’s dynamic personality, the Second Concerto is darker and more introspective, and philosophically more challenging. Again Shostakovich uses elements of cyclic thematism, but here the themes are characterized by their capacity for growth and development. The opening of the first movement Largo sees the cello embarking on a long monologue accompanied by low strings. As Rostropovich remarked, ‘Looking at the score, it seems nothing special, but the effect these opening pages have when heard in sound is overwhelming, and this is a mark of Shostakovich’s genius.’78
The second movement introduces the theme based on the Odessa ditty ‘Kupitye Bubliki’; Shostakovich remarked that it had just ‘slipped its own way’ into the piece.79 Its initial character is jaunty and lightly ironic, but by the time of its final appearance in the culminative tutti of the last movement it has acquired virulently menacing overtones. The horn’s prominent role in the First Cello Concerto is repeated in the Second, but this time the horns are doubled and used to great effect in the grotesque fanfares of the cadenza section that bridges the second and third movements. The solo cello takes up the idea in double-stopped fourths, and this interval is a predominant feature throughout the finale.
The last movement is characterized by an element of paradox in the structure, by unexpected thematic transformations and self-reference.80 The coda starts with a section of reminiscence of material from the first movement, and then turns volte-face to a sound world related to the imagery of a lost childhood. 81 Here to the jingling accompaniment of percussion the solo cello holds a long low D, and with this note brings the concerto to a close with a small crescendo. The effect is not so much of an ending as an unanswered question which hangs in frozen suspense.
The Concerto was given its first performance on Shostakovich’s sixtieth birthday at the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire, with Svetlanov conducting and the dedicatee as soloist.
While officially convalescing at home, Shostakovich wrote the Seven Romances on Poems by Alexander Blok for soprano and piano trio, his first composition after suffering a heart attack in May 1966. It was completed on 2 February 1967, and intended for Vishnevskaya, Oistrakh and Rostropovich. Shostakovich hoped to be able to tackle the piano part himself, and he wrote it bearing in mind his now limited capacities.
The work occupies a special place in his vocal output for its quality of personal confession, ranging from the intimacy of ‘Ophelia’s Song’, an invocation of Shostakovich’s native city of St Petersburg, stormy premonitions of destruction and concluding with a hymn to the therapeutic power of music.
MSTISLAV ROSTROPOVICH recalls the genesis of these two important works by Shostakovich:
The Second Cello Concerto was, like the First, written without a commission, and came as a surprise for me. But for the first time in years, Shostakovich showed me the piece before it was completed. As a rule Dmitri Dmitriyevich never even mentioned a work until it was finished, whereas Prokofiev showed me what he wrote virtually bar by bar, delighting in each new note! In Shostakovich’s case, I don’t know who else can boast of such an honour, except maybe Mravinsky or Isaak Glikman. On this occasion I was even able to give Dmitri Dmitriyevich one piece of clever advice, which he made use of.82
In general I never dared to offer any advice to Shostakovich, as I knew that I hadn’t achieved sufficient stature myself. Once Prokofiev said to Myaskovsky, ‘Nikolai Yakovlevich, you need to be watered.’ Afterwards I asked Prokofiev what he had meant by this. He answered, ‘He’s like a flower; if he’s watered, perhaps he might grow.’ In this sense, I knew that I needed watering if I were ever to be able to enter into discussion with a genius.
All the works that Shostakovich wrote for me and for Galina appeared spontaneously. Possibly you could say that the exception were the Seven Romances on Poems by Alexander Blok. I had asked Dmitri Dmitriyevich to write some vocalises which Galina and I could perform together. When I made this request, he made no response. When he had finished the cycle, he said to me, ‘Slava, you understand, you see, I wanted to satisfy your request – I found some suitable texts to set. And I wrote the first song as you wanted, “Ophelia’s Song”, for voice and cello. But then I started the second song with a whacking great pizzicato on the cello, and I realized that I didn’t have sufficient instruments to continue, so I added the violin and piano.’
Shostakovich in general never made any sketches for his compositions. He held the whole preparatory process in his head. Then he sat down at his desk, and without ever touching the piano, he simply wrote down the complete work from beginning to end. He wrote so fast that the urgency of the compositional process is tangibly evident in his uneven and jerky handwriting.83
VENYAMIN BASNER describes how Shostakovich wrote the Blok songs after recovering from illness and a creative block:
Dmitri Dmitriyevich often asked advice from performers and composers, although he knew what he was doing better than any of us. It never ceased to surprise me. In his later years, we were very close friends indeed, and he used to telephone me and consult me too.
‘Venya, I hope it’s not too late, you’re not asleep are you? What do you think, can the cor anglais manage those high notes?’
It was ridiculous for him to be consulting me, but I realized that he, too, liked reassurance in regard to his ideas. On that occasion he was writing the Eleventh Symphony, where there is a long solo for cor anglais.
‘Do you think it’s worth a go, will it work?’
‘Of course, Dmitri Dmitriyevich, it’ll sound wonderful.’
He knew it without me telling him. I remember him similarly seeking my advice when he was orchestrating Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death.
Dmitri Dmitriyevich also valued advice at rehearsals. He liked a friend to come to the rehearsal and sit and follow the score beside him. I myself must have attended all the rehearsals of his new works from the Tenth Symphony onwards. He would make a lot of notes, usually on the back of a packet of ‘papirosi’. His comments concerned the dynamics and balance – something might sound too intense or, on the contrary, might get lost in the texture. Dmitri Dmitriyevich always prepared his scores meticulously, to the extent of marking in all the bowings in the string parts. Although he was a pianist himself, he nevertheless demanded that these bowings should be observed.
Shostakovich never addressed his comments directly to the orchestral musicians. With his unfailing politeness, he passed on his requests through the conductor, Evgeni Mravinsky.
I heard many of Shostakovich’s works for the first time before they reached rehearsal stage, when he played them through on the piano, sometimes for the very first time ever. I remember the particular instance of the Seven Romances on Poems by Blok. They were written a few months after Dmitri Dmitriyevich had suffered a heart attack, while playing a concert in Leningrad. He had to spend a long time in hospital, before being allowed home to Moscow. Furthermore, his doctors forbade him to appear in public for several more months.
