Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5: a symphony of bravery, intrigue, and survival

I'm John Panther and this is Classical Breakdown. From WETA Classical in Washington, we are your guide to classical music. In this episode, I'm joined by WETA Classicals Evan Keely and we're exploring one of the most iconic and inspiring symphonies of the 20th century, Dimitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5. We get into it all from its turbulent origins in the face of authoritarianism and why Shostakovich was under threat to how we got away with what he wrote and what to listen for in the music. And we also get into the big question on the finale's tempo. Okay, so multiple people like Theresa K and Paul F have requested an episode on a symphony by Dimitri Shostakovich so buckle up and get ready for a ride because I know of no other symphony Evan than this one that requires or has so much historical context surrounding it in order to really dive into it. I think we need to be aware of what was happening in Shostakovich's life before and during this. Yes, you're quite right, John. You know, I think Dimitri Shostakovich is one of the most fascinating and one of the most complex figures. We're looking at 20th century music. Born in 1906, died in 1975. Such a hard and polarizing figure to understand in so many ways, so many comments and so much commentary and scholarship and study about his life and his music. Very easy to paint a very inadequate portrait of this composer, either as this unblemished hero of personal free expression in a tyrannical situation or conversely as this, you know, soulless sell out. You know, the reality is actually much more nuanced and complex and it's a story of certainly of great integrity and great courage, but also of complicated compromises. And we are going to do a future episode on his life, but to bring you up to speed on what was happening as he was preparing this symphony, we'll go back to for a second his birth. He was born 1906 on September 25th and he started piano as a child. He excelled, he started composing and he was in a conservatory when he was a teenager. That's a pretty typical experience for composers that we talk about. And then in the 20s, after Lenin dies in 24 and Stalin takes power, things change in music. Lenin was pretty hands off, but Stalin starts to really get involved and forbids performances of music, really much of the music we know in the canon except for a composer like Beethoven and other Russian composers. This also meant, you can imagine, it was kind of exciting for these young composers. They're 181920, they are now tasked to fill the void, define the sound, define their future and write music that would have broad appeal and appeal to what Stalin, for example, envisioned. So he wrote a lot of popular things like songs, he wrote great ballet music that kind of pushed the envelope but still really within Stalin's ideals. And he also wrote many film scores, Evan, he was a film buff from what I understand and one of his big successes was the 1932 film counterplan. Yes, and a lot of the music we hear in the concert hall today by Shostakovich, comes from a number of the different film scores that he composed. And it was in this film, I believe, there was a song that Stalin really loved and apparently it was also a very popular song and one that Stalin loved and one that might have sort of saved Shostakovich in the years to come or even the decades to come because of Stalin's view or favorability with that particular song. But Shostakovich also starts to see dark changes around him. In the 1930s, people are arrested, put in black automobiles, never seen again, just disappeared. People in his own family exiled. Some people are executed, some are imprisoned and these aren't like violent people necessarily. These are also countless artists, poets, writers, painters, musicians, actors, vanished, their things taken and what was defined as too degenerate or too decadent was always fluid and it was always ill-defined. I think that was part of the point, Evan, when you make something it's banned this week or it's not this month, you become scared to even program a particular song. Right, this has to control the seeps into everything. You don't even know what the missteps are and you feel like that's deliberate. And the symphony number five, that comes in 1937. But in 1934, Evan, that's when he saw a huge success. His Lady Macbeth of Matensk Opera. That was a huge success not just with the audience but with critics too. Yes, Lady Macbeth of Metsink, Big Hit in 1934, although it did have a revised version later on. And yes, a huge success for the composer with audiences and the state alike. And then all of a sudden things, as we were saying, John, the rules keep changing. And one day something is approved and then suddenly you're in big trouble with the same exact statement and this is how the state controls people. Yeah. So in 1936, there is a performance of this opera and Shostakovich hears that Stalin is going to be there. And so of course, Stalin runs down there. He goes to the hall. He's at this concert. Of course, hoping to see his music accepted and praised. But after intermission, Stalin was not even in his seat. And two days later, in the state run paper, Pravda, the opera and Shostakovich were very strongly denounced as having pre-socialist Petty Buzhwa Russian mentality of the previous era of the previous era. He was fully denounced and he quickly went from being this cultural hero to being a serious target. There were times after this, he was sleeping in the stairwell of his building. I mean, just imagine that Evan, you don't want your family to see your arrest potentially violent. Maybe you need to have a bag ready to run at a moment's notice. Right. And a lot of, as you were saying, John, a lot of creative people in the Soviet Union at this