Open Writing

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Dmitri SHOSTAKOVICH (1906 – 1975)

Symphony No. 15 op. 141 (1971)

Having got the subject of death off his chest, Shostakovich moved on. Or did he? Our impressions of the Fifteenth Symphony are inevitably coloured by its opening “toyshop” movement. In music as in anything else first impressions are sticky little blighters, so much so that we as often as not end up wasting half our lives trying to make everything that follows fit in. Hence the commonly-expressed feeling that the work is enigmatic, mysterious, puzzling. I remember one chap who beat his brains against the brick bastions of the Fifteenth for ages, then concluded (not unreasonably, if a little harshly, given his frustration) that the whole shebang was the rag-bag product of a composer on the threshold of senile dementia. Me? I don’t believe that for one second.

So what is going on? That first movement looms less large when viewed through the wrong end of a telescope, as I found when I tried taking a step back and looking at the piece as a whole. I got the distinct impression that, whereas the Fourteenth’s statement about death was coloured by a degree of political motivation, the Fifteenth is instead about death, “plain and simple”. Let’s face it: if at any age you’re racked by increasing ill-health, intrusive thoughts of kicking the bucket are hard to put down. Up to around twenty years previously, Shostakovich had been fearful that the nocturnal “knock at the door” would be that of Uncle Joe’s bully-boys coming to take him away. In his mid-sixties and racked by increasing ill-health, the knock was more likely to be that of the “real-life” Grim Reaper.

In this light, the Fifteenth Symphony sounds to be a not unreasonable combination of reminiscence and valediction, starting in the frolicsome foibles of carefree youth and ending up shrouded in the mists of the Ultimate Question. This would explain the flurry of self-quotations, but not the two “sore thumbs” – Wagner and Rossini. Many diverse composers have been influenced by Wagner, but I’d wager that there’re precious few of us who’d bet so much as a ha’penny on Shostakovich being one of them. Maybe he’s leg-pulling: “Here it is, folks, my Grand Wagnerian Influence!” On the other hand, in quoting the Fate motive, that dread harbinger and herald of the fall of Siegfried, the irrepressible and fearless hero, he is (as ever) neatly pinning a dark relevance onto his gag. Of course, he also quotes that well-known motive from Tristan und Isolde, the infamous rising dissonance which resolves only onto further dissonance, yearning after an unattainable ideal – and neatly turns it into an inconsequential ditty. This could so easily be a veiled comment on the triviality of Man’s most solemn aspirations when faced with the unknowable mysteries.

But what should we make of the quotation of Rossini’s famous William Tell galop? Suspecting, as per the Fate motive, some devious connection with the music’s operatic context, I asked someone who knows about these things. I was told that, after the sizzling conclusion of the overture, that particular tune does not feature in the drama at all: it occurs, with considerably less vehemence, only in the bucolic burblings of the ballet music! Momentarily dismayed, I retreated and regrouped “with the speed of light, and a cloud of dust, and a hearty ‘Hi-yo, Silver!’” I wondered (somewhat feverishly), did Shostakovich watch TV on those visits to the West that started in the late Fifties? If so, did he (like so many of my generation) become a fan of the Lone Ranger? Did he see in Tonto’s Kemo Sabay a reflection of himself, galloping on his white stallion, protecting the innocent, and waging a one-man war against the nasty baddies? Ridiculous thought, isn’t it? Well, the opera buff remarked, and as far as I can tell in all innocence, “Maybe he was a fan of the Lone Ranger”. That makes two of us being ridiculous, so perhaps we should all listen to the music in that context, and then see how ridiculous it really is?

Barshai and his faithful Indian companions set off at a thoroughly jolly trot, opposing a sunny flute to the icy pricklings of glockenspiel, and setting a thoroughly amiable tone for the entire first movement. The tune is remarkably reminiscent of the DSCH-based main subject of the first movement of the First Cello Concerto, a theme which had already resurfaced in the Eighth Quartet. Here it is utterly, uncomplicatedly merry: freed of its former political undertones, it expands under Barshai’s fatherly guidance into Shostakovich’s putative “toyshop”. The whole movement is delightfully done, every corner of the WDRSO, including the considerable “kitchen”, enjoying the youthful romp – I warmed especially to the trumpet, whose poco inebrioso quasi Prokofiev sounds like little Johnny has sampled something from the sideboard that Daddy should have kept in a safer hidey-hole! There’s also some gorgeously rumbustious playing, notably from those lower strings, but nothing is allowed to threaten the childlike mood: even the main climax, in its outline, weight and tone harks back not to anger or anguish past, but to the youthful impetuosity of the Second Piano Concerto. Tellingly, just before this jubilation comes another significant reminiscence of Shostakovich’s own youth, as he reproduces in the strings the effect of that extraordinary, layered “miasma” of the experimental Second Symphony. Then, almost at the end, hot on the heels of a circus band march-past he does it again, only this time chattering on the lighter woodwind and percussion, for all the world like kids playing with grown-up toys.