It was the time of his sixtieth birthday celebrations, when the Second Cello Concerto was given its first performance by Rostropovich. Despite the doctors’ instructions to the contrary, he insisted on attending that concert.
I was in regular contact with him during this period. I know that he was very depressed, because, as he told me at the time, he was suffering from a ‘composer’s block’, and for several months he felt ‘outside’ music. The doctors had also forbidden him to smoke or drink. His morale was at rock bottom, because there was nothing he hated more than not being able to write. All his attempts to compose were futile.
One day I came to Moscow, and, as was my habit, I rang him first thing at his dacha in Zhukovka. He said, ‘Venya, how wonderful that you’re in Moscow. Can you come out here at once, this very moment, without delay?’
I said that I’d be down as soon as I could. I arrived to find him in excellent spirits, walking up and down. He was on his own, as Irina Antonovna had gone away for a few days. He greeted me with these words: ‘I’ve just finished a new work.’
Shostakovich was always tremendously happy after completing a new composition. He told me that the idea of this work came to him when he was still in hospital, recovering from his heart attack. Although he carried the idea with him, since then he had been unable to compose. He had started to doubt himself, suspecting that perhaps his talent had dried up.
But that day, as soon as I walked through the door he said, ‘Listen, you’re not too tired, are you? Let me play this new work through for you.’
And he sat down at the piano and sang through those wonderful Blok songs. I was thrilled and amazed by the music, and he was delighted to see my genuine pleasure.
He then told me, ‘Three days ago, Irina Antonovna left the house. I was alone. I opened a cupboard, and, lo and behold, there on the bottom shelf was half a bottle of brandy. She had hidden all the drink in the house, but by chance I discovered this bottle. And, you know, I had this sudden urge to drink, which I couldn’t resist, so I had a glass. And you know, it was so good that I sat down and everything came to me at once, and I finished the work in three days.’
Certainly, I rarely saw him as happy as on that day. He said that from now on he was going to ignore the doctors’ advice. One thing is certain though, he never took up smoking again, although he allowed himself the odd glass of spirit.84
Shostakovich had endless curiosity about music, and listened avidly to new works by composers good and bad alike. Although he lent his support and encouragement to his colleagues, there were few composers of his stature with whom he enjoyed a close rapport. Whereas his long-standing friendship with Vissarion Shebalin will have provided Shostakovich with opportunities for professional discourse and creative stimulus, his links with Sergei Prokofiev and Benjamin Britten merit special attention.
After Prokofiev returned permanently to the USSR in 1936, he and Shostakovich established a somewhat formal relationship based on mutual respect. Their attitude towards each other’s music was coloured by no little ambiguity. Shostakovich regarded Prokofiev as an uneven composer, although he held certain of his works in the highest regard. For instance, he passionately loved Prokofiev’s opera Duenna, and he valued War and Peace highly enough to agree to orchestrate a fragment of the last act (at Rostropovich’s request) for the 1969 Bolshoi Theatre production (which Rostropovich conducted).
OLEG PROKOFIEV, the composer’s son, was born in France, but returned with his parents to Russia aged nine. In 1941 his parents separated, and Sergei Prokofiev married Mira Mendelssohn-Prokofieva, the librettist of his opera War and Peace. Oleg and his brother lived with their mother.
Oleg Prokofiev remembers falling under the spell of Shostakovich’s music during the war years, when his mother took him to rehearsals of the Seventh Symphony. He attended the Moscow premieres of both the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies, and understood their acute relevance to the situation in the Soviet Union:
I never spoke to my father about my fascination with Shostakovich’s music. I think that this happened because when I spoke to him about music and composers, which was rarely, I was older, and already interested in different music. I also might have felt instinctively that in a way my father and Shostakovich were ‘in different camps’ and I shouldn’t mention it. And yet the camps were not so different when, in 1948, they were all labelled a bunch of ‘composers writing formalistic, decadent music, which is against the People’, and so on.
It is difficult to imagine how the general public tacitly accepted this opinion. In any case, I just remember how two months later, during the May Day Demonstration Parade, I stumbled upon the oldest son of the composer Shebalin in the crowd, and we shared our grievances, lamenting the ugliness and absurdity of all the slanders and accusations addressed at our fathers and other composers. We were surrounded by a crowd from which it was impossible to get away, so we did not drop too many names, and used a kind of Aesopean language. It was a beautifully warm, sunny day, and an atmosphere of festivity prevailed. This somehow made our conversation even more poignant.
Despite the fact that my father and Shostakovich found themselves ‘in the same boat’ – and a rather sinking one at that – their relationship was not an easy one. There was neither friendship nor natural communication between them. When one reads the few letters that they exchanged, one is struck by a mixture of polite respect and indifference (each of them ignore all the ‘friendly remarks’ about their music).
The only actual meeting which I witnessed between my father and Shostakovich happened in 1950. It was the first performance of Prokofiev’s Cello Sonata in the Small Hall of the Conservatoire. As it happens, it was probably the only time when just the two of us went to a concert together. My father was not feeling very strong after another bout of illness. The Sonata was played in the first half of the concert, so after congratulating the performers, Rostropovich and Richter, we decided to leave. In the empty foyer Shostakovich approached my father and started speaking to him.
‘I would like to congratulate you, Sergei Sergeyevich, on the wonderful Sonata that you have written.’
‘Thank you, Dmitri Dmitriyevich, but really it’s nothing special. It was an old idea. I have just put together a few bits and pieces.’
Shostakovich, suddenly embarrassed, pattered on, ‘Oh no, Sergei Sergeyevich, you shouldn’t diminish its value, it’s a real masterpiece, I assure you.’
My father was embarrassed too, but also pleased. ‘Thank you … but … no, it’s just a trifle.’
And so they went on for some time along these lines, both trying to maintain this extremely courteous and self-deprecating, humble line of conversation. What struck me most was the extraordinary contrast of their physiques and complexions. Two totally different characters united in their respectful uneasiness!
