Shostakovich - a Russian survivor and genius

Prologue

The rise of confrontation and disruption in America's public policy worries many people.  Thinking positively, it comes across as a "wake-up call" to the inherent dangers of ignoring the lessons of our shared history.  

What message, for instance, does the new "leader of the free world" send in signing hostile orders imposing widespread tariffs which threaten international free trade?   And how can that same leader also justify aping Russia's annexation of Ukrainian regions with threats to annex Greenland, Canada - and even Gaza while forcibly expelling its population for the benefit of resort tourism?  

It's almost as if the conflicts in eastern Europe and the Middle East weren't challenging and bellicose enough for us all to be getting on with.  Have the horrors of twentieth century history been forgotten?

Let's remind ourselves of some of those bad old days when Fascism and Communism tried to suppress and regularly did obliterate daily life.  The following example centres of the musical response of a creative Russian genius - who managed to survive all manner of opprobrium and censure from Russian purges, Nazi invaders, and some in the western media. 

Career overview

Looking back 100 or so years, for example, Dimitri Shostakovich has been described as one of the era’s great musical composers.  Who could argue with that proposition given the quality and quantity of his output, never mind Russia’s political and military context? 

As if to emphasise the point, BBC music magazine is fulsome, recently (1) declaring him as “a towering figure in the story of 20th-century classical music”... “one of the most significant Russian composers of the Soviet era.”

Born in St Petersburg in September 1906 and having begun composing music with a scherzo in F minor in 1919, ending with a violin sonata before his passing in August 1975, Shostakovich produced a prolific body of work covering more than half the years of twentieth century.  His compositions included 15 symphonies, 15 string quartets, 2 cello concertos, 2 violin concertos, operas, songs and song cycles, as well as scores for 33 films, 14 plays, and 9 operas and ballets (2).  

This record of achievement is all the more remarkable, especially considering the censorious (and life-threatening) glare of an authoritarian régime.

Overview of Soviet attitudes to his compositions

After graduating from St Petersburg Conservatory as a pianist and composer, his First Symphony won the teenager immediate favour.  His subsequent career, however, varied with the political climate.  For example, initial plaudits for his second opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (1932) were followed by outright condemnation from Joseph Stalin, Russia’s ideological leader (as in iron fist and "purges") for 29 years from 1924. 

The Fifth Symphony (1937) was Shostakovich’s response, subtitled by him as a ‘Soviet artist’s reply to just criticism,’ and brought partial rehabilitation.  In contrast, the Seventh Symphony (Leningrad) performed during World War 2’s German siege of the city offered a propaganda coup to Russia.  

His Ninth Symphony (1945), however, was condemned as “wholly frivolous, an underwhelming reaction to Russia’s role in defeating Naziism at the end of the War (3).”  Post-war saw Stalinist purges (4) targeted music composers from 1948.  Shostakovich is said to have “retreated” to film music and to composing “bottom drawer” (hidden from the Communist authorities) works.  Following Stalin’s death in 1953, the 47 year old Shostakovich is said to have enjoyed relative freedom (5).  The latter comment, however, ignores his being compelled to join the Communist Party in 1960.  

The BBC magazine article summarises his struggles with political oppression as they “made his life story one of the most fascinating and turbulent in the annals of classical music.”

Novelists’ perspectives

Apart from the eloquence of his music, the most realistic re-imagining of the controlling atmosphere within which Shostakovich had to work is expressed by award-winning novelists.  One art form, literature, inspired by another, music.  There can be no other composer whose factual circumstances have been well researched to create the historic background realistically.  Two experienced authors eloquently describe the era's confines, by-the-by providing further evidence of Shostakovich’s 20th century status. 

 

Sarah Quigley’s “The Conductor”  focuses on the Nazi siege of Leningrad.  The composer’s publicly-lauded opera Lady Macbeth (6) had been condemned in Pravda as “muddle instead of music” and as a “pornographic insult to the Soviet people.”  The composer was ominously warned that unless he changed his ways “things could end very badly” for him.  

In 1941, Shostakovich began work on his Seventh Symphony.  This was just after the start of the Nazi siege of his home city.  Using language reminiscent of the Middle East today, Hitler declared that “St Petersburg must be erased from the face of the earth.”  

Shostakovich is a central character in Quigley’s novel, remaining in the city to begin the Symphony.  He finalised three of its five movements before his evacuation to Moscow.  “Too important to the Russians to remain unsilenced and too well-known in the west to be killed.”  The author places the reader as an eye witness to the graphically portrayed bleakest of Russian winters, with citizens (including orchestral musicians) facing death from shelling and starvation.  The siege lasted 900 days and 1.5 million people died.  

