Judge Dennis Davis
Shostakovich 7: The Leningrad Symphony

Judge Dennis Davis - Shostakovich 7: The Leningrad Symphony

- [Wendy] All right everyone. Welcome and thank you for joining us today. Dennis, whenever you are ready, over to you.

• I am, thank you very much, and welcome to everybody. This is the second of a two-part lecture, which I have done on Shostakovich. The first part was somewhile back, when I looked at the “Fifth Symphony”. And of course, the problem then was I was overambitious, as is typical, and effectively thought I could do the Fifth and the Seventh in one go, in one hour. Well that absolutely was ridiculous. And so this is the second part, having done the Fifth. Now, I want to touch on the Seventh. But before I do the Seventh, like any lecturer, just to recall a little bit about the context, because the Fifth is not unimportant, given the context of the Seventh for all sorts of reasons that I shall advance in a moment. Now, we know that in 1936, Shostakovich was the, at the receiving end of a significant criticism for his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, in which Stalin had walked out halfway through the performance. And then there was this article in Pravda, “Muddle rather than music.” And given the fact that Stalin wasn’t exactly the most tolerant of critics or music critics, to put it mildly, Shostakovich obviously thought this is going to be the end of him. And we discussed that last time. Relevant to this, of course, is that for two years, he didn’t produce any work at all.

And then in 1937, the “Fifth Symphony” was unveiled. And one of the reasons I just wanted to mention this, because I’m going over material that I did, of course, was in order, as it were, to deal with the criticism, and he talks about the symphony being an artists response to legitimate criticism, was that Shostakovich then decided. as it were, to follow the cannons of Beethoven at al with a much more standard symphony, symphonic work, following in a sense, in very many ways, Beethoven’s “Heroic Symphony”, and the manner in which Beethoven had done that. And we even discussed the fact that there were references at the beginning of the symphony to the Ninth Beethoven Symphony. The point I wanted to make about all of this, because I don’t want to repeat the lecture that I gave, was simply that at the end of the Symphony, at the end of the “Fifth Symphony” is a question, which is particularly interesting. And that was, although there is some form of triumph at the end of the “Fifth Symphony”, some form of resolution to the problems set out in the symphony, one is not quite sure who in fact is triumphing here and what is not quite sure as to whether in fact this is an assertion of the “magnificence” in inverted commas of the Stalinist era, or whether, by contrast actually star, in a sly subtle way, Shostakovich is hiding his critique of the Stalinist era. It’s left in an ambiguous way. And the reason I mentioned this is because, when one analyses Shostakovich, it is perfectly clear that that is a problem that faces any analysis of Shostakovich.

I want, if I may, to quote to you a really fascinating book, which I can highly recommend to everybody, called “The Rest is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century” by Alex Ross, and it’s the most fantastic analysis of 20th century music, It covers quite a bit of what number of us have spoken about over lockdown university. But why I wanted to quote it was to explain to you something about Shostakovich and ambiguity. And Ross writes like this, “But does Shostakovich always mean the opposite of what he said? Did he take no joy at all in the prospect that freedom loving peoples would at last throw off the yoke of Hitlerism?” And he’s talking about the Seventh of course, which we’re going to get to. “From even in the grip of totalitarian terror, life goes on. People are able to feel joy, rage, sorrow, love. Music is in fact better at communicating these primal emotions than it is at managing anything as tricky as irony. Irony in the standard definition is saying something rather than what one appears to be saying. To talk about musical irony, we first have to agree on what the music appears to be saying, and then we have to agree on what the music is really saying. This is invariably difficult to do. We cannot ever learn to be wary of any interpretation that displays too much certitude about what the music is really saying and stay alert to multiple levels of meaning. Shostakovich’s ‘Fifth Symphony’ becomes a rich experience when heard in this way.