My next close encounter with Shostakovich took place three or four years later, after my father had died. Stalin had also died, and this was the reason for the meeting, as things were beginning to change in a dramatic way. My mother, who had been arrested in 1948, a week after the Zhdanov Decree on Formalism in Music, was languishing in a concentration camp in the North Urals and needed help. The first rumours were circulating that it might now be possible to plead for her release (something unthinkable before). In fact there was talk of people already having been freed on grounds of ‘unjustified accusations’. My brother and I thought that Shostakovich, as the most prominent Soviet composer, could help us in this task.
We went to see him in his flat on Kutuzovsky Prospect. He received us without ceremony, dressed casually and wearing slippers in what seemed an enormous sitting room by Moscow standards. In fact our conversation took place right in the middle of the room, which made us feel a bit uneasy.
Without any preamble, we went straight to the point. Shostakovich listened to us with great attention and characteristic intensity. Yet at the same time he never seemed to stop moving. He would continually change his position on the chair, as if he never felt comfortable, crossing one leg over the other, then swapping legs; then a slipper would fall off, and he would try and pick it up from the floor and put it back on; then he would drop it again. Occasionally he would try to light a cigarette, but matches kept breaking, and the cigarette would refuse to light, and so he would take a new one, but couldn’t find the packet immediately. This went on throughout our interview.
Surveying the large room, with its two grand pianos covered with dark material, I could not help thinking of a story about Shostakovich which circulated in Moscow at that time. Apparently, one evening a friend dropped by, and on entering this room he found it in darkness, except for the corner where Shostakovich was sitting at a table illuminated by a single lamp. He was reading a book, which he rather awkwardly tried to conceal on seeing his friend.
‘What are you reading?’ his friend asked.
‘Oh, nothing interesting,’ was the answer.
When later Shostakovich had to leave the room for a minute, his friend rushed over to the corner and found behind the table the book he had been reading. It was the official – and only existing – biography of Stalin.
I have to say that Shostakovich was very willing to help us. He promised to do whatever was in his power, and we left the house with more hope. In fact, he tried to help so many people that eventually, because he had written such a lot of letters to the government, less and less attention was paid to his pleas, which were considered by and large to be an expression of his ‘artistic eccentricity’.85
The only Western composer with whom Shostakovich entered into a relationship of genuine friendship was Benjamin Britten. Shostakovich claimed that had it not been for the language barrier, they would have become close friends. He intensely admired Britten’s War Requiem, placing it on a level with Mahler’s Song of the Earth.86 The two composers met in London in 1960, when seated together in a box at the Royal Festival Hall to hear Rostropovich perform Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto.
From then on Rostropovich was instrumental in nurturing the friendship between the two composers. Exchange visits were arranged between Aldeburgh and Moscow. Britten first visited Moscow on a British Council Tour in March 1963. A year later, he was back again to conduct the world premiere of his Cello Symphony with Rostropovich as soloist.87 Thereafter Britten and Peter Pears visited Moscow and Leningrad with concert tours on several other occasions.
While Rostropovich was a frequent visitor to the Aldeburgh Festival (where on one occasion he performed the Shostakovich Sonata with Britten at the piano), Shostakovich managed to visit Britten at his Aldeburgh home only once, in 1972.
Britten and Pears also came on two private visits to the Soviet Union as a result of personal invitations from Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya. Thus they spent a large part of the summer of 1965 (from 3 August to 4 September) in Armenia, where concerts were arranged in Yerevan and where they stayed – at the Shostakoviches’ suggestion – for the most part in the beautiful surroundings of the Dilizhan Composers’ Retreat. At the end of their holiday, they paid a brief visit to the Pushkin Museum in Mikhailovskoye, near Pskov. Britten and Pears, at Rostropovich’s invitation, also spent a ten-day winter holiday in Moscow and Leningrad. They arrived in Moscow on 24 December 1966, and spent the New Year with the Rostropovich family. On Christmas Day Britten and Pears gave an inspired performance of Schumann’s Dichterliebe and Britten’s Michelangelo Sonnets at the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire, which Shostakovich attended.
This programme was repeated in Leningrad on 28 December. The day after, Britten and Pears visited the Hermitage, where they were deeply moved by Rembrandt’s portrait of the Prodigal Son. As Pears reported in his diary,88 it then became obvious that it should be the subject for the next church parable. The resulting Prodigal Son Op. 81 was to be dedicated to Shostakovich.
Peter Pears kept a diary record of his visit. Here he describes how he and Britten celebrated Christmas at Rostropovich’s Moscow flat, and saw in the New Year of 1967 at his dacha in Zhukovka outside Moscow:
Christmas dinner at Slava’s … The Russian Orthodox Christmas remains in the middle of January (hence no church bells audible in these days), but the Orthodox Soviet Atheists are only interested in the New Year. All Russians love Christmas trees however, and Father Christmas (if not Santa Claus) is in evidence everywhere. At Slava’s there was no tree, but the dinner table was brilliant with candles, and the chandelier over the table (a very beautiful old one bought ‘from a very old woman in Leningrad’) sparkled. Dmitri and Irena Shostakovich were there, punctual as always, and we exchanged presents … We sat down to a splendid spread, with an excellent goose, and talked of many things. Shostakovich in good form, talkative, nervous, Irena gentle, quiet, a marvellous foil for him. After dinner, we produced a specially brought pack of Happy Families (not the old original illustrations alas!) Slava had been champion at Aldeburgh, Christmas 1965, but this time in Moscow it was Dmitri who triumphed. We all enjoyed it, a great success, much laughter, every breach of ‘Thank you ver’ much’ pounced on and punished.
Talk about Stravinsky and the drivelling muck written about Dmitri by Nabokov,89 etc. Ben tells of his recent dream of Stravinsky as a monumental hunchback pointing with quivering finger at a passage in Ben’s Cello Symphony – ‘How dare you write that bar?’ Dmitri quickly excited and depressed. We drank healths and break up not too late, and back to our orange suite and the too short bed and the pillows stuffed with woollen pebbles, and a deep, deep sleep.
Last night, was, as expected, a great occasion and many preparations were made. The idea was that we had the first course (hors d’oeuvres etc.) chez Dmitri, the next, hot, at Slava’s, and the sweets at Dmitri’s opposite neighbour’s, Professor D.90 whose speciality ‘ist mit Kochende Wasser zu tun’ (Slava’s description of an atomic scientist). The Prof. has a friendly capable wife, a pretty French-speaking daughter and perhaps a sister, anonymous.