What an epochal context for musical composition.  On 9 August 1942, “the day after Russia shelled the Germans into silence, the city heard the symphony for the first time – and wept (7),” to quote the novel’s mindful words.  Its reviewer succinctly opines that the novel “conveys the extraordinary life-saving properties of music and hope.”  

The BBC magazine article reminds us that the composer himself described this work as “a requiem for the city that Stalin destroyed and that Hitler merely finished (8).” 

Musically and artistically, the Leningrad Symphony stands proud.  Lasting almost 80 minutes it is Shostakovich’s longest.  The music’s cadence and power conveys his exasperation at his citizens’ plight.  We sense his anguish and pain.  The allegretto invasion march (repeated 12 times) controversially references Lehar’s operetta “The Merry Widow” which, we learned in class, was a favourite piece of Hitler.  And the composer underscored its proud standing by asking for an orchestra of eight horns, six trombones, two harps, a piano, three side drums and a full percussion set. 

The UK Booker-prize winner Julian Barnes has likewise, but from different angles, captured the stifling reality which Shostakovich had to endure in Stalinist Russia.  In his book “The Noise of Time” the reader visits the composer during three key moments (9). 

One is of him waiting to be taken away after Pravda denounced his Lady Macbeth because “it tickled the perverted taste of the bourgeois with its fidgety neurotic music;” the next moment is after his successful Seventh Symphony (which restored his reputation with Stalin), as Shostakovich denounces his own and Stravinsky’s work when on a propaganda tour of the USA; and the third one sees a wiser post-Stailin Shostakovich embittered again after been forced by Nikita Khruschev to join the Communist Party and become chair of the Russian Federation Union of Composers.  

The review praises Barnes’s novel as “a condensed masterpiece that traces the lifelong battle of one man’s art with the insupportable exigencies of totalitarianism.”

The composer's music in live performances

It is one thing to appreciate music, the era and composers by listening to recordings at home or on radio.  A standout experience was a performance of Shostakovich’s work live here in Northern Ireland.  The maestro Valerii Gergiev brought and conducted Mariinsky Orchestra in a bravura performance of the composer’s Eleventh Symphony in the Ulster Hall in October 2017.  To witness it played here by the Saint Petersburg ensemble on the Revolution’s centenary was a privilege, a huge cultural compliment to our city. 

 

Shostakovich composed the symphony in 1957.  This was four years after Stalin’s death.  To quote the programme notes’ first sentence, it was written “to mark the fortieth anniversary of the October Revolution (10).”  It commemorates the events that led up to the first Russian Revolution, particularly the 1905 Bloody Sunday.  

Two pages of historic photographs with details of 1905’s and 1917’s events were included in the Belfast programme, providing visual and verbal insights to the period, the music, and the composer. The narrative interweaves the music with Russian history. 

 

The programme notes explained that whereas the régime “praised it as a fine example of  Socialist Realism and awarded the composer a Lenin Prize, many Western critics damned it as glorified film music.”  It adds that “in the years since, this symphony has come to be considered not as an official work written to satisfy the Soviet authorities but a deeply moving reflection on Russian history.”  D’accord.

Consider his popular Chamber Symphony for Strings in E Minor, opus 110A.  I heard it recently performed live by the 12-piece United Strings of Europe broadcast on BBC radio (11).  One thinks of the aphorism “if you can’t beat them, join them” as Shostakovich had joined the Communist Party in 1960.  Critics, according to the broadcaster, regarded the work as his response to joining the Party involuntarily; whereas he himself regarded the work as his own epitaph “as no one else would write one.”  

Radio 3 adds that it contains personal references including to other works such as the Lady Macbeth opera.  Another musicologist convincingly says that “the memory of Stalin’s terror… is poured into this penetrating autobiographical work. The DSCH leitmotif (the composer’s personal musical signature) permeates as Shostakovich cites themes from the first, fifth, seventh, eighth, and tenth Symphonies (12).”  

The composer’s heartbreaking words attached to the score are “In memory of the victims of fascism and war.”

Epilogue

The devastating effects on Russia itself of Stalin's post-war purges merit emphasis.  

Whereas his régime admitted that seven million had died in "the Great Patriotic War" with the Nazis between 1941-45, the fact is that régime's purges included "attacking its own citizens, executing, incarcerating and exiling those it viewed as hostile (13)."  

Following his death in 1953, Stalin's successor Nikita Kruschev revealed a much higher death figure of twenty million.  And the subsequent opening of State archives by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev enabled historians to declare revised total figures of 26.6 million deaths, comprising of twelve million military and 14.6 million civilians.  Slaughter is understatement.

                                                     ---------------------------

Considering Shostakovich's “lifelong battle with totalitarianism (14),” this observer considers his versatility and unquenchable zest for musical expression in the face of creativity being denied to be his most impressive compositional characteristics.  Miraculous doesn't sound outrageous.