So does his ‘Seventh Symphony’ with the Leningrad, which for many years was dismissed as an exercise in wartime propaganda.” And I’d like you to bear that in mind. This quotation from Ross is particularly interesting, that of course with Shostakovich in particular, not only of course, much, much music. But with him it, there is that ambiguity which one has to sort of try to analyse before what makes sense, or tends to make sense, tends to engage with the music as a whole. Now, with that having been said, I want to, if I may, divide my session up into three parts. I want to talk a little bit about the context in which the symphony was written. I want to talk about the context in which the symphony was played. And then I do want to analyse a little bit about the music itself. Please understand one thing, when it comes to the analysis of the music. In a session like ours, which spans roughly a no more than an hour, a piece of music like this, which extends between 75 to 80 minutes, depending on which recording you have, it’s absolutely impossible for me to give you the kind of intricate musical analysis to the, the music deserves. And so what I’ve selected are three clips. One from the first movement, one from the second, and just the last little bit, because I wanted to focus on some of the aspects of the music, which may make sense of my first two sections of this talk, namely the context in which was written and the context in which it was played.

So let’s talk first about the context in which it was written. Well, as we know, Shostakovich lived in Leningrad, and of course all bets are off. Everything changed on the 22nd of June, 1941 when the Germans invaded, and effectively laid siege to the city. It’s possible, and I merely say, because when Shostakovich is quoted, it’s often again disputed as to whether he meant this. But there is the quote in which he says, “Many people think I came back to life after the "Fifth Symphony”. No, I came back to life after the Seventh. You could finally talk to people. It was still hard, but you could breathe. That’s why I considered the War years productive for the arts.“ In other words, Shostakovich was able to express in music the suffering he was experiencing. And the question, of course, was that having loathed Hitler, the dictators invasion allowed him to basically range fairly widely in regard to fascism and totalitarianism, more about that in a moment. There was no question that Shostakovich had said many times that all forms of fascism were abhorrent to him. Now, the Red Army, having effectively now trying to defend itself in relation to Leningrad under siege, Shostakovich himself wanted to try to enlist in the Army. And because his eyesight was so poor, he became an auxiliary fireman. But when the German army surrounded the city and the siege began, which was to last for 900 days, and nearly a million people, one third of the city starved to death, which we’ll come back to in a moment, it was at that point that a project which Shostakovich had been interested in prior, and that significant, prior to the siege, began to take shape.

And it was essentially as a result of this that he wrote the symphony, staggeringly, in less than six months in the whole, the first three movements were written by him in Leningrad during the siege. The fourth movement was written outside of Leningrad in the relatively secure town, and I’m probably going to mispronounce this, for which I apologise, of Kuybyshev, which is where they were, Shostakovich was taken, too famous a musician to be left to the perils of Leningrad, they were evacuated, and he completed the symphony there. Now, what he said about the symphony himself was that when he wrote it, he actually also sketched a programme for the first three movements. He said this, "The exposition of the first movement tells of the happy, peaceful life of people, sure of themselves and their future. This is a simple, peaceful life lived before the war. In the development, war bursts into the peaceful life of these people. I’m not aiming for the naturalistic depiction of war, the depiction of the clatter of arms, the explosion of shells and so on. I’m trying to convey the image of war emotion.” Later in conversations he hinted that he was not only thinking of German fascism, but quote, “All forms of terror, slavery, bondage of the spirit.” recalling my earlier point about the ambiguity that Shostakovich effectively conveys, and I want to come back to that if I may.

But the simple proposition I’m making was that he effectively wrote the symphony in a context of a war scenario in which the first three movements in Leningrad, the fourth when his whole family was evacuated. And so then the question arose, once the symphony had actually been completed, where was it going to be played? And that therefore makes me turn to my second component of this lecture for you this evening, which is the context of the playing of the symphony. And there are two wonderful sources, which I can commend to you if you’re interested in them. One of course is a BBC documentary called Leningrad, and the orchestra that defied Hitler. And then I’m extremely grateful to my dear friend Gwen Robbins, who pointed me in the direction of a novel which was based on the entire episode of the Shostakovitch “Seventh Symphony”, and how it was performed, by the New Zealand writer Sarah Quigley, Q-U-I-G-L-E-Y, Sarah Quigley, called “The Conductor”, which is a really interesting novel which tracks the history of the performance. So what do I mean by the performance? Well, it was first performed, of course, outside Leningrad. It was performed in Kuibyshev on the 5th of March, 1942, in the middle, obviously, of this extraordinary war, which Russia was confronted with the invasion by the Nazis. It was then performed a few weeks later on the 29th of March, 1942 in Moscow. But it was also, the actual score was managed to get to the West. And Henry Wood, who of course is extremely famous for the BBC Proms, conducted it in London with the London Symphony Orchestra on the 22nd of June, ‘42.