time are dealing with this kind of fear. If you think about just trying to live in that situation, hiding, you can't really plan or think for the future. And now you also have this art to worry about. So his fourth symphony, he withdraws. He doesn't even perform it. It would be decades later before that would even get performed. He was too worried. And then he starts on this symphony number five. And the question is, well, what does he do? Does he write really positive propaganda music that is going to please the authorities? Do you do something subversive that is so bad he's gone by nightfall or something in between? I mean, Shostakovich also liked codes and ciphers in his music too. He put his name in sometimes. Yeah. The initials of his name, like you on Sebastian Bach did, is a Shostakovich style. And as you were saying, John, he loves these codes and ciphers and these sort of secrets that only the Konyoshenti will discover in his music. And is this a kind of subversion? Is it a kind of compromise? Is it both? These are among the puzzles that Shostakovich leaves for us to continue to explore. And these are things that conductors are still exploring the tremendous conductor Michael Tilsen-Thomas, one of the greatest in our inner nation's history. He's had a lot to say about this work. And here's a clip that may give us an idea or maybe not. This is a musicologist in and out of Russia, are still very divided on this question, accusing one another of everything from misremembering to outright forgery. So what is the truth? Whatever it is, it's in the score. But I have to tell you, even the score is not all that helpful since the symphony, although it's very emotional, has almost no indications in its score of expression other than from time to time play expressively. It's as if the composer wanted nothing on the page that could reveal his thoughts other than the notes themselves. So Evan, even Michael Tilsen-Thomas can't give us the clearest answer on that. This is something that will, I think, continue. And this is an indication of the complexity of what we're dealing with when we're looking at a work like Shostakovich's fifth symphony or a lot of music by Dimitri Shostakovich. And so it helps us to feel maybe some humility as we approach the altar of this powerful and mysterious piece that, yes, it's, in fact, very difficult to understand. Exactly. And we're going to hear from another conductor, Michelle Merrill, later on, who was on one of the earlier episodes of Classical Breakdown. But with all of that, let's dive into the first symphony. How does he open this? This very imposing theme, this canonical imitation with this weird and kind of frightening 30-second note pickup that immediately launches us into this sense of, I don't know, being trapped or being in the midst of a conflict. And these two themes side by side, this one very jagged with this weird 30-second note Dari! Dadaam and there's this roughness that there's this edgyness to it, and then immediately after that, this kind of simple, stepwise, flowing "yah, da-da-di, da-da-di." So we're already on uncertain territory from the very beginning of this piece. It is such a powerful opening, and after those two phrases that you just described, there are these three beats, bum, bum, bum. And Michael Tulson Thomas described those as like a dead end. We're constantly reaching dead ends in this movement, a very strong, imposing, or very strong or imposing theme, a more subdued repetition or variation of it, and then another dead end. And we constantly hit that. Also, there's another symphony that has a very tada opening, Beethoven's Nife. So we have this juxtaposition here of these jagged dotted rhythms alongside those D, da-da-dum, that you described. And then from there, we have the strings dominating the first movement in a way that feels like we are sort of maybe wandering around, we're wandering around in silence. We're just people looking at each other, unable to say something. And particularly, I love Shostakovich's use of low woodwinds, particularly. You have to play them, I think, with a very inquisitor-type fashion. This feels like an inquisitor or someone you cannot trust. That is imposing themselves. Yeah. The contrabassoon in the score and the clarinets often play low in their range, and there's this sort of unsettling, untrustworthy sound. But as you said, John, the strings really dominated the beginning of this symphony. It's really the string choir, that's the central figure. And you have this sort of side commentary from the woodwinds in a lot of these places. And you also hear that the theme you're listening to often times becomes the accompaniment to the next theme. So I almost hear it like in, if you go to Balei and you see they have the screens that have like different sets on them. And you can sort of see behind them, they'll kind of like make a depth effect, if that makes sense. And I feel like I'm looking at these things kind of like that or hearing them that way. There's a layering of sound in this symphony that's really compelling. And it's part of the anxiety that's built up in the strings is also because of this recording. They do not let up. They keep the energy going all the way to the ends of the notes. That's where I think is so important. A lot of times there's a lot of lift at the ends of notes. And I just, for myself personally, I don't feel like that's what we need to have here. Yeah, I agree, John. Here we come, Rasha in this 1967 recording with the Moscow Philharmonic. The phrasing is one of the things that makes this such a compelling and powerful performance. It's a really a sense of completion of the phrases. There's a fullness of the sound. It isn't overly heavy, heavy handed or pedantic, but there's a sense of fullness that really adds depth to the appreciation of the piece. So this is 1967 that recording, which is After Stalin's