We were summoned for 10.00 pm at Dmitri’s, we were of course late. The surprise was a special showing of an ancient copy of ‘The Gold Rush’ upstairs in someone’s bedroom. (It is the most wonderful film and full of superb sophisticated photography – don’t forget the Chaplin-into-Hen sequence). We had a quick nip of vodka before, and the film lasted exactly the right length of time (until 11.50) when with champagne bottles in hand we went out to the brightly lit Christmas Tree and toasted the New Year to the Soviet National Anthem, and went around kissing one another, the Shostakoviches, the Professor and his family, Dmitri’s daughter, Galya, and her very odd beatnik husband, and us. Next came a meal around a long table groaning with drink and eats, and presents (indoors needless to say). We each got some cognac or vodka, a false nose (not expected to be worn for more than a minute or two) and, later, a score of Dmitri’s recent ‘Stepan Razin’91 (Evtushenko) for Ben, and a record of the same for me.
At this point Dmitri, tired, and with a recent heart attack in mind, was packed off to bed, and we came back to ‘ours’, where Galya, Ben and Slava made a little music while our meal was being prepared. Boiled Soodak (fish) with an egg-sauce, simple and suitable. And then (2 am) we went over to the Prof.’s for tea and sweet things – jolly good, too.
There was a rather amusing contrast between the houses and their owners: (i) Dmitri and the sweet, very gifted, tactful Irene, with a house varying from too much clutter to apparent discomfort. She is in her 20’s, he just 60, twice a widower: his children are older than she, I fancy.
(ii) Slava and Galya with tremendously expensive gadgets, chandeliers from Venice, four or five American fridges, which don’t work, cupboards full of hair-dryers and electric toasters.
(iii) The Prof. who is obviously a V.I.P. living like an Edwardian bourgeois with nice Persian rugs, discreet and well-arranged lampshades, small dark pictures, a small grand piano. Madam Prof. is Ukrainian and specializes in rich Ukrainian cakes.
At about 3.30 we called it a day and went back through the crisp night snow-white to bed. Not a sound before 9.30 am, then creaks, whispers, and slow emergences towards the bathroom, followed by tea, or breakfast (untouched) upstairs at 11 or so.
News came that Dmitri expected us for lunch at 2. We insisted on a walk, sunny, but very cold, among other reasons for the sake of the endearing dog JOVE JOFF, pronounced Dgoff, a young highly intelligent Alsatian, who is tied up outside even in this snow (he has a cosy little Datchya) because indoors he is too big and too incontinent. He adores these walks and loves everyone except Dmitri Shostakovich’s beatnik son-in-law who, by the way, is not so cretinous as he looks, speaks reasonable slow English and loves ‘drizzle’. D.S. loves the winter and hates the summer – too many mosquitoes. (Remember this!)
For lunch chez D.S. we had (as on our previous post-Armenian visit) exactly the same menu as the night before, and in due course tramped home to sleep, summoned to meet again at 7 pm at the Prof.’s for ‘some tea and a little eat’. We couldn’t reach the Prof.’s before 8.15, to find D.S. and daughter Galya + Prof. + Frau Prof. playing the cardgame called KEENK (?King), a rather dull subversion, with variants of whist. In the other half of the parlour, television was intruding senselessly, for the sole benefit of a non-speaking Chekhov character, (an aunt of Mrs. Prof.’s cousin?) who stared non-stop at it and to whom we were never introduced. After two hours (?) of KEENK, watched with growing impatience by Ben (he was horrified to see D.S. part with 12 roubles to the Prof.) the hint was taken and we sat down to tea, cognac, wine, brawn, ham, and Ukrainian cakes. D.S. rather soon disappeared; we sat on and finally got away at 10, and in furious despair Ben called for ‘Winterreise’. I saw what he meant, and it was a very good cleanser for the palate and the mind … we sang the first half straight through to our dear Galya, Aza,92 and Slava. This was as much as I could manage, without practice and with a furious tummy-ache, and in spite of Ben’s sulks, refused the second half.
Off up the icy snow – safe to the flat. Before this, we had looked in, at Slava’s (and Irene Sh.’s) suggestion, at the final rehearsal of Dmitri’s Thirteenth Symphony, the one to texts by Yevtushenko (including ‘Babi Yar’ – the passionate anti-semitic poem). The performance is tonight, Kondrashin and the Moscow Philharmonic. Owing to our late start, we could only hear some of the last movement, to a text (Baritone Solo and Bass Chorus – 60 of them) which contrasts Galileo with a colleague who also knew that the earth revolves round the sun but, on account of his large family, did not allow himself to say so. ‘Give me a career like Pasteur, Galileo or Tolstoi (Chorus: which Tolstoi? Solo: Leo!)’ (There was a ghastly career-Soviet-novelist Alexei Tolstoi). It ended very simply, very beautifully, strings, solo string, a bell – really the work of a master – how we wish we could have heard it all.93
Britten and Pears visited Moscow and Leningrad once more for the Days of British Music in April 1971. In Moscow they were the guests of the British Ambassador, Sir Duncan Wilson. Here his daughter, ELIZABETH WILSON, recalls various encounters with Shostakovich during those days:
In Moscow Britten conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in a concert at the Conservatoire Hall where his Piano Concerto and his Cello Symphony were programmed with Sviatoslav Richter and Rostropovich as the respective soloists. Shostakovich came to that concert, and he also attended a private concert that Britten and Pears gave at the Embassy Residence, where the artists performed a group of Schubert lieder and Britten’s Winter Words. (I am sure that the white Daneman piano in the grand ballroom of the Embassy has never before or since produced such a subtle and beautiful range of sound!)
But the two composers met twice again in less formal circumstances. A ‘rehearsal’ performance of Shostakovich’s recent Thirteenth Quartet was arranged at Dmitri Dmitriyevich’s flat on Nezhdanova Street for Britten and Pears’ benefit. I accompanied them as chauffeur and interpreter, mainly so that they could rid themselves of the official Soviet interpreter who had been allotted to them. Ben had taken against her, after noticing the paralyzing effect she had on sensitive Soviet citizens.
