Views And Reviews: Shostakovich - Symphony No.2
...To be perfectly honest (which I usually am), I think that the Second Symphony is actually a very good piece of music, lacking only a decent belter of a singable tune for its choral finale....
Paul Serotsky continues his review of a set of recordings of Dimitri Shostakovich's symphonies.
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Dmitri Shostakovich (1906 – 1975)
The Symphonies (Complete) –
Nos. 1, 2 “To October”, 3 “First of May”, 4, 5, 6, 7 “Leningrad”, 8, 9, 10, 11 “The Year 1905", 12 “The Year 1917" (“To the Memory of Lenin”), 13 “Babi Yar”, 14, 15.
WDR Symphony Orchestra/Rudolf Barshai, with WDR Chorus (Nos. 2, 3), Sergei Aleksashkin (bass, No. 13), Moscow Choral Academy (No. 13), Alla Simoni (sop., No. 14), Vladimir Vaneev (bass, No. 14)
Brilliant Classics 6324-1/11, Box of 11 CDs in individual cardboard sleeves, with booklet.
Recorded at Philharmonie, Koln, 10/94 (Nos. 1, 3), 1/95 (No. 2), 4/96 and 10/96 (No. 4), 7/95 and 4/96 (No. 5), 10/95 (No. 6), 9/92 (No. 7), 3/94 and 10/95 (No. 8), 7/95, 9/95 and 4/96 (No. 9), 10/96 (No. 10), 5/99 (No. 11), 9/95 (No. 12), 9/00 (No. 13), Sometime in 1999/2000 (No. 14), 6/98 (No. 15)
[670 mins.]
Symphony No. 2 op. 14 “To October” (1927)
A year down the line, Shostakovich was channelling his creative energies like nobody’s business. In the euphoric years of cultural revolution the artistic community was humming, like a beehive in July, with invention and experiment. In those heady days, it was even OK to exchange ideas with the “West”. Shostakovich was as happy as a pig in muck. In line with the original communist ethos, there was a great demand for enthusiastic blowing of own trumpets. The Soviet Union was an unprecedented hotbed of “team-building”, which reached fever-pitch with the imminence of the 10th. anniversary of the Revolution. Shostakovich’s Second Symphony was, quite simply, written in response to a State commission for a work to glorify the achievements of the Red Revolution. And why not? Everything in the garden was rosy!
I wonder why, when the Brits belt out stuff like Rule, Britannia! or the Yanks, hands on hearts, intone God Bless America, we call it “patriotism”, yet the minute the Reds of Russia try the self-same thing we call it “political propaganda” (or, worse, “agitprop”)? Smacks of double standards to me. Along with the Third – and, for that matter, the Seventh, Eleventh and Twelfth – Shostakovich’s Second has come in for a fair old bit of stick for its “propagandism”, the problem being that along with the propagandist bathwater, the musical baby has tended to be chucked out. To be perfectly honest (which I usually am), I think that the Second Symphony is actually a very good piece of music, lacking only a decent belter of a singable tune for its choral finale.
Moreover, in sonic terms the largo introduction is one of Shostakovich’s most adventurous passages. Light years off the beaten track of his otherwise direct style this is an incredible impressionistic wash of shifting layers of sound. At first, I thought of the opening of Rheingold, but then – well, although I can’t imagine that Shostakovich would have even heard of Charles Ives, let alone his music, this sounds for all the world as if it ought to be called “The Dnieper at Kiev, from Three Places in Little Russia”! From the black (Dylan Thomas would surely have called it “bible black”) bass drum roll at the start, Barshai builds a real feeling of oily oppression and creepy-crawly foment, aided by some deeply rosiny basses.
When the main allegro molto started, I was again impressed by the sound of the WDRSO, this time particularly by the nut-flavoured woodwind and some spectacularly raucous brass. Already, Shostakovich is learning to “carry his line”, courtesy of a quasi-fugal treatment of his materials. Barshai grabs the opportunity with both hands, moulding out of the embattled confusion a terrific build-up to a broader climax. With the melodic and harmonic contours veering momentarily towards Scriabin, this sounds not so much like “We are victorious!” as “Are we victorious?” Barshai equally coaxes some real Russian gloom out of the ominous disquiet of the slower central music. The final, choral section is fired off by a factory siren, apparently “keyed in F sharp”, though how I don’t know! This cuts in so alarmingly that it’ll have the family dog running for cover. The WDR chorus sound full-bodied and pretty idiomatic, standing their end resolutely against the big orchestra. Only their final words, which are supposed to be “shouted”, sound a bit understated, and frankly I’m a bit surprised that Barshai didn’t put a rocket under them! Chorus versus Orchestra is never an easy balance to strike, but it’s struck superbly here. There’re neither words nor translation given of the poem (by Alexander Bezymensky), though we are told the gist of it: “Lenin – struggle – October – the Commune – Lenin”, which is probably all we need to know?
All in all, with some terrifically intense playing, Barshai and the WDRSO (and Chorus) make out a convincing case for this symphony, which although it isn’t Shostakovich’s best is still nowhere near the unmitigated “crock of s***e” that some folk would have us believe.
