Posts Tagged: Shostakovich

CSO Addenda: Golijov, Sibelius, Shostakovich

Osvaldo Golijov (1960 – )
Sidereus

Osvaldo Golijov is the composer of such blockbuster classical hits as The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind and the toe-tapping Pasión según San Marco:

Mr. Golijov’s pieces often have more the flavor of an ethnomusicological exploration, which makes a certain amount of sense for a composer of Argentinian birth who grew up on klezmer and tango and who has also lived in Israel and the U.S.  [Although, is it really ethnomusicological if it’s actually your ethnicity?  Discuss.]

Anyone who attended Thursday’s lecture was privy to insights from the work’s dedicatee, Mr. Henry Fogel.  Boosey & Hawkes has provided an equally enlightening interview with the composer about the genesis of the work.  You can listen to the work online in a performance conducted by Mei-Ann Chen (who gave the première in October 2010 in Memphis) with the New England Conservatory Philharmonia.  Also of note is Mr. Golijov’s growing filmography since becoming the go-to composer of Francis Ford Coppola.

Lest there be any confusion, the title of Mr. Golijov’s latest work, Sidereus, is in no way meant to sound like an hilarious mispronunciation of the next composer on the program.

Jean Sibelius (1865 – 1957)
Violin Concerto in D minor, Op. 47 (1903, rev. 1905)

Sibelius’ violin concerto is far and above my favorite work in the genre, and one of my favorite works by the composer.  In fact, it’s one of the first pieces that got me into classical music.  You can view an introduction to the work here by the violinist Ida Haendel, who actually received a letter of appreciation from Sibelius after he had heard her performance of the work, and whose Wikipedia entry actually says the following:

She has the reputation of being as accomplished and brilliant a violinist as Yehudi Menuhin and Isaac Stern; but has said that had she been more photogenic, she would have been as famous.

Ida Haendel

Yehudi Menuhin and Isaac Stern, two violinists who Ida Haendel was not as attractive as

People sometimes said the same thing about Sibelius himself, but never to his face (see above).

But seriously folks, if you’re really into the Sibelius concerto, it’s worth your 10 bucks to invest in Leonidas Kavakos’ recording of the 1903 and 1905 versions of the work.  He is still the only artist to record the 1903 version, due to the Sibelius family’s wishes, which is pretty impressive.  He is also way, way hotter than Ida Haendel.

You’ll get to hear the intricate, Bach-like second cadenza that Sibelius later cut from the first movement of his concerto:

amongst many other interesting tidbits.

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906 – 1975)
Suite from Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District


OK, first of all, if you’re anything like me, you’ve always wondered just where IS the Mtsensk District.  It’s here:

The rest of this discussion I’m gonna cut and paste from my March 4, 2010 post about Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11:

Shostakovich’s troubles with the government began in the year 1936, at which point Joseph Stalin, eager to send a message to the artistic community, denounced Shostakovitch’s opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District as immoral and anti-soviet.  Let’s watch a bit of the opera and see if we can spot anything that Stalin may have found objectionable.  Remember to look very closely now:

At first glance, it looks pretty tame, but that Stalin always had a fine eye for detail.  Anyhoo, that led to this very famous headline from the Soviet newspaper Pravda:

which roughly translates to “Muddle instead of Music”, and which began a nightmarish 20 year period of heavy government repression and scare tactics aimed at keeping Shostakovitch in line.

I’d like to recommend two more valuable resources pertaining to Shostakovich’s music and life:

The first is the audio guide to chapter 7 of Alex Ross’s phenomenal book, The Rest is Noise.  Even if you haven’t read the book or don’t have a copy handy, the audio guide gives you a nice synopsis of the chapter on music in the 1930′s and 40′s USSR.

The second is an article by everybody’s favorite Slovenian Marxist-Lacanian-psychoanalytic philosopher, Slavoj Žižek, entitled “Shostakovich in Casablanca“.  In this article, Žižek compares Soviet repression of classical music to the Hollywood Hays code, in terms of what the censors expected and how an artist was meant both to abide by the code and simultaneously to circumvent it.  He posits that Shostakovich found whatever success he could with the Soviet regime because he understood this Janus-faced censorship, whereas Prokofiev just couldn’t figure it out.

Civic Addenda

Well, it’s happened again – preparing for a talk at Symphony Center, I’ve come across way too much material for my allotted 30 minutes.  Here are extra insights on the October 31, 2010 concert of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago.  To the various concert attendees who found their way here after hearing my talk – Welcome!  Do feel free to peruse the rest of my web site, always being aware that it does not in any way represent the Chicago Symphony or Civic Orchestras.