And Arturo Toscanini beat out a lot of competition, including from Serge Koussevitzky, the legendary conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra to play it in, for the first time, in America on the 19th of July, 1942. It’s interesting, when it was played on the 19th of July in 1942, it didn’t exactly go down particularly well. In fact, to the contrary, it was played, and almost again, if I can quote to you from Alex Ross’s wonderful book, he says this. “On the 19th of July, 1942, NBC broadcast Shostakovich’s 'Leningrad Symphony’ with Toscanini conducting the NBC Orchestra.” In fact, Time Magazine had already now had a cover of a portrait of Shostakovich in his fireman’s helmet because the symphony had become quite famous already, having been played in the West by Henry Wood, as I indicated. And now Ross continues “Most of the emigre composers, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Eisler, Rachmaninoff, Hindemith, and Bartok were listening, and almost all seemed to have experienced a mass attack of envy and resentment. Schonberg placed, praised Shostakovich on other occasions, but this time he snapped. ‘with composing like this,’ he said, ‘one must be grateful that he has not already gone up to 'Symphony 77.’ Hindemith condemned the trend towards despicable rubbish in orchestral music, and sat down to write a set of Fugues, the "Ludus Tonalis”, in which he hoped to remind those who had not completely succumbed to what music and composition should not be. None of the emigres reacted more strongly than Bartok, who was listening at home in New York.

When he wrote his ‘Concerto for Orchestra’ the following summer, he included a savage reference to Leningrad in ‘Intermezzo Interrotto,’ the fourth movement, the clarinet plays a speeded up cartoonish version of the Bolero-ish ‘Invasion’ theme, accompanied by chortling trills and sneering trombone glissandos. Bartok, like Hindemith, apparently believed that Shostakovich was indulging an oversimplified writing for cheap effect. Neither composer seemed to realise that the first movement of Leningrad was a complicated act of parody, or that Shostakovich had little to gain, financial or otherwise, from American success.“ So that’s what Ross has to say about this. But what is equally interesting is the context in which it was played Leningrad. Now consider this, it’s 1942. The city has been effectively surrounded by the Germans for a year. The major orchestra in Leningrad, the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, in which its famous conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky had effectively been disbanded, and there was a tremendous desire, however, to play the symphony, which had been written by Shostakovich about Leningrad if you wish, in Leningrad. And so the conductor, Karl Eliasberg, who was at that time the conductor of the Leningrad Radio Orchestra, set about trying to construct an orchestra, or his radio orchestra, in order to play the symphony in Leningrad. But consider the conditions here. People were starving, as I indicated to you, literally, you know, a million if not more people died as a result of the siege by the Nazis.

There were very few musicians who were sufficiently healthy, and consider also what I’ve said to you, that there was something like, it’s a symphony of 75 to 80 minutes. When you listen to the whole symphony, as I’m sure many of you have, but maybe you’ll be stimulated to listen to it again after the session. You think, it requires an extraordinary amount of energy to be able to play it. And here were at best a few starving musicians, who were essentially in no physical position to perform the symphony. And yet, Eliasberg persisted, and rounded up a whole range of musicians from all over Leningrad in order to basically fill his orchestra. It is quite extraordinary that at one point, in order to get a drummer, he went to the morgue where a, the drummer of the Leningrad Orchestra apparently was dead, but when he got to the morgue, he found he was still alive, and they rehabilitated him, and he was the drummer on the night in which they actually performed. They were, Eliasberg was very strict and apparently if you didn’t pitch up at rehearsals, you only got half rations. But at the end of the day, he was able to actually get sufficient musicians up and ready to play this most demanding of symphonies. But more than that, the entire playing of the "Leningrad Symphony,” as the BBC document, basically documentary film, “Leningrad and the Orchestra Who Defied Hitler” shows so luminously is if you really want to know about the power of music, here it was. In the midst of this dreadful, dreadful siege, somehow they were able to construct an orchestra from the dead, if you wish. And they did more than that.

