I once named
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) 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
(pictured right) 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.