death. And you'll also hear some technical issues with the tape, as you might be hearing in some of the examples, but the performance is so powerful. This is one of the most powerful performances I know of it. And I'll put a link to the playlist on the show notes page. And it says things in a way that I think other recordings don't quite get there. But it is also a little rough around the edges. Yeah. 1967, of course, when this recording was made is also an interesting time in Soviet history. It's the end of the Kruchchov era and the beginning of the Brezhnev era. And that whole time of re-evaluating the whole Stalin period and how Stalin was rejected in that phase and trying to find a new direction. I don't know the extent to which that plays into this performance, but it's an interesting thing to think about. I think so too. There is something very personal about this. And from other Russian musicians you hear from who were alive and performing at this time. Admits all of this, we get this sudden sunshine in the music and we also have an accompanying rhythm with it. Bum, bum, bum, one, two, three, one, two, three. I kind of like those dead end notes, but now a little bit transformed for this accompaniment. And this is where we go into a new tempo. And in the middle of a measure actually, we're starting a new section of this symphony. There's this kind of this almost Lutheran, choral, prelude kind of thing with this long notes in this upper, this high melody with this dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, accompaniment that you were mentioning, John. And it kind of gives us this momentary illusion that what came before, the slower section was an intro and now we're in the Sonata Allegro, but that's not really what Shostakovich is doing here. And we have that long melody there, which is a new theme and yet the themes from the first part of the movement come back and they're all woven together. So there isn't like an introduction and then a main exposition in this movement. Not in a clear kind of way, I don't think. Because when I listen to this, it does feel like we enter into new areas or open doors before we realize we're in a new place. And you sort of feel like, well, there's something unsettling close by, but there is this momentary rest. Now part of the writing that I think adds to the drama of the symphony is the high register writing that he writes. We've talked about it with Chekhovsky particularly who does great contrast of high and low. And with Shostakovich writing high in this viola section, it makes it feel more anxious and uneasy than it would if it was just like, you know, a major third down. Yeah, when I give that high writing to the violins, it's more in their range. You see the same thing with the cello section, they often play very high in the tessiture of that range. And it creates that kind of almost strained quality that, I don't know, there's a tension in that sound. But the oldest playing high versus violins playing the same pitches has a very different kind of sound. Shostakovich really knows how to play upon those colors. And I really meant it when I said it feels like you are kind of pushed into something new before you quite realize what it is. We go to this middle development section in a very creepy way because we have the almost the three note dead end motif, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, and a way and the piano comes in. It is terrifying. This is so unsettling. It's like, yes, yes. It feels like there is, it's like almost as if something has attached itself to you and you can't get away from it. I really feel the same way. And Russian composers of this era are so good at this. It's such a Shostakovichish sound. Prokofiev has a similar kind of a sound quality in some of his music. There's something about this, like this, you know, 1930s, 1940s Soviet era Russian musical mindset that can create that sense of claustrophobia. Part of it for me is that they include the piano in symphonies and especially in very creative ways, especially with, I think, articulation. They combine articulation of the piano with other instruments, even some of the low instruments. Yes. Prokofiev does that with tuba in piano, but this is just so terrifying. And it starts to speed up and I get a feeling that this develops faster than we want or than we realize and the anxiety has just overcome us. And it feels like we are in a situation where we can no longer think but merely react to what's happening around us. It's not even clear to me where the development section actually starts. And I think that ambiguity, like I said, you know, this is not your sort of 18th century sonata allegro form. It kind of is, it plays upon that and you know, it kind of distorts it like a fun house mirror. So we're sort of like, okay, this is the first movement of a symphony. I think I can make sense of this. And yet we feel like we're always a little bit off balance. Like Shostakovich is just two steps ahead of us kind of speaking a new musical language, but also referring to an old one that we kind of know and we're hearing it sort of like underwater. And so there's a sense of confusion that really makes this, makes you want to listen even more intently. There is an instrument that Shostakovich uses quite often in his music into great effect and that is the snare drum. He brings the snare in like eight or so minutes into the music. It is a ruthless march. The trumpets are screaming. They're yelling orders behind you. And then this even speeds up and the low brass come in with just an existential repeat of the original theme, which then gets brought into strings in the xylophone. Again, with that articulation, kind of like how I think about the piano is just pounding away. Yes, that's another very Shostakovich. Shostakovichy and sound to my ears. That xylophone kind of doubling the other instruments