Open Writing

Dmitri SHOSTAKOVICH (1906 – 1975)

Symphony No. 9 op. 70 (1945)

For forty days (and possibly forty nights) did Shostakovich toil on the score of his Ninth Symphony. More succinctly, and with rather less biblical ambiguity, he had the whole thing sown up in under six weeks flat. Nevertheless he did have a problem with it, though this was not writing the music, but deciding what to write. He had aroused the Allies with his Seventh, perplexed the Proletariat and the Politburo with his Eighth, and now with the War won and the “magic” number nine hovering on the threshold of his oeuvre, many – particularly certain occupiers of high places whom he despised with all his heart – were expecting a Russian victory hymn to challenge the mighty Ninth Symphony of Beethoven.

Shostakovich was in a right old quandary. Should he do the expected, and be seen to kow-tow? Should he seem to kow-tow, and subvert the surface celebration with some secret code? Did he even want to challenge Beethoven’s Ninth? Suppose he tried (either way) and flopped? Then again, there were the ordinary folk of Russia, the brave, long-suffering people, the life-blood of the homeland he so loved: these people above all he did not want to let down. What was he to do? The answer he found was completely gob-smacking in its brilliance: to the people he gave the joy and celebration – and commemoration – they deserved, and to the masters he gave his challenge to the perceived supremacy of Beethoven. Only it was not Russia’s answer to the mighty Ninth, but Russia’s answer to the flighty Eighth!

The people, it seemed, loved it, but it comes as no surprise that Caesar was hardly over the moon with what had been rendered unto him. Shostakovich was sailing dangerously close to the wind, and the weather was about to take a distinct turn for the worse: by 1948 the innocent Ninth would be one of the works outlawed by the Zhdanov decree. Innocent? Yes. Despite David Doughty’s reference to “surface gaiety”, implying a concealed subtext, to the best of my knowledge not one expert (revisionist or otherwise) has unearthed the slightest hint of any “subversion”. My impression is that, to all intents and purposes, Shostakovich made his subversive point through an entire lack of ambiguity. He gave voice to the simple feelings – happiness, relief, and indeed loss – of the people who had resisted and vanquished an “enemy without”, and he had ignored the desire of the Soviet State, by implication an “enemy within”, for its extravagant vehicle of self-aggrandisement.

The key to successful performance of this, Shostakovich’s equivalent of Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony (there’s even a first movement exposition repeat!), is directness and simplicity. The places where some conductors tend to “drop their pants” are the second and fourth movements. And the reason is generally because they stuff more emotional baggage into their pockets than their belts can reasonably support. On my old and by now somewhat dog-eared LP, no less a conductor than Kondrashin, whose performance is otherwise in every respect thrilling, overloads the music on the emotional front. Or, I should add, finds a joke where there really isn’t one. I’m referring to the short fourth movement. Sure, the bassoon’s first two notes give a momentary impression of the start of the Grand Declamation of Beethoven’s Ninth, but this is surely no more than an aside, a passing sly dig at the pompous Party dignitaries. I don’t think there’s any intention on Shostakovich’s part to make the rest of it funny, but performers (perhaps taken in by the surrounding gaiety) can make it so by parodistic inflection.

Barshai homes in like a peregrine falcon on Shostakovich’s first movement tempo: as any Italian will (I believe) tell you, allegro means “jolly” or “happy”. Barshai does not rush the music off its feet: the first subject bustles merrily and the second positively bounces along. Thanks to some delightfully natty, chatty strings and woodwind, notes and phrases are classically clear and focussed, and everything is audible – including the percussion. That’s one touch I particularly like – the tymps in the second subject are hit hard, but the effect is robustly playful rather than aggressive. Even the straining harmonies towards the end of the development sound not so much stressful as plain, old-fashioned “tipsy”.

The second movement is marked moderato, but like the correspondingly marked movement of Mahler’s Sixth it has often been given a portentous adagio treatment – almost as if conductors were unconsciously trying to salvage something of the Ninth that had been expected. In Barshai’s hands, the lilting clarinet tune really does lilt, and the music becomes charmingly wistful. The heavier, upwardly treading refrain, elsewhere imbued with menace, here sounds about as threatening as an overgrown cuddly bunny because Barshai ever so slightly accelerates into it, generating a slightly “lolloping” feel. The effect is of someone musing by a fireside, thinking back to the bad times, at first with increasing regretfulness but then with a sigh of relief that it’s over over and done with. The wonderful grading and shading of the textures and dynamics by the WDRSO conjure this image a real treat: there is proper sweetness in the relief.

Presto, the man asks, and presto he gets, though nota bene it’s not prestissimo. The result is a scherzo full of dash and verve, but allowing the woodwind to sound as clear and sparkling as spring water, brass and drums bouncing and boisterous, and the strings bringing sharp incisiveness to those rapidly repeated notes in the trio section. The gradual cessation of festivities for the solemn memorial of the largo fourth movement is seemingly seamless, so that the hiatus just before the brass pronouncement is real hold-your-breath stuff. To my mind, those octave heavy brass have never been better than here: absolutely on the button, a brick wall of sound balanced like one of those ripe Russian men’s choruses. Spine-tingling. The ensuing bassoon soliloquy is the heart of the symphony, the heartfelt playing of the WDRSO principal almost “speaking” its personal remembrance for the fallen. So, in a celebratory symphony, it is only right and proper that the same voice eventually ends this “two minutes’ silence” to kick off the celebrations.

The finale is one of those rare movements where I wish I had a score to hand (I normally feel that referring to the score, which is by no means an absolute, is somehow “cheating”). I can remember reading a review of the Kondrashin when it first appeared about thirty years ago: a glowing review, but with a question mark over Kondrashin’s sudden, huge accelerando for the build-up to the climax, with an equally drastic deceleration into the climax itself. It always did sound a bit contrived (blisteringly exciting, to be sure, but nevertheless contrived!), and I don’t recall anyone else indulging in such an acrobatic feat. Until now, that is, because blow me if Barshai doesn’t do the self-same thing! Well, very nearly: Barshai cranks up the tempo, more subtly, right from the word “go”, and thus when he takes off it’s nowhere near as much “like the clappers”. Oddly, though, the last couple of bars before the climax itself mark the low spot of the performance: having pulled back on the reins, Barshai then keeps slightly too tight a hold. Either that, or he should have pulled back just a nadge more so that his “release” had more effect. It’s only marginal – and it’s only momentary: the climax itself is as breezy as a village band, and the coda romps away as bright and fizzy as you could wish. As I’ve implied already, the recording is exemplary, full-bodied yet clear as a bell.