We were welcomed at the door by Shostakovich, and sat down in the adjoining study where the ‘Beethovens’ were already assembled. To our dismay, the official interpreter arrived unbidden – proof that the Embassy walls had ears of their own, as nobody had told her the time and place of this meeting. Still, she was unable to mar this occasion – an exclusively musical experience. We listened in tense silence to the Beethoven Quartet perform this extraordinary music – its effect was all the more powerful because of the intimacy of the occasion – indeed, we were seated almost on top of the performers.
The second occasion was at a small gathering at Rostropovich’s flat in the next-door building. Britten had just completed his Third Suite for Cello Solo, and had brought it to Moscow as a present for the cellist. That day he was to play the Suite through for him on the piano. Shostakovich and his wife, Peter Pears, Susan Phipps and myself made up the rest of the audience.
The effect of the Suite was all the more profound for its having been written with a keen awareness of the harassment Rostropovich was recently suffering on account of his open support of Solzhenitsyn. The work, based as it is on Russian themes, was a manifest tribute to a Russian patriot.
When Britten had finished playing, he got up from the piano amidst acclamations of ‘Bravo’. He appeared to disclaim all credit for what we had just heard, shrugging his shoulders in embarrassment. With a perplexed expression, he apologized for his inadequate performance and for having played the music too fast. At this Shostakovich chipped in and said, ‘Yes, yes, Ben, we composers always tend to play our music too fast …’
Dmitri Dmitriyevich went on to make a point about the Kontakion (‘Rest with All the Saints’) from the Orthodox Liturgy which Britten uses as one of the Suite’s themes; all the themes are stated in their pure form at the end of the work, after a set of variations.
Shostakovich knew another version of the melody, using a B flat rather than a B natural, and questioned the source of the variant that Britten had used. Ben was very upset: ‘Of course, Dmitri must be right – and now what am I going to do?’ (here he addressed Peter Pears) ‘I can change the theme, but what about the preceding variations …? I’ll have to rewrite the whole thing.’
Seeing his agitation, Dmitri Dmitriyevich tried to calm Ben down, and started apologizing profusely, saying it didn’t matter, no doubt there were at least two versions in existence, only he was familiar with the other one. Throughout these exchanges Rostropovich displayed an excitement and enthusiasm, which nevertheless contained a hint of disappointment; Britten had written a series of marvellous solo works for cello, whereas Dmitri Dmitriyevich didn’t seem to be writing any new chamber work for cello yet. The implication was clear enough, but, alas, these hints went unheeded.
When Britten returned to England, he confirmed with authorities from the Russian Orthodox Church that his version of the Kontakion was generally accepted. However, in deference to Shostakovich, Britten gives the two versions of the Kontakion in the published edition of the Suite, thereby leaving the choice to the performer. Like Shostakovich, he didn’t believe in changing what he had written.94
In his later years Shostakovich was increasingly drawn to the intimate world of chamber music. Not only do his later works (starting with his Ninth Quartet) have what Alfred Schnittke calls the quality of ‘philosophical lyricism’,95 but they were designed as a vehicle for self-discovery and private confession. In this Shostakovich seemed to be relinquishing the public world of the large symphonic canvases, where he spoke from a moral stand representing the voice of civic conscience.
Moreover, as if to refute his increasing physical infirmities, Shostakovich was to show an infinite capacity for renewal in the sphere of chamber music, together with a youthful flexibility in his ability to absorb and rework new influences.
This predilection for intimate musical forms went hand in hand with a need to surround himself with an intimate circle of performers. After the bitter lessons of the Thirteenth Symphony, Shostakovich preferred to write for trusted friends. Having composed his two most recent works for Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya, Shostakovich went on to dedicate his next work, the Second Violin Concerto, to his old friend David Oistrakh.
Whereas the First Cello Concerto closely followed the scheme of the First Violin Concerto, this time it was the Second Cello Concerto that served as a model for the Second Violin Concerto. Written in May 1967 it was intended as a sixtieth birthday present for the great violinist, but the composer had anticipated the celebration by one year. However, it is unlikely that Shostakovich, with his extremely accurate memory, actually muddled the date of Oistrakh’s birth. In probability he had already conceived the piece and did not want to delay writing it.
Oistrakh remarked on some of the peculiar features of the work: the extreme awkwardness of the C sharp minor key for a string player, and other technical instrumental problems, such as the double stopping, which at first sight appeared insurmountable. But Oistrakh realized that Shostakovich knew exactly what he was after, and had a precise understanding of the violin’s possibilities.96
The Second Concerto sees a return to the classically conventional three-movement form. With its sparse orchestral textures and enigmatic character, the work places the violin in the centre of the drama, a protagonist of lyrical pathos. The middle movement Adagio in particular achieves haunting beauty in its themes, where the superb orchestration sees some interesting and highly effective combinations of violin with horn and high woodwind. The rondo finale harks back to the burlesque rhythms of his First Concerto, but its mood of vigorous energy rings hollow after the pervading melancholy of the other two movements. The horn and timpani (evoking their important role in the outer movements of the First Cello Concerto) help to bring the piece to a positive conclusion.
The Second Violin Concerto was first performed in Moscow on 26 September 1967, the day after Shostakovich’s birthday, by the dedicatee as soloist under Kondrashin’s direction.97 The success of the concerto was perhaps overshadowed by the next important premiere of the ‘Seven Romances on Verses by Alexander Blok’ on 23 October, performed by Vishnevskaya, Oistrakh and Rostropovich, with Moisei Weinberg standing in for Shostakovich at the piano. (Despite the ‘easy’ piano part, Shostakovich was never able to perform the work.) The Blok cycle was a work whose immediate and heartfelt appeal ensured its place in the repertoire of musicians worldwide.
These two works stood in marked contrast to the short symphonic poem ‘October’ which the composer tossed off during his summer vacation – a formal offering for the pompous celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution – and an easy substitute for the long-promised and never commenced opera ‘The Quiet Don’. ‘October’ is generally regarded as one of Shostakovich’s most abject failures, whose hollow rejoicings make ‘The Song of the Forests’ sound sincere in comparison. The composer’s son Maxim, a recent graduate from Rozhdestvensky’s conducting class, directed its premiere, on 16 September 1967. (This was partly in compensation for his not having been entrusted with the responsibility of the Second Violin Concerto’s first performance.)
