Shostakovich - this is myself

We went to see Shostakovich the next day, without having eaten or slept. He was expecting us and opened the door himself. 'Hello, how are you? Thank you for coming,' he said rapidly, convulsively shaking all our hands. Four music stands were waiting in the room. Shostakovich sat down in an armchair and waited impatiently. We quickly opened our cases, took our places, and immediately began playing.

The five-movement Quartet No. 8 in C-minor, Opus 110 is played without interruption. The slow fugato, with its theme, 'D-S-C-H'; the furious scherzo, with the Jewish melody from his own second trio, Opus 67; the agitated waltz; the requiem for those who perished; and once again the original bitter fugato con sordino, with his initials.

As he listened, Shostakovich picked up the score and a pencil, and put both aside, his head bent. What he must have felt at this moment, we could only guess. Having openly said at the beginning of the quartet, 'This is myself,' he sat before us, tormented, listening to his story about himself, his musical confession, the sorrowful cry of a soul, where each note weeps with pain.

We tried not to look at him. We began the fourth movement, which imitated either bombs falling from above and exploding on the earth or just hearts breaking. Then came the old Russian song 'Tormented by Heavy Bondage,' and finally the culmination of the quartet, which comes from his opera Katerina Izmailova. In the last scene, when the prisoners are being moved across a Siberian river, Sergei, for whose sake Katerina has sacrificed everything on earth, betrays her with Sonetka. The impact of the scene is that the entire audience, the orchestra, and all the characters see this; even the gendarme spits at Sergei and Sonetka; only Katerina alone knows nothing and is happy to meet Sergei. The insolent Sonetka appears, and slowly the irremediable catastrophe reaches Katerina's consciousness. She throws herself into the icy water, pulling Sonetka with her. Thus is happens in the opera. The same melody sounds different in the quartet: here, it is the loneliness of the composer himself and his premonition of his inevitable end.

We finished the quartet and looked at Shostakovich. His head was hanging low, his face hidden in his hands. We waited. He didn't stir. We got up, quietly put our instruments away, and stole out of the room - Rostislav Dubinsky, founder of the Borodin Quartet writing in Stormy Applause , Making Music In A Workers State.

In memory of Anna Politkovskaya, crusading Russian journalist famed for her exposés of corruption and the Chechen war. Born 1958, murdered October 7 2006.

Image credit - Patricia Zipprodt, costume designs for Katerina Ismailova, New York City Opera via Ohio Arts Council. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Shostakovich's persecutor finally speaks out

Comments

Pliable said…
And an excellent article in today's Guardian - http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1891506,00.html
8:44 am
Post a Comment

Recent popular posts

David Munrow - more than early music

Image
'David Munrow and the Early Music Consort of London transformed our view of medieval music. The impact of their performances far surparssed any that had gone before: by demonstrating how medieval music could sound normal, they created a niche for it in the concert hall and on record that it has never lost' ~ From Daniel Leech-Wilkinson's notes for Music of the Gothic era May 15 2007 is the thirty-first anniversary of the death of David Munrow. His contribution to the acceptance, understanding and performance of early music almost defies summary. He was born in 1942, and learnt the bassoon and recorder as a child. Between school and university he travelled and taught in South America , and started the collection of ethnic instruments that were to give him, and the world, a new perspective on early music making. He read English at Pembroke College , Cambridge, and was encouraged by Thurston Dart to take an active role in the music-making of that most musical of cities. ...
Read more

Is this a proper use of royal patronage?

Image
In a latest desperate attempt to generate street cred for our monarch, the royal spin doctors have created an Apple Music playlist for King Charles. Leaving aside concerns that supporting a rapacious streaming service is hardly the best way to help the UK's creative industries , Charles has a somewhat worrying track record as a music influencer.  When a leading orchestra proposed programming Michael Tippett's innocuous Suite for the Birthday of Prince Charles at a concert to be attended by the future monarch, the Suite was vetoed because the orchestra's managing director was told "Charles hates it". The dangers of King Charles' creative myopia were chronicled by the inimitable John Drummond in his autobiography :  I have always found [Prince Charles'] lack of interest in anything to do with the arts in our time depressing, since all his opinions get so widely reported. It seems to me that he has had unrivalled opportunities to get to understand the tw...
Read more

Classical music must be doing something wrong

Image
Classical music's website of choice Slipped Disc  today runs a story on the latest RAJAR UK radio listening figures . This story states that a "...record number of individual hours was spent listening to [BBC Radio 3]. They must be doing something right". Which is good news; but only for those who believe that facts should never stand in the way of a good story. Because simple arithmetic shows that BBC Radio 3 is not doing very much right, while UK classical radio in its entirety is doing something wrong.   In the quarter ended September 2024, BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM audiences were 2.039m and 4.416m respectively. Which gives a total audience for the two classical stations of 6.455m. For the same quarter in September 2023 the audiences were 2.002m and 4.467m, giving a total classical radio audience 12 months previously of 6.469m.  So BBC Radio 3's "something right" turns out to be a fractional increase in its audience year on year, and a contribution ...
Read more

Nothing but malice, unchecked egoism, rawness...