For example, the listener is captivated, on the one hand, by the sheer orchestral power of the 7th Symphony whose “enormous first movement” includes the striking militaristic 356 bar “invasion theme (15),” repeated in the fifth movement with energetic percussive power to reach an emotionally rousing conclusion.  

On the other hand, the contrast with his piano concerto number 2 is striking. Composed in 1957 for his then 19 year old son and pianist Maxim, this work is described as an “irresistible charmer replete with delightfully sardonic five-finger exercises and a magical distillation of Rachmaninov for its slow movement (16).”  High and worthy praise.  

Shostakovich’s biographer Dmitri Rabinovich is quoted as saying that the second concerto showed that it was as though “the composer's youth had returned to him.”  A living testimonial to one of the 20th century’s and Russia's great composers and survivors.

                                                    ---------------------------------------

Back to the now, as in this final week of March 2025 the Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes began a concert tour of the USA, reservations apparent in his thoughts.  He expressed concern "that the current US leadership is apparently turning its back on longtime friends in Europe and around the world."   He adds, and I end with his quotation -

"Music cannot solve global problems, but it can inspire some of the emotions we so badly need right now; compassion, empathy, generosity, understanding, and an appreciation of diversity." 

 

Related articles:-

1. https://michaelmcsorleycurrent.blogspot.com/2024/11/leader-of-free-world.html  (Nov 5 2024 election mandate etc)

2. https://michaelmcsorleyeconomy.blogspot.com/2025/01/contrasting-fortunes.html (re Climate, Greenland & tariffs)

 

© Michael McSorley 2025

References:-

1.  Erik Levi & Steve Wright BBC Music Magazine 25 Sept 2024 Shostakovich: Russia’s voice of the oppressed who walked a tightrope between artistic sincerity and political survival

2  Alec Macdonald QUB School of Open Learning Shostakovich course handouts(Jan 2025)

3.  Ibid Erik Levi & Steve Wright BBC Music Magazine 25 Sept 2024

4.  https://www.france24.com/en/20200622-stalin-purges-added-to-vast-human-cost-of-wwii

5.  David Ashman sleeve notes Shostakovich Symphony no.1 and Piano Concertos 1&2 2003 www.emi-encore.com

6.  Described by tutor AMacdonald in class 4 as “one of the 20th century’s most important operas”

7.  The Observer NewReview 15 July 2012 The Symphony that silenced the Nazis, Bella Bathurst

8.  Ibid Erik Levi & Steve Wright BBC Music Magazine 25 Sept 2024

9.  The Observer NewReview 17 January 2016  Review by Alex Preston of “The Noise of Time” 2015, Julian Barnes 

10. Andrew Huth Belfast International ArtsFestival concert programme notes 11 Oct 2017 https://belfastinternationalartsfestival.com/event/mariinsky-orchestra/

11. BBC Radio 3  Classical Live 17 Feb 2025 Wigmore Hall United Strings of Europe

12. https://sofiaphilharmonic.com/en/works/dmitri-shostakovich-chamber-symphony-for-strings-in-c-minor-op-110a/

13. Ibid https://www.france24.com/en/20200622-stalin-purges-added-to-vast-human-cost-of-wwii

14. The Observer NewReview 17 January 2016 Alex Preston review “The Noise of Time” Julian Barnes

15. Sleevenotes Mariinsky Orchestra 2012 recording Shostakovich Symphony no.7, Valery Gergiev

16. Sleevenotes London Philharmonic Orchestra recording Shostakovich Piano Concerto no. 2, 2003. Pianist Mikhail Rudy, Conductor Mariss Jansons

 

Sergei Rachmaninoff: a Russian Romantic

 Introduction

For many people Sergei Rachmaninov is the genius responsible for creating the most mellifluous music ever written by a human being. So what better way to mark the 150th anniversary of this Romantic's birth than to consider his music’s distinctive Russian essences.  

 

The anniversary is being marked by music lovers world-wide with special live concerts and events. For example, on 28 January in New York's Carnegie Hall, where the composer himself played and conducted, the virtuosic Chinese pianist Yuja Wang made the running in "an all-afternoon marathon" devoted exclusively to Rachmaninoff. Supported by the Philadelphia Orchestra, with which the pianist/composer himself played and recorded, this time under the baton of maestro Yannick Nézet-Séguin she played not one or two but all four of his concertos as well as his Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. The concert lasted for three and a half hours (including two intermissions to take a breath and refuel).

 

Back in the UK, BBC Radio 3 nominated Rachmaninoff as its composer of the week to coincide with his birthday in the final week of March. One of many events on home ground was a live performance of his choral masterpiece the Vsenoshchnoe Bdenie or All Night Vigil, sometimes referred to as the Vespers. It was performed on consecutive nights by Chamber Choir Ireland and conducted by Paul Hillier in two liturgical settings, Clonard Monastery Belfast and Christ Church Cathedral Dublin.