Shostakovich, Chamber Symphony (1960)
(String Quartet No. 8 arranged by Rudolf Barshai for String Orchestra)

The Chamber Symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich began life as his 8th String Quartet – the version that we hear in concert by string orchestras is simply an arrangement by the Russian conductor Rudolf Barshai.  More than any other Shostakovich Quartet, the Eighth seems particularly suited for this kind of expanded treatment.

Shostakovich’s eighth quartet is a sort of mix tape of previous compositions, woven together with his “signature motto”, the notes DSCH as in Dmitri Schostakovitch  (This actually requires a lot of explanation, and it requires us to pretend we’re German musicians for a moment: the German note name system calls our E-flat “Es” – hence the use of the letter “S” in this motto; similarly, the Germans refer to our note “B” as “H” for some reason.  Also, you’re going to have to go German in the spelling of Dmitri’s last name, since American’s tend to prefer the spelling Shostakovich with no “c”.)

Here is the opening of the Quartet, with that exact motive in the cello part:

This is the theme that will connect the vast array of quotations from Shostakovich’s earlier works.  Here they all are, in order:

1.) First Symphony (1926)

The original, a playfully sardonic duet for trumpet and bassoon:

In the quartet the music is slowed down, sounding old and weary:

2.) Fifth Symphony (1937)

The tune, deep in the horns, bold and Wagnerian:

In the quartet appears in the first violin, timid and demure:

3) Second Piano Trio (1944)

Originally, Shostakovich gave this Jewish theme a delightfully eerie “oom-pah” rhythm, creating a soft, macabre folk dance:

In the second movement of the quartet, the same tune is presented in a diabolical frenzy:

4) First Cello Concerto (1959)

The only difference between the original:

and the quartet version:

is the instrumentation.

5) The Young Guard (1948)

There seems to be a lot of confusion in the literature about the next quotation.  The quote itself is minuscule – a four-note motive from Shostakovich’s score for the 1948 film “The Young Guard”:

This motive itself comes from a revolutionary song which features prominently in the plot of the movie.  In one of the film’s most powerful scenes, we see a group of young girls who have been imprisoned by the Nazis for their resistance during World War II (these are in fact the Young Guards of history).  As they sing this anthem, they defy their captors and work up the courage to fight back; the young men in the next cell over join in:

When it appears in the quartet, the four-note motive is cut short by three violent bow strokes:

The internet being the mind-boggling thing that it is, you can actually watch the entire film on YouTube (in Russian and German, without subtitles):

Part I: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Part II: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

6) “Tortured by Grievous Unfreedom”

This is the only quote in the piece that is not from one of Shostakovich’s own previous works.  It is a revolutionary song, said to be Lenin’s favorite.  There is a wonderful page that contextualizes this song in terms of Russian Revolutionary music here.  There is a page devoted to this particular song in its many iterations here (in Russian).  It goes a little something like this:

and it’s used in the quartet like this:

7) Katerina’s arioso from the fourth act of Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District:

which itself sounds a little bit like a mixture of Bernard Herrmann’s score for Vertigo:

and “Bess, You is my Woman Now” from Porgy & Bess:

and is used in the quartet like this:

Recommended Reading

  • David Fanning: Shostakovich String Quartet No. 8 (2004) – google books
  • Michael Mishra: A Shostakovich Companion (2008) – google books
  • Richard Taruskin: Defining Russia Musically: Historical and Hermeneutical Essays (1997) – google books

Recommended Recordings

For anyone who has even a moderate interest in the Shostakovich String Quartet repertoire, I would seriously recommend dropping 42 bucks at the Amazon mp3 store (50 bucks on iTunes) and buying the recordings of all 15 Shostakovich Quartets by the confusingly named “Beethoven” Quartet.  These performers collaborated extensively with Shostakovich himself and gave the premieres of several of his quartets including the Eighth.  You could also spend just 5 bucks and get the Eighth Quartet individually. Amazon, iTunes

For a more recent, fast, polished, full-throttled reading of this piece, I highly recommend the Emerson Quartet’s recording. Amazon, iTunes

As for recordings of the Rudolf Barshai-arranged “Chamber Symphony” version, it’s very difficult to find one in which both the orchestra and the conductor seem to be in the spirit of the piece: often, the technical demands of the string writing are too difficult for and entire orchestra to play together up to tempo, or the conductor indulges too much in Shostakovich’s ‘mood music’.  One recording that I highly recommend is Vladimir Ashkenazy’s reading with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. iTunes

Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 5 (1888)

OK, so I totally geeked out on the Shostakovich stuff, so just watch this and enjoy it:

CSO Addenda: Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich

As is usually the case when I prepare my pre-concert lectures at the Chicago Symphony, I end up with way more information than I can share in the 30 minutes allotted.  Here are some extra insights on the March 4-6 concerts. Welcome CSO patrons!

Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor

Any piece with as many gorgeous tunes as Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Piano Concerto is just asking to be pillaged for its melodies, and thus we have Wikipedia’s list of several works as being derived from or inspired by this piece.  Let’s see if we agree with them:

1st movement


Frank Sinatra’s “I Think of You“

Here’s the Rachmaninoff:

OK, no argument there.  [BTW, does anyone else agree that the Hollywood session player in Nelson Riddle’s orchestra sounded WAY better on the horn solo than the principal in the New Philharmonia Orchestra?]

The Wik then goes on to list no fewer than four songs by Muse which supposedly quote the first movement:

1. “Space Dementia”:

which is pretty obviously an homage to the opening of the concerto:

[BTW, does anybody agree that Moshe Atmon is a way better pianist than the guy from Muse?]

then #2. “Butterflies & Hurricanes

and #3. “Ruled by Secrecy”

which both quote the end of the movement’s first theme:

As for “Megalomania”, the closest thing I could find was this:

which I would hardly call a “quote”, but does share certain melodic and harmonic ideas with the concerto.

2nd movement

Unfortunately it can’t all be Frank Sinatra and English alt-prog-art rock.  When it comes to the gorgeous second movement,

we go from the semi-decent:


(which has a questionable connection to the original),

to the bad:

to the truly, spine-cringingly, awful:

Interestingly, that last excerpt is nothing but the original Rachmaninoff with some cheeze-fried vocals laid on top.  It comes out the absolute worst because it puts the original composition in such stark relief.

3rd movement

Let’s cleanse our ears, shall we, with some more grade-A Frank:

which, it hardly needs saying, is this:

Shostakovich Symphony No. 11 (“The Year 1905”)

As it’s title would indicate, Shostakovich took the 1905 Russian Revolution as the subject of his 11th Symphony.  Theories abound as to other, hidden meanings behind this work (especially the 1956 Hungarian uprising against the communist government).

Perhaps the most widely known piece of art concerning the 1905 Revolution is Sergei Eisenstein’s landmark silent film from 1925, Battleship Potemkin.  Below is the much acclaimed “Odessa Steps” sequence.

(Please note that this clip contains music from Shostakovich’s 11th and 5th symphonies – not the original score by Meisel which was lost and has since been restored.)  The whole film can be viewed here.

The Symphony “1905” was a turning point for Shostakovich — he had outlived Stalin and was now in the position to regain some sense of sanity and ease, if not full official favor.  His troubles with the government had begun in the year 1936, at which point Joseph Stalin, eager to send a message to the artistic community, denounced Shostakovitch’s opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District as immoral and anti-soviet.  Let’s watch a bit of the opera and see if we can spot anything that Stalin may have found objectionable.  Remember to look very closely now:

At first glance, it looks pretty tame, but that Stalin always had a fine eye for detail.  Anyhoo, that led to this very famous headline from the Soviet newspaper Pravda:

which roughly translates to “Muddle instead of Music”, and which began a nightmarish 20 year period of heavy government repression and scare tactics aimed at keeping Shostakovitch in line.

I’d like to recommend two more valuable resources pertaining to Shostakovich’s music and life:

The first is the audio guide to chapter 7 of Alex Ross’s phenomenal book, The Rest is Noise.  Even if you haven’t read the book or don’t have a copy handy, the audio guide gives you a nice synopsis of the chapter on music in the 1930’s and 40’s USSR.

The second is an article by everybody’s favorite Slovenian Marxist-Lacanian-psychoanalytic philosopher, Slavoj Žižek, entitled “Shostakovich in Casablanca“.  In this article, Žižek compares Soviet repression of classical music to the Hollywood Hays code, in terms of what the censors expected and how an artist was meant both to abide by the code and simultaneously to circumvent it.  He posits that Shostakovich found whatever success he could with the Soviet regime because he understood this Janus-faced censorship, whereas Prokofiev just couldn’t figure it out.

That’s all the extra goodies for this concert series.  Feel free to leave a note in the comments section to share your opinions of the concert!  Also, feel free to peruse the rest of my site at your own risk, in full awareness that hereafter, the Chicago Symphony has nothing to do with the content on this site…