Image
German violinist Christian Tetzlaff has explained his decision to cancel his American concerts saying "I feel utter anger. I cannot go on with this feeling inside. I cannot just go and play a tour of beautiful concerts". Tezlaff then goes on to express a sentiment that many of us share: "There seems to be a quietness or denial about what’s going on". This prompted a post by the ever-wise Alex Ross headlined The Spirit of Casals . Which in turn prompted me to reread articles I wrote many years ago after visiting Casals' beloved Catalonia . These reminded me that Casals' wisdom is still as painfully relevant today as it was when he was railing against Franco's authoritarian regime. Here is one example  of that wisdom: Music must serve a purpose; it must be a part of something larger than itself, a part of humanity; and that, indeed, is at the core of my argument with music today - its lack of humanity. A musician is also a man, and more important than his...
Read more

Soundtrack for a porn movie

Image
"No, you have not landed on Slipped Disc by mistake. Respected electronic music pioneer Klaus Schulze tells the story himself.  The origins of " Body Love " are quite funny. I received a call from a movie producer named Manfred Menz and I wound up becoming his principal composer for a period of time. Amongst others, I composed the "Barracuda" soundtrack for him [1978, previously unreleased on album]. This led to a friendship which lasts till today. Menz now lives in Malibu, California where I visited him a couple of years ago. Anyway, this guy calls me and asks if I would compose the score to a porn movie. I said: "Porn? Nah, I don't do that kind of thing".  As it turned out, the director of the movie, Lasse Braun, had already shot it and had used my albums " Timewind " [1975] and " Moondawn " [1976] as a kind of "working soundtrack". This was obvious because the couples in the film were moving in time to my gro...
Read more

Art as an erotic explosion

Image
According to the UK's National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles , one of the reasons for the recent decline in sexual activity among younger people is the "search for spiritual and mental development". But many have disagreed with the proposition that asceticism and celibacy are the key to higher levels of consciousness. One notable dissenter was the French Indologist and musicologist Alain Daniélou  (1907-1994) whose circle in the 1930s included Jean Cocteau, Serge Diaghilev, and Stravinsky. After later moving to India Daniélou stayed with Rabindranath Tagore , before becoming a professor at the Hindu University of Benares and director of the College of Indian Music. He corresponded with René Guénon about the philosophic and religious approaches of Shaivite Hinduism, and shared some of Guénon's less-savoury anti-modernism views . (The toxic undercurrent of the far-right has been around for a long time: Steve Bannon cites Guénon as an influence .) In 1963...
Read more

The Berlin Philharmonic's darkest hour

Image
Wilhelm Furtwängler was born on 25th January 1886. He was Music Director of the Berlin Philharmonic from 1923 to his death in 1954, and held this position for the twelve years that Hitler was in power. In January 1945 he was conducting in Vienna, and fled from there to Switzerland where he remained until the Battle of Berlin ended in the defeat of the Nazis. The musicians of his orchestra remained in Berlin during its darkest hour. Here is their story: On 28th March 1945 the Russian forces commanded by Marshal Georgy Zhukov were just twenty miles to the east of Berlin. A month previously Albert Speer had been replaced as Nazi armaments minister after trying to persuade Hitler that defeat was inevitable. Speer now turned his energies to preventing the musicians of his adored Berlin Philharmonic from perishing in the inevitable final battle. Reich Commisioner Dr Joseph Goebells, who was in charge of the defence of Berlin, had ordered the entire orchestra to be drafted into the Vol...
Read more

The terrible danger of avoiding dangers

Image
In this book I am describing a journey into a region whose 'differences' from Europe are too great to be easily bridged: and difference is, in a way, akin to danger. We are leaving the security of our too uniform environment, in which there is little that is unfamiliar and nothing that is surprising, and entering into the tremendous strangeness of 'another' world... But are we really excluded from that world? I do not think so. Our feeling of exclusion rests mainly on an error peculiar to our Western way of thinking: we are wont to underestimate the creative value of the unfamiliar and are always tempted to do violence to it, to appropriate it, to take it over, on our own terms , into our own intellectual environment. It seems to me, however, that our age of disquiet no longer permits such cavalier attempts; many of us beginning to realize that cultural distances can and should be overcome by means other than intellectual rape: it might perhaps be overcome by surrend...
Read more

Composer with very mixed feelings about the digital world

Image
In an online interview LA-based composer Jeffrey Roden explained: I have very mixed feelings about the digital world in general and would hesitate to say that the net worth of it has been positive for music and its listeners... Technology has made many very wonderful things possible. More music is not one of them..  The photo above shows Jeffrey Roden with members of the Bennewitz Quartet during a recording session for his 2016 double album Threads of a Prayer Volume 1 . Swiss philosopher Max Picard lamented how "Nothing has changed the nature of man so much as the loss of silence" and Threads of a Prayer is an extended hymn to that lost silence. This overlooked essay in the power of the silence between the notes can be compared to the music of Morton Feldman, Arvo Pärt, and John Tavener. But as Roden explains, such comparisons are not only meaningless, but disrespectful and demeaning: Although I am paraphrasing, Hemingway said talking about the work too much took away i...
Read more

Classical music's biggest problem is that no one cares

Image
These photos were taken by me in 2008 at independent record retailer Prelude Records in Norwich. Jordi Savall's impromptu viol recital and signing session preceeded two performances at the Norfolk and Norwich Festival. One was a solo recital by Jordi in Peter Mancroft Church ; the other was an immensely moving performance of his visionary Jerusalem multicultural project at the Theatre Royal*. As reported here Prelude Records closed earlier this year; it was a victim of predatory online retailing, and today its premises stand empty awaiting occupation by a mobile phone or E-cigarette retailer. The Norfolk and Norwich Festival has been the victim of savage funding cuts , but continues in a more modest form due to the dedicated work of its small management team. A few days ago I wrote about a two-thirds empty Snape Maltings concert and proposed that classical music's heartland is facing a perfect storm caused by the convergence of the shifts in consumer tastes and the r...
Read more