 

And various academic institutions, including Queen's University in Belfast, have presented courses like the one I attended explaining the life and times of the great multi-tasker, composer pianist and conductor. 

 

Let’s begin by reflecting on the aspects of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s music that contribute to its particularly Russian qualities.   His prime influences include family, education, and the Orthodox Church. 

Family, education, geography, history, culture, Orthodox Christianity

Like his forebears, Rachmaninoff was steeped in Russian culture from the start.  Depending on whether the Julian or Gregorian calendar is used, he was born on 20 March or 2 April 1873 at one of his family’s estates in Semyonovo. This sits in the Staraya Russa region, some 260 miles east of Moscow. He belonged, in effect, to a family of “the privileged minority.” 

This was a time of revolutionary activity with the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881; an era coinciding with emancipation of serfs.  Russia’s Empire had grown over the previous couple of centuries sprawling from the Black Sea all the way to the Pacific Ocean in the far east by the end of the19th century. 

Rachmaninoff’s birthplace in north-western Russia was close to Novgorod, originally (like several places in Ireland) a Viking settlement, “near enough to catch the echoes of its old bells.” This quotation articulates the composer’s recall years later of “dear childhood memories” when his maternal grandmother Sophia Butakova took him to Novgorod’s Orthodox Cathedral of St Sophia with its 16th century white stone bell-tower. 

Musicianship was in the Rachmaninoff family genes.  Sergei’s great-grandfather Alexander Gerasimovich was a competent violinist.  Alexander’s son, Arkady, was a pianist taught by John Field.  This Irish virtuoso had studied with Mikhail Glinka, Russia’s first important composer.  Field, who is buried in Moscow, is remembered as the originator of the piano nocturne, a form later made famous by Chopin whose music Sergei Rachmaninoff himself played as a student, as well as in middle and later life.  

Sergei’s grandfather Arkady got up early every morning to practise piano for four to five hours.  Likewise Arkady’s son Vassily, Sergei’s father, played piano.  Sergei often programmed a piece based on a theme he recalled from his father’s playing.  My QUB tutor advises that the piece was Polka de V(orW)R. Its composer was Franz Behr rather than Vassily Rachmaninoff as Sergei may have thought.

The biographer Scott says that it was Sergei’s mother who introduced him to music when she sat him, aged four, at a piano.  Scott adds that her role resulted in the engagement of Anna Ornatskaya from St Petersburg Conservatoire as his first piano teacher.  Interesting to observe Russian quality and seminal family influence combining from the beginning.

His subsequent musical education was delivered in Russia’s most prestigious places of learning.  Aged nine, he was enrolled in the junior section of the St Petersburg Conservatoire; later transferring to Moscow’s Conservatoire under the tutelage of, among others, Russian maestro Nikolai Zverev.  That latter part of his musical education led him to encounter Romantic composer and compatriot PyotrTchaikovsky (1840-1893) whom he idolised - and a mutual respect resulted.

Russian music qualities in piano compositions

Early illustrations of composition by Rachmaninoff when still a student contain aspects which attest to their Russian quality.  His Russian Rhapsody for two pianos in E Minor, written improvisationally in 1891 aged 18, derives from an unspecified Slavic folk-song.  It tears along for nine rhapsodic minutes, a set of variations on the folk theme, in an enthusiastic and competitive pianistic tussle.

Soon after this, he composed five Morceaux de Fantaisie of which the Prelude in C sharp minor commanded instant attention.  It remains today as a platform favourite. Sometimes called “The Bells of Moscow,” the notable Russian essence is its mindful resonances of Orthodox church bells.  It is a 62-bar stand-alone piece in three sections, with the outer two being "lento" and the contrasting central part being "agitato."  To say that small is beautiful understates the Prelude's magnificent impact on the senses. The composer's inspiration was taken from his own dream of bells, heard in the A section, achingly tolling at a funeral service.

These same bells recur after a 3-year period of “paralysing apathy” caused by the disastrous premiere of his Symphony number 1 in 1897.  In a watershed change in style and mood,  Rachmaninoff deserted “the lively style of the Russian nationalist school” reverting in his Piano Concerto number 2 to reflect the strains of the old Orthodox Russia resonant since his childhood (more under literary influences below).  

This concerto's first movement, for instance, with its literally striking piano opening recalls St Sophia’s Cathedral campanology; as does its subsequent Orthodox plainchant melody played by the orchestra.  The second movement reuses the opening bars of his 1891 Romance for his Skalon sister relatives at the Ivanovka country estate.

 

His piano concertos numbers 3 and 4 continued with the sumptuous Russian idioms sweeping listeners along expansively as if (in my ears) to mirror the geographical expanse of Russia itself.  These works have captured hearts such that the third concerto received the Hollywood treatment and recognition.  Topical in March given the Oscars, Geoffrey Rush won best actor gong for portrayal of pianist David Helfgott in the 1996 film “Shine.”

