{"id":6389,"date":"2014-09-09T16:29:25","date_gmt":"2014-09-09T15:29:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/?p=6389"},"modified":"2019-08-09T17:07:47","modified_gmt":"2019-08-09T16:07:47","slug":"explore-the-score-shostakovich-arr-barshai-chamber-symphony-opus-110a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/2014\/09\/09\/explore-the-score-shostakovich-arr-barshai-chamber-symphony-opus-110a\/","title":{"rendered":"Explore the Score- Shostakovich (arr. Barshai): Chamber Symphony, opus 110a"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Dmitri Shostakovich\u2019s Chamber Symphony opus 110a<\/strong>, an arrangement for string orchestra of his String Quartet no. 8 in C minor, opus 110, was the first of five orchestral transcriptions of his string quartets by his friend, the violist and conductor Rudolf Barshai. Shostakovich\u2019s Eighth String Quartet stands at the centre point of his fifteen works in the genre. Shostakovich\u2019s contribution to the string quartet repertoire stands alongside that of B\u00e9la Bart\u00f3k as the most important addition since Beethoven\u2019s mighty sixteen quartets. Shostakovich wrote the Eighth Quartet in the astonishing span of just three days between the 12th<\/sup> and 14th<\/sup> of July, 1960 while in Dresden working on the soundtrack for the film Five Days, Five Nights\u2014a film about the Allied firebombing of that levelled that city in the closing months of WW II. When the work was published, its roots in Dresden were underlined by its dedication \u201cTo the victims of war and fascism.\u201d Many early listeners detected all sorts of musical evocations of the city\u2019s destruction. (I even know of one American conductor who, in an act of chutzpah and genius, persuaded the great novelist Kurt Vonnegut to read selections of his own tribute to Dresden, Slaughterhouse Five<\/em>, at a performance of the Chamber Symphony version of the quartet. Any excuse to hear Vonnegut read his own prose!).<\/p>\n

\"Leningrad<\/a>

Leningrad as seen by photographer Alexey Titarenko. His images, inspired in part by the music of Shostakovich, will be included in our upcoming Avie recording<\/p><\/div>\n

However, the true meaning and origins of this unique work gradually rose to the surface. Shostakovich was notoriously grudging in revealing anything about his music\u2019s inner symbolism to even his closest friends, but in the case of the Eighth Quartet, he confessed early on that \u201cI started thinking that if some day I die, nobody is likely to write a work in memory of me, so I had better write one myself.\u201d To his son, Maxim, he said, simply \u201cit\u2019s in my honour, dedicated to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Shostakovich<\/a><\/p>\n

The confessional nature of the quartet is made explicit in its first four notes\u2014Shostakovich\u2019s musical motto DSCH, or D, E-flat, C, B. This motive first began to appear in disguised form in his Jewish-inflected Fourth String Quartet in 1948, later becoming the triumphant theme of his Tenth Symphony, premiered and published just after the death of Stalin in 1953. Never before, however, had Shostakovich opened a work with this motto, nor treated it with such intensity. The hushed, forlorn and fugal atmosphere of the opening evokes that of the opening of Beethoven\u2019s greatest string quartet, his Opus 131 in C-sharp minor (the two works also have many structural similarities).<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/131.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

Beethoven\u2019s model shows him at his most intimate and confessional, and so, too, it is Shostakovich\u2019s response.<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Beginning.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

\"Beethoven's<\/a>

Beethoven’s last string quartets are referenced extensively in Shostakovich’s Eighth<\/p><\/div>\n

It is not, however, only the DSCH motto which underlines how personal this work was. Early in the first movement, Shostakovich quotes the opening of his First Symphony, the work that had launched then 19-year-old composer to international superstardom.<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/First-Symphony.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

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What had been cheeky and mercurial in 1926 has become deeply tragic and resigned by 1960.<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/First-Sym-Quote.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

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A page later, he quotes his own Fifth Symphony, the work that had marked the central turning point of his career, and the most tumultuous point in his fraught relationship with Stalin and the Communist Party.<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/5th-Sym-Quote.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

This musical quote points to a key biographical detail of Shostakovich\u2019s life in 1960. After standing outside of the Party\u2019s ruthless apparatus for his entire career, Shostakovich was finally forced to join the Communist Party that year, a step that caused him great personal shame and emotional distress. In fact, such was Shostakovich\u2019s anguish that his friend, the musicologist Lev Lebedinsky, reports that \u201che thought it would be his last work\u2014hence the self-quotations and the inclusion of a funeral march\u2026 A few of the composer\u2019s friends knew that after finishing the work, Shostakovich had intended to kill himself; luckily they managed to persuade him not to do it.\u201d Shostakovich went so far as to not attend the Party ceremony at which he was to be inducted- an act which could have been suicidal in and of itself.<\/p>\n