They were able to get their pictures, of course, of literally the concert hall being polished up for the occasion. People got into their best dress that they could under the circumstances. The Red Army, in preparation for the night in which the concert was going to actually be broadcast, launched on a ferocious counter attack on the Nazis to quieten them, so that in fact there would be no disturbance when the symphony was played. And more than that, they put up loud speakers right around the city so that the surrounding Nazi soldiers could actually hear that the symphony was being played at the time. I find it extraordinarily moving, as I’m sure most people do, that here in the midst of despair, in the midst of starvation, and the hellish conditions of Leningrad at the time, the symphony was played, and it belted out to the surrounding Nazi soldiers that actually music was going to triumph one way or the other. Eliasberg himself was a very controversial character. He lived with his mother, he was said to have a heartless approach to music, to which he replied, “Of course I have no heart. Many years ago in that Leningrad stairwell, I gave my heart to Shostakovich.” And yet he was the hero who managed to get the orchestra and play the symphony. It was very much a case in which he didn’t really get as much credit as he deserved for a long time, because after the war, Yevgeny Mravinsky came back, was extremely jealous of the praise that Eliasberg had received for this heroic attempt. And he blocked him from any promotion. Eliasberg died in 78, quite unheralded, although recent attempts have been made to rehabilitate him, to reflect upon the heroic affair. One final point about this context.

On the 29th of January, 1964, which was of course 22 years later, 22 of the original orchestra, in the presence of Shostakovich played the symphony in Leningrad. And so the symphony itself is, for all of the reasons that I’ve advanced, an extraordinarily remarkable piece of musical history. Let me now turn to the piece of music itself. Again, I do apologise for the fact that I can’t give you all of the symphony. I’d love to play all 80 minutes, I can’t. But let me start off with the fact that it opens in the, in its home key of C major. There’s a theme in string unison. Octaves are supplied by the two bassoons, and it reflects the normal life of Leningrad or any city in a non war situation. And then, of course, what happens is inserted into this is the remarkable situation where Shostakovich, as it were, creates what he calls his invasion theme. It’s no doubt about it that he must have borrowed the Bolero, written about, well, in 1928, so some 14 years earlier. And this theme, right, which starts off very quietly, very, almost demurely, and reaches an absolute crescendo. It, in place of elaboration and variation of this, what you’d expect in a symphony, in the movement of first and second themes, the orchestra begins repeating a rather simple minded idea over a span of 350 bars, with a snare drum rhythm wrapping continuously underneath it, a la the Bolero. And effectively what you’ve got in the symphony is a situation of the strings, representing the Soviet or the Russian people being drowned out increasingly by the tympany, by the trumpets, which is the invading the invasion theme.

Now of course, the big question, going back to my point of ambiguity here, is did Shostakovich actually mean that this was, as it were, a protest against all invasion? After all, he’d begun thinking and starting sketches of the symphony before Hitler invaded. But yet it’s been interpreted, of course, as effectively a musical metaphor for the invasion by the Nazis of Leningrad. Well, you can judge that for yourselves, because that’s the wonderful nature of this music, of its ambiguity. I am going to play you now, as clip one, a five minute part. Not the whole, the whole of the invasion theme goes on for 15 minutes of a 28 minute, roughly a first movement, extraordinary long movement. But I hope that you listen to it all, because you’ve got to listen to the intensity of it as it moves you through. In fact, you can’t get out of your head by the time you’ve finished it. Certainly, I haven’t, having listened to it a number of times. It’s quite remarkable, and it, and of course it very much depends on how great the conductor is who does it. Claudette and I, in the time before COVID, where you could go to wonderful concerts, and we went to Carnegie Hall, and the great Mariss Jansons, before he got ill, I think conducting the orchestra in an unbelievable performance of the symphony. I mean, just it’s always stayed with me. We were so privileged to hear it, as he, kind of, essentially pulled out all of the framework of this 15 minute, 350 bars. But here it is, the invasion theme, or at least part of it. And you can judge this as yourself as to what he was having in mind. Of course, it’s a photograph of the young Shostakovich.

