Open Writing

Dmitri SHOSTAKOVICH (1906 – 1975)

Symphony No. 8 op. 65 (1943)
Before he had finally polished off the finale of the Seventh, Shostakovich was hoicked out of the beleaguered Leningrad, and moved to the comparative safety of Moscow to finish his work. This looked suspiciously like a caring attitude on the part of the authorities. However, as Shostakovich himself was something of a thorn in their sides, we must conclude – bearing in mind the cloak-and-dagger mode of its dissemination – that what they were really after was the Seventh, or more precisely its anticipated propaganda value.

With scarcely a pause for breath, Shostakovich got stuck into the composition of the Eighth, which turned out to be unremittingly gloomy and laden with the grimmest foreboding. The reaction to its first performance (under Mravinsky) was hardly surprising: puzzlement, confusion – and ominous rumblings of accusation: noises on the lines of “Why, when the tide of the war is turning, does he not write something to encourage our valiant workers and warriors?” Why indeed, especially when he had, so to speak, already experienced the rough edge of Uncle Joe’s tongue?

According to Ian MacDonald, the reason is this: Shostakovich had believed that Uncle Joe & Co. were specifically purging Leningrad of its overpreponderance of “liberals”, free-thinking individualists who were reluctant to genuflect. On being moved to Moscow, he realised that this barbarism was actually infecting the entire country. Shostakovich was utterly appalled, quite literally “speechless with rage”, to the extent that he threw caution to the wind and penned a singularly explicit message in his new symphony. However, I don’t think this happened suddenly. It begins to look like the first three movements of the Seventh might after all be doing “what it says on the tin”, while the finale (written largely in Moscow) expresses this growing realisation: maybe we should hearken more attentively to the covert crawling of the opening subject, that becomes a battering ram to spoil the victory celebrations of the coda?

Since about 1966 I have possessed an LP recording of this work. A Melodiya import, it came in a plain cardboard box adorned only with a black-and-white photograph of an acorn (?). The two discs, thick slabs of armour-plated vinyl (they don’t make ‘em like that any more!), contain some of the most execrably-engineered monophonic sound I’ve ever heard. They enshrine a “live” performance although, judging by the din in the auditorium, some of the audience were in a pretty terminal condition. But the performance itself, given by the Leningrad Philharmonic under Evgeny Mravinsky, is completely transfixing! From damp, grey hopelessness through biting sarcasm to vicious vitriol, it has in my ears never been bettered. The reason, I guess, has something to do with the fact that these peerless performers had lived through the self-same oppression as the composer – and at the time still crouched in its dreadful shadow.

Hoping to hear more detail from a modern recording, I eventually supplemented it with the highly-recommended LSO/Previn CD. This was good, very good in fact, but compared to the old LPs it came across as warm, rounded, and positively snuggly – raising the age-old question of whether you have to live through something to properly express it. So, here I am, again holding out high hopes of a high fidelity equivalent to that old Melodiya set and, well, Rudolf Barshai at least has the prerequisite experience. Maybe it’s too much to expect that he would match that old Mravinsky recording, but for this pair of ears at least he knocks Previn (and Haitink, for that matter) into the proverbial cocked hat.

The strings at the opening set the tone, forcefully grinding out the theme then, as if exhausted by the sheer effort, sinking back into sorrowful song. This entire threnody is beautifully articulated, though again the piercing intensity of the high violins and flute/piccolo unisons turns out to be a mite more than the mics. can take. Although falling short of the implacable rage of Mravinsky, Barshai builds the colossal crisis of the “central” climax with volcanic inevitability (if there is such a thing. OK, there is now!). Whilst the “march” episode has all the clout of lead-lined boxing-gloves, his outlining of the three-note phrases, over those roaring drum-rolls, is perhaps not jagged enough, but then the shimmering string tremolando that terminates this devastating outburst is utterly stunning. The bleakness of the ensuing recitatives is chilling – it’s just a shame that the WDRSO trumpets don’t quite scald the ear-drums like the Leningraders do.

There’s one footnote to this movement: curiously, I’ve never heard it mentioned, but there are astonishing parallels with the first movement of the Fifth. It’s as if Shostakovich had re-used the same mould, so that it sounds like he’s giving us the same message – only now of course he’s expressing not the lot of one city, but of an entire nation.

The two scherzi are nigh on faultless. In the second movement, the orchestra bring off their phrase-end crescendi superbly, menacing surges ensuring that nobody is fooled by the “up-beat” sound of the music. The feeling of “puppets outwardly conforming, inwardly screaming” is palpable, although the screeching woodwind are, for once, a little subdued (where Mravinsky’s forces sound like they must have given themselves hernias). Although the final climax is built with wicked intent, the WDRSO tambourinist is no match for his Leningrad counterpart, who punches the poor instrument so hard it penetrates even that murky old recording! These are, however, all relative – by any normal standards this is superbly played.

If the second movement represents “puppets”, the incessant, merciless jabbering of the third must relate to the “string-pullers”. But, however you interpret it, there’s no doubt that Shostakovich intended that “merciless”, and any conductor who takes off like a frightened gazelle is surely missing the point. Barshai opens at a deliberate tempo, by which I mean just nicely slow enough so’s they don’t have to ease back to accommodate the less agile trombones when they take up the maddening ostinato. If you want to hear how horribly damaging this is, try Previn, who ignores the composer’s cautionary non troppo and “pratfalls” straight into this particular puddle. Again there’s some wonderful playing: the violas at the start have an oaken hue that is spine-tingling, whilst the “oom-pah” section in the trio has a whale of a time. It’s very much a movement of two halves. Each half starts with that nagging nattering. The first half ends with a sarcasm of “circus” music, creating an expectation for the ending of the second half which is savagely broken – and for this reason I don’t think that there should be any obvious “special” build-up. At the very end of the movement, where the tempo breaks, Barshai coaxes a right old racket from the players, and the tam-tam is given some real stick. It sounds like the end of the world . . .

. . . and that’s very apposite, because he makes the fourth movement sound like the world has come to an end! This morbid passacaglia bears the full weight of the hopelessness of the incarcerated on its shoulders The strings of the WDRSO sound as if they have had all the colour blanched out of them, the solo horn sounds exhausted, the solo piccolo’s melisma hesitates as if half-forgotten, and the woodwind fluttertonguings have an acrid reek. That might sound bad, but it isn’t. In refusing to apply any sheen of cosmetics to the music’s sound, Barshai skewers its soul. The simple, unstressed modulation with which Shostakovich slips into his finale is like the proverbial shaft of sunlight through the prison bars. A mood of tentative celebration develops, gradually growing more confident until its surging festivity awakens the “dragon” of the first movement, leaving us in no doubt that the time for dancing in the streets is not yet. Stunned and bemused, the dancers slowly melt into the mist. The hushed coda, almost in fear of reaching its resolution sounds like nothing more than a chastened hand groping stealthily for some imagined shred of hope, and finally grasping it, holding it, and cherishing it. For all its massive outrage, the Eighth ends on a more optimistic note than does the Seventh, for all its pomp and bombast.

On the bridge between the third and fourth movements, I stopped comparing Barshai with Mravinsky, because looking forward from that bridge the panorama presented by Barshai matches that of the Master, and Barshai and his WDRSO players capture the import of the music with equal eloquence.