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After the meditative opening Largo,<\/em> the second movement is a study in violence and madness, culminating in a screaming quotation of Shostakovich\u2019s famous \u201cJewish Theme\u201d from his Second Piano Trio.\u00a0 Jewish music held a special place in the composer\u2019s heart, and he is quoted as having said that \u201cJewish folk music is close to my idea of what music should be\u2026 Jews were tormented for so long that they learned to hide their despair.\u00a0 They express their despair in dance music.\u201d<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Jewish.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

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There is more madness in the third movement, with the DSCH motive now twisted into a macabre waltz- it is as if the composer is mocking himself.<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Waltz.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

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This movement also includes a quote from the opening of Shostakovich\u2019s recently-completed First Cello Concerto.<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/1st-Cello.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

[Only many years later did Shostakovich reveal that that piece includes a demonic-sounding reference to Stalin\u2019s favourite folk-song, Suliko.]<\/p>\n

The fourth-movement is another Largo<\/em>, but has elements of both fast and slow music. It begins with three short, savage chords in the strings, \u201cAnd the knocks on the door by the KGB,\u201d said the composer\u2019s son Maxim, \u201cyou can also hear them here.\u201d<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/KGB.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

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This gesture has a second meaning, as it is also a reference to the opening of the last movement of Beethoven\u2019s final string quartet (his last completed work). Beethoven underscored these three chords in his work with the words \u201cMuss es sein<\/em>?\u201d or \u201cMust it be?\u201d<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Muss-es-sein-final.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

Lebedinsky tells us that Shostakovich intended this to be his last work, too, and this gives this quotation particular existential power. Beethoven answered his own quetsion “Es muss sein!”(“It must be!”).<\/p>\n

Again, Shostakovich quotes the theme of his First Cello Concerto, those four now-famous short notes now presented slowly and with terrible intensity. In fact, this theme was first used by the composer in a scene called \u201cThe Death of the Heroes\u201d from his score to the movie The Young Guard<\/em> in 1947-8.<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Death-of-Heroes.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

Here is how it sounded in The Young Guard:<\/em><\/p>\nhttp:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/06-Death-of-the-Heroes.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

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There follow two more devastating quotations- first of the revolutionary song \u201cTormented by the Horrors of Prison.\u201d<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Tormented.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

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Then, in the solo cello, a quote from the Act 4 of his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk<\/em>. This scene in the opera is the one in which Katarina graps the depth of her betrayal by her beloved Sergei. Already condemned for the murder of her husband, she now realises the man for whom she sacrificed everything has forsaken her, and she throws herself into the icy waters of a Siberian river. Katarina, of course, took Sergei\u2019s lover Sonetka, to her grave with her.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/youtu.be\/kAg1jZVgNy0?t=38m56s<\/p>\n

(aria begins at 40:09)<\/p>\n

Here, this music is transformed to announce Shostakovich\u2019s planned suicide- he intended to go to his death alone.<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/aria.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

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The fifth movement is another Largo<\/em>, returning full circle to the soundworld of the opening, with a complete fugue on the DSCH motive. The final quote, again of his First Symphony, brings a life’s journey heartbreakingly full circle:<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/full-circile.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

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The work was premiered by the Beethoven String Quartet, but it was Shostakovich\u2019s habit to organize a private reading of his quartets with his young colleagues in the Borodin Quartet. When the Borodin\u2019s played the Eighth Quartet through for the first time at the composer\u2019s house, their first violinist Rostislav Dubinsky reported that \u201cWe finished the quartet and looked at Shostakovich. His head was hanging low, his face hidden in his hands. We waited. He didn\u2019t stir. We got up, quietly put our instruments away, and stole out of the room.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Copyrighted recordings are excerpted here under Fair Use provisions of international copyright law.<\/p>\n

Beethoven- String Quartet in F major, opus 135 performed by Masala String Quartet (Kio Seiler, Eva Rosenberg, Sheridan Kamberger, Kenneth Woods. Produced by Andrew Hasenpflug<\/p>\n

Shostakovich 8th Quartet performed by the Borodin String Quartet<\/a><\/p>\n