The fourth piano concerto, as we learned in class, exemplifies Rachmaninoff's compositional technique where the score alternates between major and his beloved minor keys, seamless shifting of the musical mood between happy and sad.

The influence of Orthodox ceremonial bells appears again in other Rachmaninoff compositions, such as and including his 1913 piano sonata number 2 opus 36.

Russian music qualities in choral compositions

One of Rachmaninoff’s favourite compositions was his Bells Symphony, also written in 1913 when he was 40 years old. The four-movement piece’s Russian qualities stem from two parallels between Rachmaninoff and his mentor at the Moscow Conservatoire, Tchaikovsky.  It was explained in my QUB course that the Symphony’s first movement reflects sleigh bells; wedding bells are prominent in the second; alarm bells are heard in the third; with the tolling of funeral bells in the final movement.  One parallel is that Rachmaninoff’s Bells Symphony (1913) and Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique (his sixth) mirror a picture of Russian life from birth to death, with both having slow finales which eke out sadness.  

The other parallel is that Rachmaninoff wrote the Bells at the same composition desk in Rome that Tchaikovsky had used.  His family were lodging in Modest (Pyotr’s brother) Tchaikovsky’s flat in Rome.  Another example of Russian mentor’s musicianship combining with family, inspiring Sergei to produce high quality music.

Rachmaninoff’s other favourite from his own work is said to have been the All Night Vigil.  Written in less than two weeks in early 1915 it is another work brimming with Russian qualities.  

The first six of its fifteen movements set texts from the Russian Orthodox All Night Vigil ceremony, its canonical hour of Vespers.  So personal was it to Rachmaninoff that he asked for the fifth, Nunc Dimittis (meaning “release now”) to be sung at his own funeral.  And as if to emphasise Russian quality, he based ten of the sections on chant to comply with the Orthodox Church’s requirements. 

Rachmaninoff’s Vespers culminate from two decades of interest in Russian sacred music.  This interest had been initiated by Tchaikovsky’s own setting of the All Night Vigil.  The biographer Max Harrison argues that whereas both composers make extensive use of traditional Russian chants, Rachmaninoff’s is more complex in its use of harmony, textual variety and polyphony.  Harrison quotes Rachmaninoff’s Vespers being praised as “the greatest musical achievement of the Russian Orthodox Church.”

 

I concur.  The Vespers was performed in Omagh’s Sacred Heart Church by the Chorus of the Mariinsky Theatre under the baton of maestro Valery Gergiev on a hot summer’s day in 2000.  Recorded by BBC Radio, it was presented as St Petersburg’s sincere condolences to the victims of the 1998 bombing.  

In class we learned about Rachmaninoff’s use of the low B flat.  For me, this was the Mariinsky performance’s stand-out choral feature.  The unique power and mesmerising beauty of Mariinsky’s bassi profundi voices is a truly Russian art-form, the privilege of a lifetime witnessed live.

 

Chamber Choir Ireland observe that whereas the All Night Vigil "went largely unheard until the 1960's due to Bolshevik suppression of religious music, it has since earned its rightful place in the repertory next to his symphonies concertos and piano works." I must add that CCI's recent rendition at Clonard Monastery was majestically celestial, right up there with the very best, hitting all the notes with aplomb, not least those of the deep deep basses.

 

Chamber Choir Ireland sing Rachmaninoff's All Night Vigil at Clonard Monastery Belfast on 31 March 2023

Russian literary influences

Apart from the influence of composers like his compatriot Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff's works also took inspiration from giants of Russian literature.  An early example is the first of his three one-act operas, written in 1892, Aleko based on a 569-line poem The Gypsies by the Romantic Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837).

 

Aleko’s theme is a jealousy-based crime of passion (nothing exclusively Russian there).  In Pushkin’s day, however, during Nicholas I’s régime gypsy orchestras had special allure.  Zverev used to take his students, Rachmaninoff included, to fashionable restaurants to hear gypsies play friskas on their cimbaloms.  

Aleko’s quality ensured that Rachmaninoff passed his Conservatoire finals with flying colours, a Grand Gold Medal, marking a successful end to his student days.  The work was highly admired by both Zverev and by Tchaikovsky.

 

The other two operas by Rachmaninoff were The Miserly Knight and Francesca Da Rimini, both written in 1904. 

Another Rachmaninoff composition was based on the poem “Along the Way” by his contemporary Anton Chekhov (1860-1904, famous for his short stories and for plays like Uncle Vanya, The Cherry Orchard).  Rachmaninoff based his composition The Crag on Chekhov’s poem.  According to Bertensson, it is set on Christmas Eve in a roadside inn, featuring an encounter between an old man/giant crag and a young lady, all travellers in a waiting room, but travelling in opposite directions - like a tale of unrequited ardour, as are the best love songs.