Of course, he, and remember the 1942, he’d have been 36. And here we go. That gives you a pretty reasonable idea, I think, of what is, I mean, it really is extraordinary, 350 bars. It may be in some ways one of the most remarkable pieces of symphonic music ever written, because he just keeps on piling on the agony, piling on as a, to a, variation on variation, using the kind of Bolero idea from Ravel’s Bolero to, in a repetitive fashion, to try as best he can to explain or to essentially articulate the emotional consequences of an invasion of this kind. Again, you know, some people suggested that this was effectively a metaphor for any form of totalitarian infection. And it’s very interesting, just a couple of observations, as you have noticed. If you start the movement, as I indicated, there’s a flute solo which invites us into this dreamlike world. And then the, this march and battle that ensues, which is unrelenting, in which to a large degree, what is happening is that trumpets and the tympany are drowning out any kind of, if you wish, almost sanity, because the strings, individuality of the strings as he constructs them represents the Soviet people, on one interpretation, pitted against the machine-like rhythms of the trumpet and the tympany. On the other hand, as I say it has been interpreted that Shostakovich was effectively protesting against all forms totalitarian power.

Now that of course is the one of the ambiguities of the, of the piece. But I do think that upon reflection, when I quoted what the disgruntled other composers had said, there is, it seems to me, quite a plausible case to be made out that there was much more nuance in this piece than otherwise meets the eye at the time. And I think to some extent that is accepted today. The second movement, which I, which is particularly interesting, Shostakovich called this movement “Memories.” Sad memories, sad because there’s no joy anymore. There’s no dancing, there’s no joy of any kind. And I just want to play about the first five minutes if I can, just to give you a sense, where you’ll find, you’ll see here an extended wind solo, but behind that, a whole kind of unsettling rhythm for strings. And then, just right at the end of the five minute clip, you’ll see a parody of a march, because what he’s trying to convey here is to a large degree, the bitterness of life. You can’t dance anymore, dance is only forced, it’s unnatural. Everything is unnatural. There no longer is the freedom to have joy, to have love, to actually have freedom. And he essentially constructs a second movement in particular in this way. The recording, which we have here for you, is itself rather interesting, because it’s, the conductor is Karel Ancerl. The Czechoslovakian conductor, who himself has a very interesting history, because he landed up in Theresienstadt concentration camp. And it was he who was forced to conduct at the camp for a propaganda film made about Theresienstadt, later becoming the most famous, I think of all the conductors of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, but himself, with this extraordinarily scarred history because of what had happened to him, they wife and family in the concentration camp, Jewish Czechoslovakian conductor Ancerl, here he is conducting the first five minutes of the second movement called “Memories.”

Okay, Lauren, I think we can stop this one, Lauren, thank you. I think you’ve got the picture. What I meant by that, almost that parody of a march. You can’t march, nothing is normal anymore. It’s all distorted, it’s all, it, there is no joy. It is just macabre under circumstances. The third movement, the adagio, again, you, which I don’t have time to play for you as much as I’d love to. Essentially there, the battle lines are clearly drawn. The winds are contrast against flexible strings. You’ve got this battle going on between the two of them and with a sort of indication towards end of the third movement that it’s the strings that are going to actually win here, almost as it were Shostakovich suggesting if we stick together, if we stick together against this cacophony of sound, we can survive, we can actually conquer that which has been thrown against us. The fourth movement, which is the last movement of the symphony, this 80, 75 to 80 minute symphony is particularly interesting for a number of reasons. Because it, the opening theme is interned by the whole orchestra, and it comes back to the triumphant home key, which is an indication that there’s a resolution, there’s an indication that there is going to be a triumph. The C major key. But the curious part about it is right at the end, you’ll notice in this clip that I’m going to play for you, the side drum returns, that side drum, right, which of course has been central to this awful part of the, kind of, Bolero invasion theme in the first movement, and which does play a role in the third movement as well.