Shostakovich had to listen to all these premieres over the radio (or on tape recorders) from his hospital bed, for he had broken his left leg early in September, a major and depressing setback for him. While in hospital he succeeded in writing music for Arnshtam’s film Sofiya Perovskaya from the chronometric scheme without recourse to any viewing facilities.
In the meantime, Shostakovich had not forgotten another violinist friend. On 11 March 1968 he wrote to Dmitri Tsyganov from Repino: ‘Dear Mitya! Tomorrow is your sixtieth birthday. I have just completed a quartet and ask you not to refuse the honour of accepting my dedication to you.’98 The work in question, the two-movement Twelfth Quartet, represented an open acknowledgement of Shostakovich’s interest in serial techniques. But whereas in his preceding works, the thematic use of twelve-tone rows (most recently in the Blok cycle and the Second Violin Concerto) was chiefly a means of creating emotional detachment and harmonic ambiguity, here in the Twelfth Quartet he explored the more abstract aspects of dodecaphonic serialism. The main interest of the sparse and introverted first movement lies in resolving the conflicts between atonality and the pull of the home key of D flat major. This is immediately evident when the scattered intervals of the tone-row in the first bar resolve on to a D flat in the second. (To emphasize the conquest, the cello, in its accompaniment to the violin’s expressive lament, proceeds up a diatonic D flat major scale.) In contrast the second subject’s fragmented waltz theme (which could almost belong to Schoenberg) does not achieve tonal stability.
But it is in the second movement of symphonic proportions that Shostakovich explores various aspects of serialism to greatest effect. In no other work did Shostakovich so uncompromisingly condense his thinking, bending and manipulating the thematic material and reconciling the resulting conflicts within the taut framework of his structure, achieving a work of unrelenting dramatic force and intensity. The writing imposes enormous demands on the string quartet both in terms of virtuosity, and in the range of sonic effects (sul ponticello, pizzicati, accents and trills). In these aspects and in the density of the textures it looks forward to the Fourteenth Symphony.
In view of the official Soviet stand against the Western avant-garde and the New Viennese School, Shostakovich felt the need to justify trespassing on dodecaphonic territory: ‘If a composer sets himself the aim of writing purely dodecaphonic music at all costs, then he is artificially limiting himself. But using elements of this system can be fully justified when dictated by the actual compositional concept.’99 When Tsyganov anxiously brought up the subject of serialism, Shostakovich retorted, ‘But one finds examples of it in Mozart’s music.’100
In any case the composer had rarely been so satisfied with a new work of his own. He informed Tsyganov that the Twelfth Quartet had worked out ‘splendidly’; it was more a ‘Symphony’ than a chamber work. The music emphasizes the importance of the first violin; Tsyganov remarked:
It was as if he reached the very core of my musical nature. Shostakovich praised my playing in the funereal episode of the second movement, in the lengthy violin pizzicato section, where one seems to hear the tread of death itself. And another peculiar feature of this quartet: only three instruments play for quite some time at the beginning. The Eleventh Quartet was designed for Vasili Shirinsky, but he was no longer with us by the Twelfth Quartet, as the music shows – three instruments remain, only afterwards does the fourth enter.101
In August 1968 Shostakovich started composition of a three-movement sonata for violin and piano as another surprise gift for Oistrakh, now timed for his ‘real’ sixtieth birthday.
In the sonata’s outer movements Shostakovich again explores compatibility of serial techniques within the context of tonality. In the first movement Andante the piano’s opening motif is an ascending twelve-note tone-row which is immediately inverted, and then repeats itself as accompanying background to the violin theme. The character of abstracted contemplation of the first subject is in marked contrast to the ironic humour of the second (where incidentally the composer uses a diatonic twelve-tone row in the dominant key of D major).
The second movement belongs to the well-tried genre of vigorously dynamic scherzo, and holds few surprises. The variations of the finale (also a form much loved by Shostakovich) are in effect a typical passacaglia movement, conceived on a grand scale. It reaches astonishing intensity at its culmination, with the stormily virtuoso solo cadenzas of piano, followed by violin. Again throughout the work the interval of the fourth has a special significance, both in the themes of the outer movements102 and in their final mirrored soundings in the ghostly ponticelli tremolandi in the violin’s double stops. Shostakovich does not seem to bring the music to a close, but points to its further temporal and spatial dimensions.
And there was a pleasant surprise in store for Oistrakh:
Evidently Dmitri Dmitriyevich considered that, having mistaken the date of my anniversary, he should correct the error. This is how the Sonata for Violin and Piano appeared, written ‘in honour of David Oistrakh’s sixtieth birthday’. I hadn’t in any way expected it, although I had long dreamt that Shostakovich would write a violin sonat.103
This splendid three-movement work was completed on 23 October 1968, and was given its official premiere on 2 May 1969 with Sviatoslav Richter partnering Oistrakh.
1 K. A. Simeonov was principal conductor of the Ukrainian Theatre of Opera and Ballet from 1961 to 1966 and from 1975 to 1977.
2 Levon Atovmyan, who had attended all the productions of Lady Macbeth from 1934 onwards, wrote in his reminiscences of the qualities of the various sopranos who tackled the part of Katerina Izmailova. But ‘whosoever heard Vishnevskaya’s performance of Katerina’s two arias (accompanied by Weinberg) at Shostakovich’s home can confirm that her performance was three heads higher than all the others. This was confirmed by her performance in the film of Katerina Izmailova.’ Muzykal’naya Akademiya, no. 4, 1997, p. 70.
3 Our Father, Dmitri Shostakovich, Ardov (Moscow, 2003), p. 134.
4 Ibid., p.135. Another account, from a story told by Kondrashin (Razhnikov Kirill Kondrashin Talks of his Life (Moscow, Sovietsky Kompozitor, 1989), p. 194), reported in K. Meyer’s book (Shostakovich: Life, Work and Times, p. 396), differs in that it reports that Shostakovich had to borrow money from Khachaturian for repairs to the dacha. But the point of the story is the same: that Shostakovich, unlike most others in his position, gave back to the State the dacha he had received as a gift.