Orthodox liturgy combines with another Russian literary giant to influence a different work by Rachmaninoff.  Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) is referenced, enigmatically at least, at the end of the score in Symphony number 1 in D Minor.  “Vengeance is mine I will repay” is the same biblical quotation inscribed in the novelist’s 1878 masterpiece Anna Karenina.  

The adverse reaction from Russia’s music establishment to the first symphony’s disastrous 1897 premiere led Rachmaninoff, as we heard above, into a period of “paralysing apathy” - three years of abstinence from composing; and, as if that wasn't punishment enough, it also led to the work’s full quality remaining unrecognised for 70 years.

The October Revolution 1917

 

All I know is that after working on postponed revisions to his first piano concerto as the Revolution convulsed outside, Rachmaninoff decided on October 25 to leave Russia. Biographer Scott writes that circumstances were scarcely conducive to beginning new compositions; after which, fortuitously, he was invited to tour Scandanavia. Scott adds with pathos that "the family's revolution-disrupted exit meant travelling north through Finland in a peasant sledge to reach the Swedish frontier."

 

A Belfast-based Russian lady piano teacher recently told me that Rachmaninoff’s compositional muse declined after he fled to America.  If the indignant lady is correct, I wonder how he could have composed gorgeous works like the piano concerto number 4, the Corelli Variations, and other works like the Rhapsody on a theme by Paganini. Could Rachmaninoff's compositions in his final 25 years of exile in America and in Europe exhibit American or non-Russian qualities? 

 

The premiere in 1936 of his Symphony number three performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra was dubbed, according to our QUB tutor, by one American critic at the time as "Rachmaninoff's Russian Symphony." In similar vein, an expert commentator on BBC Radio 3's Rachmaninoff anniversary week (01 04 2023) opined that his 1940 composition, the beautiful and boistrous Symphonic Dances, illustrate his nostalgia for Russia.  In class we learned that the Dances symphony represents a meeting of the young and older composer using Russian musical idioms alongside brassy traces of American jazz.

 

It's well known that Rachmaninoff's celebrity preceeded him, so much so that the words "punishing" and "touring schedule" with performances across Europe and the USA are likely to have reduced compositional time. So even if the Russian Romantic composed a smaller quantity of music while in exile, its quality adhered to the highest standards evoking even greater international appreciation and recognition all these years later.  

 

©Michael McSorley 2023

Bibliography

1. Encyclopoedia Britannica https://www.britannica.com/place/Russia/From-Alexander-II-to-Nicholas-II

2. https://www.history.com/news/vikings-in-russia-kiev-rus-varangians-prince-oleg 

3. Pushkin The Gypsies https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aleksandr-Sergeyevich-Pushkin#ref202053

4. Friska, Hungarian - Oxford English Dictionary - a fast section in the music of folk-dance or in music of this style

5. Rachmaninoff Michael Scott (2008)

6. Sergei Rachmaninoff: a Lifetime in Music Sergei Bertensson and Jay Leyda (1956)

7. MariinskyOrchestra, notes by Daniel Jaffé, CD by Denis Matsuev, conductor Valery Gergiev Piano Concerto no.2

8. Rachmaninoff; Life Works Recordings Max Harrison (2006)

Russian music composed after the 1917 Revolution – some examples

Introduction

A century on from the Russian Revolution, it’s fascinating to examine its impact on the country’s four outstanding composers of that time. 

• Sergei Rachmaninov left the country aged 44 in 1917 to spend the rest of his life harmoniously in the US.  
• Igor Stravinsky aged 35 when the Revolution struck and who had moved to Switzerland in 1915, likewise stayed outside Russia not returning until 1962, living for another nine years.  
• Sergei Prokofiev was 26 in Oct 1917 and fled to America where on arrival in 1918 he was welcomed to New York as a celebrity, returning to the Soviet Union for good 18 years later.  
• Of the four, only Dmitri Shostakovich who was just 11 years old in 1917 remained in Russia. 

This essay looks at compositions from Shostakovich and Prokofiev, the two whose best works were composed under the Soviet regime.   

I present short cameos of five pieces, beginning with three epics:-

Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony and his 11^th Symphony;

and as a contrast:-

Shostakovich’s jazz suites ending with (as a seasonal gift to readers) Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kijé Suite.

Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet

From 1932, Prokofiev's visits to Russia became more frequent, and in 1936 he returned permanently.  The pieces he composed during this transitional period include his best works, like the Romeo and Juliet ballet.  Theatre colleagues had suggested Shakespeare’s play to him since “in 1934 the drive towards reinstating western as well as Russian classics was in full swing.[i]”

The following summer Prokofiev worked on the ballet at the Bolshoi’s country retreat.  Nevertheless, when he played the completed score conservatives doubted whether it was danceable.  Another issue emerging at auditions was the proposed happy ending.  Eventually, Prokofiev relented and reverted to Shakespeare’s script.