Whereas the first movement looked back at the Good Old Days (the accent being firmly on the “Good”), the second looks forward less than optimistically to what the future holds. The WDRSO’s brass lean wearily on the straining dissonances of their chorale, the solo cello struggles up from the depths of its rocking-chair only to lament, the solo trombone is all but drained of energy and expression. The solo violin aspires momentarily, but is cut off by toneless (or intoneless!) dead-sounding woodwind chords, reminiscent of the chords in the coda of Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra or (and here’s a thought!) those famous “self-cancelling” chords of Stravinsky’s. When I say it sounds dreadful, that’s not a complaint but a compliment! Curiously, when the trombone does stir itself into something approaching a tune, to the accompaniment of a suitably leaden tuba, it emerges as something of a dirge-variant of Waltzin’ Matilda (this surely is accidental?!). The violin again sings with affecting sweetness, but is again confounded by those negating woodwind (one of the curiosities about growing older is that our minds, remaining forever “sweet sixteen”, can’t understand why the body creaks and groans at even the most trivial demands). It’s too much; warping the once proud and defiant DSCH into an agonised, plunging SDCH, the dirge spills over into massive mortification that is hammered home to horribly enervating effect. Only exhaustion can follow: strangulated muted trumpets, halting string phrases like glimmering red embers, lifeless plunkings of celeste, a dull and broken tattoo of tympani. Sure, I’ve heard this movement played with more outright intensity than this, but for me Barshai scores in avoiding that extreme. He seems to be very much aware that this is “terminal” music, even in the embittered climax which in his hands becomes like the abortive flare of a dying sun, shedding the remnants of its light into an uncaring universe.

The ensuing short allegretto sounds a bit brighter, with its almost pointillist chamber-music scoring delectably dotted by the players. The tune skips upwards, then turns on its head and skips downwards, getting nowhere fast. In keeping the pace leisurely, the tempo metronomic, and the dynamics subdued, Barshai finds an eerie, haunted quality, carrying something of the feeling of “Death takes the Fiddle”, helped out more than a little by some splendidly scrawny playing (quite deliberate, I’m sure!). My gut feelings are that this symphony is stuffed to the gunnels with self-quotations, and my intestines are just as sure that as yet I haven’t spotted 99% of them. Nevertheless I’d lay odds that the grotesque downward trombone slides, leerily relished by the WDRSO first trombone, are a reference to the comical detumescence of the sated Sergei in Scene 3 of Lady MacBeth. If so, then here they ram home the prevailing impression of failing potency, as do the dislocated clatterings of the percussion – the WDRSO can-bangers, captured in great detail by the recording, create a convincing “clock with a dicky ticker”.

The opening of the finale confirms the progression. Shostakovich, in co-opting the gloomy brass Fate motive and attendant halting drum rhythm from Siegrfried’s Tod, foretells the fall of another hero – the composer himself. It also forms a wonderful complement and opposition to the Rossini quote from the first movement, or it does if you subscribe to the “Lone Ranger Theory”, because then that quotation also relates to a “hero”, only one who is full of vim, vigour, and fighting spirit, and for whom death was merely something he himself visited on the enemies of justice. But then Shostakovich, teasingly tweaking the Tristan quote, immediately goes on to demonstrate that his own sense of humour, like the Humour of the Thirteenth Symphony, is unquenchable. Barshai here coaxes, with faultless timing, a prettily poised tenuto from the violins. At a measured, dead-even tempo, Barshai makes the ensuing ghostly dance feel like the comical passage of the Fourth’s finale with all its get-up-and-go got up and gone: all is understated and wan, what little colour it has in its cheeks draining away in the twilight. The music subsides, via what must surely be a glance back to the nocturnal pacings of the Tenth, to the gloomy stasis of Siegfried’s Tod, into which the WDRSO’s wonderful first clarinet meanders listlessly. Gradually, the music stirs and grows, in a long, curiously crawling crescendo. The climax that erupts, triggered with telling rubato, mirrors the outburst in the second movement, and is likewise burdened. The tune of the plodding dirge this time sounds like a variant of the first few bars of the Seventh’s “Nazi” march, as if the strutting jackboot had become a lead-lined size 15 welly. This climax ends in real disaster: a cinematographic “shock, horror!” discord like the Last Gasp of the Damned. The Wagner quotes and the ghostly dancing, already more remote, are gradually stifled by the “self-negating” chords of the second movement: is this Shostakovich’s impression of Asrael tapping Dmitri Dmitrevich on the shoulder? The coda drifts into delirium. Over a numb hum of strings, the wraiths of themes half-remembered jostle with the percussion “dicky-ticker”, and then – nothing.

Again, I am led to wonder whether, in such music, those who bring more overtly expressive playing aren’t in some way missing the point. I must confess that, had I come to this performance of this symphony “cold”, then in respect of all save the first movement I would in all likelihood have carped about listless phrasing and dull, ponderous climaxes (and so forth). But I haven’t come to it “cold”, I’ve come to it via the other fourteen performances in the cycle, and along the way I’ve picked up a great deal of respect and admiration for Barshai’s thoughtful interpretations. Consequently, I do not believe (as some do) that he has “blobbed out” at the finishing post. What we hear is exactly what he intended us to hear. My feelings about the nature of the music, as expressed here, do not originate from any perceptive acuity on my part (though it would be a nice ego-boost if they did!), but from what Barshai is telling me. It doesn’t really matter whether you think his performance good or bad, because above all it is an informed one.