5 Ibid., pp. 117–18.
6 Ibid., pp. 135.
7 In Glikman, Letters to a Friend, p. 172.
8 Quoted in Sofiya Khentova, Shostakovich: Life and Work, vol. 2, p. 416.
9 Isaak Glikman, Letters to a Friend, p. 176.
10 In private conversation with EW.
11 Lev Lebedinsky: compiled from various interviews, conversations and articles by EW.
12 In fact she was born in 1934, and was two years older than Galina, DDS’s daughter.
13 Galina Vishnevskaya, Galina: A Russian Story, pp. 273, 274.
14 Our Father, Dmitri Shostakovich, Ardov (Moscow, 2003), pp. 166–7.
15 Unusually Shostakovich first wrote the work in piano score. The full score was completed on 21 April.
16 Shostakovich got a good laugh when his ex-assistant, the composer Nikolai Peiko, reacted pedantically to the poem’s concluding words, ‘He’s a brave fellow’. Peiko objected, ‘Humour is not a person.’ See his letters to Glikman dated 7 July 1963 and 15 September 1964.
17 Shostakovich took issue with Evtushenko about being conditioned by fear. ‘I was happy and totally truthful with my late wife … And now I have a very good wife, to whom I cannot twist the truth …’. From a letter dated 8 July 1962 in Shostakovich archive in Moscow.
18 Alfred Schnittke made conscious reference to Shostakovich’s love of quotation, but gave it a new symbolic significance when he developed his version of polystylism (which also owed much to Western composers such as Luciano Berio and Henri Pousser). Nevertheless Shostakovich’s parody serves as an antecedent to the polystylistic jumble of funeral marches, Soviet songs, and of music made banal through over-familiarity in Schnittke’s First Symphony. For Schnittke these allusions were a potent symbol of the disappearance of cultural values.
19 Gmyirya had lived in occupied territory during the Second World War, and had been forced to collaborate with the Germans. This fact made him vulnerable to pressure from the authorities, and therefore he gave in quickly to their demand that he should refuse to participate in the performance of the Thirteenth Symphony. As Gmyrya was quite open with Shostakovich on this account, the composer was able to accept his withdrawal, whereas he regarded Mravinsky’s refusal as tantamount to betrayal.
20 Boris Zhutovsky, ‘Returning to My Notes of 1962/63’, Literaturnaya Gazeta, 5 July 1989.
21 Ibid.
22 From Yudina’s letter to M. and P. Souvchinsky, dated 28 December 1962. Published in Muzikal’naya Akademiya, no. 4, 1997, p. 113.
23 Galina Vishnevskaya recounts how at Shostakovich’s request she approached the Bolshoi Theatre bass, Alexander Vedernikov. Initially delighted to be asked, he quickly withdrew on realizing the risky nature of the texts. Only after this episode was Nechipailo invited to sing the solo part (Galina: A Russian Story, pp. 275–77).
24 According to L. Fay, Gromadsky was not so much an understudy, but an alternative soloist. He had been billed to sing in the second performance, a few days after the first. (This fact does not necessarily negate what Kondrashin says here.) L. Fay, Shostakovich: A Life (OUP, 2000), p. 335 n. 40.
25 Russian cigarettes with a hollow cardboard filter.
26 In her account of the same events, Galina Vishnevskaya absolves Nechipailo from blame. He had been ordered at the last minute to sing that night at the Bolshoi Theatre to replace the scheduled singer, who had been ‘taken ill’, no doubt following Party instructions (Galina: A Russian Story, p. 278).
27 Kondrashin slightly exaggerates. In fact there were two performances of the Thirteenth Symphony with the revised text in Moscow in February 1963. Vitali Katayev performed the Symphony in Minsk with the old text shortly afterwards. Further performances took place outside Moscow in Gorky in December 1965, and in Novosibirsk and Leningrad during 1966.
28 Kirill Kondrashin, reminiscences of DDS compiled from taped interviews.
29 Here, as in the revised version of ‘Babi Yar’, Evtushenko talks of the massacre of three national groups, and not exclusively of the Jews, as in his first version of the poem.
30 From the poem ‘A Second Birth’ written in late December 1962. Shostakovich commented to Isaak Glikman in a letter dated 7 January 1963: ‘I don’t like the title “A Second Birth”. My music never died, and therefore it doesn’t need to be born a second time’ (Glikman, Letters to a Friend, p. 184).
31 Evgeni Evtushenko, Reminiscences of Shostakovich and his Thirteenth Symphony.
32 Isaak Schwartz, ‘Reminiscences of Shostakovich’, article commissioned for this book.
33 On 25 September 1966.
34 Mstislav Rostropovich: recorded interview with EW.
35 Arnshtam’s films were Five Days and Five Nights (1960), Sofiya Perovskaya (1967/8). Galina Serebryakova wrote the scenario (based on her trilogy of the life of Marx) for the film A Year as Long as a Lifetime (1965), which was directed by Grigori Roshal.
36 Akimov’s production of 1932, and Kozintsev’s 1954 production, where the director used Shostakovich’s music written for his earlier production of King Lear (1941).
37 Grigori Kozintsev, The Complete Works, vol. II, p. 436.
38 Ibid., vol. II, pp. 423, 430.
39 Ibid., vol. III, pp. 155, 156.
40 Ibid., vol. II, pp. 427, 430, 431, 435.
41 Ibid., vol. II, pp. 431, 432, 433, 444.
42 Karen Khachaturian: recorded interview with EW.
43 I. Stravinsky and R. Craft, Dialogues and a Diary, pp. 291–2, 306–9.
44 Published on 1 January 1962.
45 At the first festival in June 1962 one concert was dedicated to Shostakovich’s works, where Rostropovich played the First Cello Concerto, participated in a performance of the Eighth Quartet, and accompanied Vishnevskaya in the Satires. Shostakovich was present on this occasion.
46 The Festival took place in February 1964.
47 Mstislav Rostropovich: recorded interview with EW.
48 SAMIZDAT, a widely used acronym denoting ‘self-publication’, was a sort of underground press used for circulating forbidden publications in typescript. Equally forbidden was the so-called ‘TAM-IZDAT’, a publication from ‘over there’ (i.e. the West).