The Soviet premiere did not take place until January 1940.  One theory is that the delay may have been due to fear in the arts community in the aftermath of the Pravda editorials criticising Shostakovich and other "degenerate modernists."

It was only then that the music’s fame soared, eventually forming the basis of three popular suites - the concert-hall version.  The suites comprise of 20 pieces, lasting for 70 exhilarating minutes.  The ballet consists of 52 pieces of music, lasting for over two hours.   The term Magnum Opus fits, quantitatively and qualitatively.

I love Prokofiev’s innovation, particularly the addition of tenor saxophone to the standard orchestral instrumentation.  It adds a unique sound to the orchestra.  It is used both in solo and as part of the ensemble.  Prokofiev also used the cornet, viola d’amore and mandolins, which add an Italianate flavour to the music.

One can visualise nimble ballerinas in The Street Awakens and in Juliet the Young Girl.  Sections like Gavotte provide sweet contrast to the menace of the ballet’s best known piece, The Dance of the Knights[ii]. 

Prokofiev, you’re hired.

The Leningrad Symphony - Shostakovich

When a live symphonic performance thrills and excites, connecting emotionally and intellectually, I have to buy a recording.  The same compulsion can occur with a production on TV or radio.  

Five years ago, however, an award-winning novel inspired the same outcome. 

The Conductor written by Sarah Quigley was so realistic in its depiction of the suffering of St Petersburg’s citizens and of its Radio Orchestra during the Nazi siege that I had to purchase the music.  This harrowing tale drove the German-based New Zealander to imagine the setting for Shostakovich’s seventh Symphony. 

The composer’s publicly-lauded opera Lady Macbeth of Mtensk had been latterly condemned in 1936 by Stalinism in Pravda as “muddle instead of music.”   

Five years later, Shostakovich began work on this mammoth symphony just after the start of the Nazi siege of Leningrad.  Hitler had declared that the city “must be erased from the face of the earth.”

Shostakovich, used to standing up to Soviet tyranny (depicted more recently by a Booker prize-winning novelist[iii]) had other ideas:-

“Neither savage raids, German planes nor the grim atmosphere of the beleaguered city could hinder the flow.  I worked with an inhuman intensity I have never before reached.”

The siege lasted 900 days and 1.5 million people died.  What an epochal context for musical composition.  Shostakovich had been evacuated having completed the first three movements and finished the work in Moscow.   

The day after Russia eventually shelled the Germans into silence, the city heard this symphony for the first time – and wept.[iv]

This defiant symphony stands proud in many ways.  It is his longest, lasting almost 80 minutes.  Its allegretto invasion march (repeated twelve times) references Lehar[v]’s operetta “The Merry Widow.”  The composer asked for an orchestra of eight horns, six trombones, two harps, a piano, three side drums and a full complement of percussion instruments. 

As Bathurst says, the novel (and for me the symphony also) convey “the extraordinary life-saving properties of music, and hope.”  

Listening to this work is like being a witness to history wherein music is integral.

Shostakovich’s 11^th Symphony

Shostakovich wrote this epic work in 1957 (four years after Stalin’s death) “to mark the fortieth anniversary of the October Revolution.[vi]”  It commemorates the events that led up to the first Russian Revolution, particularly the 1905 Bloody Sunday.

Saint Petersburg’s Mariinsky Orchestra gave a bravura performance in the Ulster Hall on 11 October.[vii]   The Belfast audience responded with an emphatic standing ovation that was almost as boisterous as the military might of the music.

To witness this superlative musical interpretation in our city during the centenary of the October Revolution was flattering, an integral part of the occasion.  Another factor was that two years ago my wife and I travelled to Russia and attended the Mariinsky Theatre where they performed a lavish production of the ballet Giselle. 

The St Petersburg theatre tickets, incidentally, were much more expensive than the Belfast Festival prices to hear Shostakovich’s 11th. 

More importantly, what made this symphony so enjoyable was that the last time I had seen maestro Valery Gergiev conduct in front of my eyes was when he brought the Mariinsky Chorus to Omagh (my hometown) less than a year after the 1998 bomb.  They performed the sacred Orthodox Vespers[viii] by Rachmaninov in the Church of the Sacred Heart.  A poignant gesture, symbolic of music’s healing power.

I enjoyed this symphony not just for its power and beauty; but for its capacity to transport me two decades back to another similar experience with the same maestro making a heroic gesture in the face of evil.  

