I once named Dmitri Shostakovich
(1906-1975) as the 20th century’s most important
composer. Before the scoffing and sniggering begins, I qualified
that his music was most representative of the trials and
tribulations of the last century, having lived under one of the
most repressive regimes known in history and survived to tell
the tale. Besides his compositional output, his legacy also
lives on in the works of his students and countless Hollywood
composers (who have imitated his style in movies about struggles
against oppression).
Boris Tishchenko (born
1939) was a student of Shostakovich, and like his master, was
also influenced by the popular music around him. This is clearly
heard in the five-movement Seventh Symphony, composed in 1994.
Is it just me, or do I hear an echo of the Beatles song
Blackbird in the insistent rhythmic figure played by the
solo clarinet in the opening of the first movement? Or does the
scherzo-like second movement sound like Golliwogg’s Cakewalk
on steroids meeting Lennie Bernstein at the Moscow Circus? Or is
the finale a Latin American or Caribbean dance parade gone
psychedelic, and careening off the tracks in rather spectacular
fashion.
The shadow of Shostakovich also
looms large in the slow third movement, which sounds much like a
passacaglia, a favourite device of the master’s. A plaintive and
sinuous oboe solo provides the seed for an anguished cry
dominated initially by the winds and brass and later taken over
by slashing strings. The five-movement structure also brings to
mind Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony, in which the
seemingly light-hearted finale is emulated (subconsciously or
otherwise?) in the fourth movement.
All of this seems to suggest
that the work is hackneyed or derivative, but Tishchenko seems
to me much more than a mere imitator. He just knows how to take
popular motifs or ideas as a starting point, and builds around
it. Mahler and Shostakovich were both masters at that, and this
is more or less the means by which this rather absorbing
53-minute work is constructed.
This idiom is practically bread
and butter for the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra under Dmitry
Yablonsky, and they deliver without exaggeration nor
sentimentality. I cannot imagine it being performed more
convincingly, and certainly not to be surpassed by a non-Russian
orchestra. Recorded from a “live” performance at the Tchaikovsky
Conservatory Grand Hall in 2002, the sound is vivid to the point
of hair-raising intensity. The audience thankfully does not
reveal much of itself until the final applause.
Quite coincidentally, Naxos has
also issued a new recording of Shostakovich’s Seventh
Symphony, also known as the Leningrad. This is rather
uncharacteristic of the budget label, given its “one work one
recording” policy. Presumably this is to replace an older
recording by the Slovak Philharmonic led by Ladislav Slovak.
It’s just as well because the new recording is far better than
the last. Dmitry Yablonsky and the Russian Philharmonic take a
few minutes longer than the Slovaks, but manages to sound much
less bloated and sluggish. As a performance on disc, it gives
stiff competition to some of the best in the catalogue at this
price range.
Here’s a little history about
the Leningrad Symphony. Shostakovich composed it in 1941
when his hometown was under siege by the Nazis. Almost a million
inhabitants died in the 900-day ordeal, but Shostakovich (who
was in the civil defence force as a fireman) and his family were
whisked away to the safety of the East. The plight of the
Russians was well known to the West and this symphony came to
represent their struggle. Both Toscanini and Stokowski fought
over the rights for the first performance after the score was
smuggled via microfilm to the West in what sounds like a plot of
a good spy thriller. Toscanini and his NBC Symphony won and the
work became one of the most performed of the time. Popular
opinion since then has however shifted drastically because of
its overtly programmatic nature – of the supposed triumph of
Russia (read Communism) over its oppressors (read Fascism). Was
it this the largest piece of musical Communist propaganda ever
hatched? Or could it be taken seriously as pure music?
As pure music, it is still an
impressive statement. Shostakovich is a master of symphonic
development and communicates directly with his heart. The
musical material is well sustained for the best part of 75
minutes (most performances take between 70 to 80 minutes,
barring Bernstein’s Mahlerian take that tops 85 minutes) and
when performed “right”, it does not tire the listener. Overwhelm
it certainly does, especially in the first movement’s “invasion”
sequence when a particular banal theme (representing the Nazis)
is repeated with increasing volume and stridency à la
Ravel’s Bolero for what seems to be an eternity. The
Russian Philharmonic manages to generate a massive bloc of
sound, and much credit will go to the brass section, which
produces some of the fiercest snarls to be heard on disc.
The contrasts of slow and fast
sequences in the middle movements are well projected, and there
is a genuine sense of an epic unfolding before one’s ears. The
final movement also rises to the occasion; its buildup and final
call to arms is a gripping affair, a subtle foil to the excesses
of the opening movement. How are the somewhat controversial
final pages of the symphony handled? As in the Fifth Symphony,
the triumph expressed is a supposedly ambiguous one. Yablonsky’s
steady, non-grandiloquent and unmannered approach views it as a
victory of the human spirit rather than an ideological one.
Politically correct for today’s climes but nonetheless a totally
valid one.
Bearing in mind other fine budget-priced
recordings of Leningrad (notably Paavo Berglund on EMI Classics
and Mstislav Rostropovich on Warner Apex), this is one recording
I shall be returning to quite often.