49 The occasion referred to is probably the RSFSR Congress of Composers held in April 1960, when DDS was elected First Secretary.
50 This term originates from the Ukrainian word for crest or topknot. In Russian the word denotes a Ukrainian, in reference to the Ukrainians’ habit of shaving their heads, leaving only a topknot.
51 Sergei Slonimsky, ‘Brush Strokes for a Portrait of a Great Musician’, article commissioned for this book.
52 Edison Denisov: recorded interview with EW.
53 M. Yakovlev (ed.), D. Shostakovich on Himself and His Times, p. 275.
54 B. Tishchenko, Letters from Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich to Boris Tishchenko (Kompozitor, St Petersburg, 1997), p. 24.
55 Boris Pokrovsky: recorded interview with EW.
56 Glikman, Letters to a Friend, p. 168.
57 Radio interview, 2 September 1963: Dmitri Shostakovich Speaks (LP: Melodiya Mono, 33 M 40–41705).
58 From S. Khentova’s interview with Tsyganov. Khentova, In Shostakovich’s World (Moscow, 1996), pp. 209–10.
59 The two sketches consist of a rough draft and a fair copy of a movement of 225 bars, where the exposition is written out and a minimal plan of the development and recapitulation is pencilled in.
60 Glikman, Letters to a Friend, p. 190.
61 Letter dated 15 September 1964 (ibid., p. 196).
62 Interview with Tsyganov in Khentova, In Shostakovich’s World (Moscow, 1996), p. 207.
63 Fyodor Druzhinin, article commissioned for this book.
64 Letter dated 6 September 1958 (Glikman, Letters to a Friend, p. 141).
65 Glikman, Letters to a Friend, from letter dated 11 February 1960, p. 151.
66 Ibid., from letter dated 26 February 1960, p. 154.
67 Ibid., letter dated 30 September 1967, p. 234.
68 Vishnevskaya, Galina: A Russian Story, pp. 362–3.
69 Glikman, Letters to a Friend, p. 216.
70 Ibid., letter dated 10 November 1966, p. 221.
71 Ibid., note to letter dated 4 September 1965, p. 206.
72 The number of the journal in question was published on 30 August 1965.
73 Letter to Glikman dated 4 September 1965, in Letters to a Friend, p. 206.
74 ‘Bread rolls – buy our bread rolls.’ Bubliki have a hole in the middle, and are somewhat like Jewish bagels.
75 See letter to Glikman dated 27 April 1966, in Letters to a Friend, p. 213.
76 Letter to D. Shepilov dated 21 September 1966 quoted in Rubtsova, Thus it was: Tikhon Khrennikov on his Times and Himself (Moscow, 1994), p. 142.
77 The Shostakovich couple spent three weeks here between 20 April and 14 May.
78 In conversation with EW, 2004.
79 In letter to Glikman dated 27 April 1966, in Letters to a Friend, p. 213.
80 For instance a lyrical theme at fig. 91 shares the same melodic structure as the scherzo of the Tenth Symphony.
81 The ‘toyshop’ image that Shostakovich gave to his unfinished Ninth Quartet or the Fifteenth Symphony seems justified here.
82 Rostropovich informed Shostakovich that it was possible to play fourths as double stops across three strings. The composer used this device to great effect, for instance in the last cello cadenza section at fig. 101 in the finale.
83 Mstislav Rostropovich: recorded interview with EW.
84 Venyamin Basner: recorded interview with EW.
85 Oleg Prokofiev, ‘On My Few Contacts with Shostakovich’, article commissioned for this book.
86 Letter dated 1 August 1963 (Glikman, Letters to a Friend, p. 190).
87 The performance was given at the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire on 12 March 1964, and repeated a few days later in Leningrad.
88 Peter Pears, Moscow Christmas:A Diary from Philip Reed (ed.), The Travel Diaries of Peter Pears 1936–1978 (Boydell Press/Britten–Pears Library, 1995), p. 146.
89 Reference to Nicholas Nabokov, the composer.
90 Professor Nikolai Antonovich Dolezhal, an eminent nuclear physician and academician. Shostakovich enjoyed his company, and often visited him for a game of cards (usually partnered by his daughter Galina).
91 The recording of The Execution of Stepan Razin Op. 119 was made with Kondrashin conducting the Moscow Philharmonic, the RSFSR Academic Choir and Vitali Gromadsky, bass soloist, in 1965.
92 The pianist Aza Amintayeva, who worked as accompanist in Rostropovich’s class at the Conservatoire.
93 Peter Pears, Moscow Christmas: A Diary from Philip Reed (ed.), The Travel Diaries of Peter Pears 1936–1978 (Boydell Press/Britten–Pears Library, 1995), pp. 138–9, 148–50.
94 Elizabeth Wilson, ‘Reminiscences of Benjamin Britten’s Visit to Moscow, April 1971’, article written for this book.
95 Alfred Schnittke, ‘Circles of Influence’, in G. Shneyerson (ed.), D. Shostakovich: Articles and Materials, p. 225.
96 David Oistrakh, ‘A Great Artist of Our Time’, in G. Shneerson (ed.), D. Shostakovich: Articles and Materials, p. 28.
97 An unofficial first performance which Oistrakh had recorded took place on 13 September as a ‘try-out’ concert in the Moscow suburb of Bolshevo. Shostakovich had not been present, but listened to the recording, after which he rang Oistrakh to make his comments. Oistrakh also taped this telephone conversation.
98 From interview with Tsyganov, in Khentova, In Shostakovich’s World, p. 211
99 DDS,‘Invitation to Young Music’, Yunost, no. 5, 1968, p. 87.
100 From interview with Tsyganov, in Khentova, In Shostakovich’s World, p. 211.
101 From interview with Tsyganov, in Khentova, In Shostakovich’s World, p. 211.
102 The eleven-bar variation theme, firmly based in the tonic key of G, has two distinct parts, the first dominated by the interval of the fourth, and the second being a twelve-tone row.
103 Oistrakh, ‘A Great Artist of Our Time’, p. 29.