Music like this has the knack of connecting one to life’s big events, whether happy or tragic.  I suspect that applies mutually, as much to the composer and conductor as to listeners privileged to hear it live.

But more than that.  When I read about Russian aggression today in a former Soviet Republic,[ix] Shostakovich’s war symphonies retain a chilling contemporary relevance.

Shostakovich jazz suites 1 and 2

Shostakovich was prolific and versatile in his composition.  He wrote war symphonies, preludes and fugues, opera, film music, string quartets, and jazz.         

In the same decade - the 1930’s - Nazism was condemning black American jazz as “degenerate music.[x]”  Despite this same word being Pravda’s chosen adjective for denouncing Shostakovich, the Soviet authorities demanded that more be done “to reflect this emerging genre.”   

Hence Prokofiev’s Shakespearean ballet and Shostakovich’s jazz.

The first of the two jazz suites was written in 1934, lasts about eight minutes comprising of a waltz, a polka and a foxtrot.  It was scored for 3 saxophones, 2 trumpets, trombone, wood block, snare drum, cymbals, xylophone, banjo, Hawaiian guitar, piano, violin and double bass.  Legitimate instruments that could grace any jazz big band. 

The atmosphere is lighter than his epic symphonies, more like ballroom dance tunes than jazz of the era.  I do, however, detect a subtle Django Reinhardt[xi] finger-picking influence and a definite Latin rhythm in the foxtrot. 

The longer second suite was composed in 1938, lasts about 24 minutes and is likewise cheerfully tuneful which would play well in ballroom dancing.  The version I know[xii] describes it as a “suite for variety orchestra.” 

Shostokovich’s atmospheric jazz somehow conjures images in my mind of filmed versions of Hercule Poirot mysteries.

Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kijé Suite

In 1933/4 Prokofiev composed a suite for the Soviet film Lieutenant Kijé.  Smaller in scale and less tumultuous than the Shakespearean ballet, it is a beautifully melodious and playful composition from start to finish 23 minutes later.

It is its fourth suite which steals the imagination, a universal favourite during the imminent festive season.  The Troika depicts a fast sleigh ride on the traditional 3-horse Russian sled.  Bells jingle, horses dash through proper snow, glamour glistens – it could only be romantic Russia.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GUzJ7fQBtg

Troika is an indispensible part of Christmas in the same way as Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite. The appeal for me is that when music captures the essence of Yuletide, it lives permanently in the fondest part of our memories.

So much so that several life-affirming composer/musicians in the creative era of “Prog-Rock” were influenced by composers like Prokofiev.  

Greg Lake[xiii] (Emerson Lake and Palmer) used the Troika at a slower pace as the basis of his song “I believe in Father Christmas.”  Lake’s tune was a subtle reaction to the commercialisation of the season. 

http://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/latest/greg-lake-prokofiev-troika-christmas/

Not just a one-off, but ELP issued “Works” a double album in 1977 whose track The Enemy God” incorporates an excerpt from the second movement of Prokofiev’s Scythian Suite.[xiv]

Personal enjoyment of Prokofiev’s music is one thing; but when composers in other musical genres adopt and adapt individual movements, that feeling is vindicated and enhanced.

©Michael McSorley 2017

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[i] LSO Live Prokofiev Romeo & Juliet complete ballet Valery Gergiev. London Symphony Orchestra.  Notes David Nice

[ii] Used by the BBC as theme music for “The Apprentice” hosted by Sir Alan Sugar

[iii] Julian Barnes “The Noise of Time” 2015 tells the story of Shostakovich’s life dealing with 3 periods of Soviet oppression; a novel described as a masterpiece by Alex Preston, Observer New Review 17 January 2016

[iv] Bella Bathurst Observer New Review Oct 2012 “The Symphony that silenced the Nazis.” The Conductor Sarah Quigley 2012

[v] Franz Lehár 1870-1948, born in Hungary, Roman Catholic, employed Jewish librettists for operas.

[vi] Andrew Huth concert programme notes, BIAF Oct 11 2017

[vii] https://belfastinternationalartsfestival.com/event/mariinsky-orchestra/

[viii] Rachmaninov Vespers, written in 1915

[ix] Observer 12 November 2017 Special Report  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/12/ukraine-on-the-front-line-of-europes-forgotten-war

[x] BBC 4 documentary Howard Goodall “The Story of Music” spring 2013

[xi] Django Reinhardt, Romani French composer & jazz guitarist 1910-53, “gypsy jazz.” Collaboration with violinist Stephane Grappelli, the 1934 Hot Club de France Quintet

[xii] Shostakovich The Jazz Album Concertgebouw Orchestra, 1995 conductor Riccardo Chailly

[xiii] Greg Lake 1947-Dec 2016

[xiv] Scythian Suite Prokofiev 1915. “Works” also includes ELP’s interpretation of Aaron Copeland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man.”