And so the question that always arises at the end is, well, we may be able to conquer tyranny, but at the end of the day, the threat, the threat of tyranny always remains. And the side drum reminds us of that. Again, possibly ambiguity on the part of Shostakovitch. But as I indicated to you earlier, there’s no question if you go back to the Fifth, as I suggested when I started this lecture, that that is very much part of the repertoire of understanding him. So you’ll be pleased, I’ve just got a three minute clip of the right to the end of the symphony. This is played by the Berlin Phonic Orchestra, conducted by the German conductor, Michael Sanderling, the son of the famous Carl Sanderling. So here we are, the last three minutes of the entire symphony. And notice the side drum roll right at the end. Thanks Lauren, you can see what I mean by the side drum at the end, and remember of course, the side drum and the drums are so symbolic about the, kind of, if you call it the fascist or the totalitarian impetus against the strings that et al, which was supposed to represent the people who suffering at the extent thereof. Let me just conclude by saying this. When you think that this was a symphony which was played by starving musicians in 1942, by Eliasberg’s Leningrad Radio Orchestra. That it was broadcast so that the German, the Nazi soldiers could hear it. Just think about what that must have done for the morale, what an assertion of how important music can be. And there’s no question about it. If I could conclude by saying, and I started with the idea of ambiguity, that music’s ability to be ambiguous, to capture ambiguity was probably the saving grace for Shostakovich, saved his life. He could express his beliefs that one day, and perhaps this is an interpretation, that one day Stalin would be overthrown, and that humanity could defeat tyranny, and that he might be able to survive. And by substituting one tyrant for another, he could compose this particular symphony, which was essentially, was performed for millions of people in his lifetime without betraying his conscience. It’s not, maybe it’s not just a piece about Hitler, maybe it’s also a piece about Stalin for after all he thought about writing this before the war began.

And I think in this way, it has a timelessness and a greatness, because what it says is that there is the possibility of throwing off tyrants, of throwing off totalitarians. But as the side drum reminds us at the end, and Shostakovich does, in the midst of the triumphant return to the home key of C Major, that side drum tells us that whilst the human spirit might never be broken, evil will always be present. Totalitarian forces will always be there. Anti-democratic tendencies will always exist. The question is what triumphs at the end. And for this reason, it is, in my view, quite remarkable piece of music. And I hope that, you know, you’ll be inspired to go listen to it again, or if you’ve never listened to it, listen to it for the first time. And think about those musicians in 1942, on half rations, playing 75 minutes of this music, and it being heard by the Germans, who must at the end of it thought, this is going to be a hell of a job if we are going to win here. And so, therefore, that’s really what I wanted to say. As you can see, it was going to take me more than an hour to do the Fifth and the Seventh, but they are coupled at the tote at that sense.

And I hope you enjoyed this. I’ll just take a few questions that exist.

Q&A and Comments:

The title of the book, Ina is, and let me hold it up, is called, oh, I dunno if I’ve forgot it. “The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century” by Alex Ross, it’s a fabulous book.

Alan, yes, those five minutes of invasion and 15 are very ugly. And they’re very ugly for a very good reason. That was his intention, absolutely. But it starts off not like that. Very quietly, very gently. You may recall that David Peiemer and I, some of you may recall lectured on cabaret. And there’s that Nazi song that starts off in exactly the same way, almost in a kind of idyllic song, which suddenly you realise actually is being sung by a bunch of Nazis in the most ugliest fashion. And in a way, Shostakovich, perhaps as a predecessor to that did precisely that in adapting the Bolero theme in that way.

Stephen, Bartok’s problem with the march is that he seems to think that Shostakovich is besotted by its drive, whereas he was satirising the Nazi onslaught, seeing how relentless it is, but going nowhere. I think that’s right. But of course it may not just be the Nazi onslaught, for the reasons that I’ve spoken about.

Thank you very much, Patricia. It is a remarkable piece of music. And Erica, I’m pleased you saw the BBC documentary. I recommend it to everybody. Brenda, thank you very much. Goodnight to everybody, and I hope that you’re going listen to it again.

• Dennis, thanks a million, sorry I

• It’s my pleasure. Nice to see you.

• [Wendy] Yeah, how are you?

• Okay.

• It was brilliant. That was brilliant.

• Thank you very much. Yeah, well it’s a-

• Thanks a lot.

• Brilliant piece of music, pleasure.

• It certainly is, thanks.

• The other one is the but we’ll do that later, take care.

• Good, take care. Bye-bye, thanks a lot.