in that way that just sounds like. And it's easy for that to be kind of this ham-fisted cliche, but Shostakovich maintains a level of sort of a, I don't know if it's an ironic distance or there's the sense of that secret code we were talking about the way he uses these ambiguous ways of expressing himself. Michael Tilsen-Thomas says, "We, you know, the score doesn't tell us what his feelings are." And we hear this xylophone pounding away like, "What is that? Is it a joke? Is it terror? Is it laughter? - Where is it? You know, there's a sense like where there's a message there that we are supposed to decipher and we don't have the code to break Well the terror does come not too long after this it feels I mean it feels beyond existential and Terrifying and it's what I mean particularly about this performance and remember Shostakovich is supposed to be redeeming himself right now Yes, if I was at the premiere I've I heard oh Shostakovich new symphony I'm going down there Yeah, if I was sitting there and then I heard this and if I was with somebody I might whisper I'll go get the car It's like you know, I don't know how many guards is going to take but I know how many there are here Yeah, and I don't want to be around Shostakovich when this symphony is over I don't even know what they're thinking as they're hearing this because this goes to this massive monophonic line is kind of how I described it with the strings Playing all in unison basically together which sounds like this is something horrifying against the state or perhaps It can be interpreted as the strength yes of the Soviet people yes This is one of the fascinating things about this piece John when is he being critical and when is he applauding and He I think he doesn't want us to know I think he for it to save his own skin. He didn't want anyone to know Yeah, you know Are we even asking the wrong question and asking that again? I can't help but wonder it Just the question itself I think is says a lot as we're as we're exploring the music and Another beautiful moment is nearby and he doesn't with the Going from minor to major with the winds the the flute and then the horn and invitation This is a beautiful moment that I really hear a lot from Beethoven often especially with the oboe leading the orchestra from Minor to a to major we suddenly feel safe all of a sudden. Yeah, and that's preceded by this You know these dead-end notes that he was saying that three three note motif there and there's this kind of almost full Guarantee that we hear in Shostakovich's music and a lot of his pieces But you know I find even even in Shostakovich's best music and the fifth symphony is certainly among his greatest works even Ugliness is beautiful. Yeah, there's a sense of chaos and terror and absurdity and there's in the midst of all that there's a sense of striving there's a sense of nobility Even when it's kind of sarcastic, there's a sense like you know We don't lose a sense that life still has meaning. Yeah, and then we have these beautiful moments like you were just described This moment where we're coming back to a place of rest a place of tranquility and we're reminded that there's still beauty in the world And the way the movement ends is I think really what you're describing it's is this haunting or it's as beautiful You know what what is this because we have these light Ta-da-m rhythms coming back in Nice flute and violin solo that takes us to the end and then the ascending lines in the chalest another keyboard instrument this this feels so Is this ugly or beautiful or is it all at the same time? Yes, we think of Chakowsky with this instrument Yeah, actually I had to look this up the chalesta was invented until 1886 Chakowsky was one of the first composers to use it in orchestral score We all think of the sugar plumb fairy in the nutcracker bowl We are far away from the sweet innocence of the sugar plumb fairy in this Shasta, Covage symphony And before we get to the next movement, Evan I just wanted to tell a quick story about my own experience that kind of Paints to what was happening at this time when I was in high school in youth orchestra We had like a weekend kind of workshop thing with conductor Stefan Sandroling Who was music director of the Florida orchestra at the time Stefan Sandroling is the son of or a Kurt Sandroling the famous conductor that was very close with Chastakovic and The conductor that I was working with Stefan grew up in this and he told stories one was He remembered Chastakovic would come over You know regularly and what they would do is that they would go into the the main room of how these all these places were built the main room The phone would be taken off the hook The radio would be turned on as high as possible with like they said you couldn't even hear anything This is blasting music phones off the phone off the hook and they sat close to each other and spoke very softly like like whispering It's like a spy movie and and yeah, this is real life. This is history There is a real fear of You know what you say and how it's interpreted that that's happening at this time So it was a very very Real thing that was all encompassing for Chastakovic. Yeah There's there's a cultural paranoia in this whole era of Soviet history And there's also the reality that it isn't paranoia when in fact your life is in danger That's true, which is a reality that a composer like Chastakovic is dealing with every day And it's of course not just him. It's people that he knows it's friends of his musicians that he's known his whole life Or he reads about things or he hears about things that are whispered on the street Yeah, you know, it's just this is a literal state of constant terror Now the second movement is a scarlet so and you might be forgiven actually you would be forgiven if you thought this was The opening to a scarlet so by goose-dough mallard and a lot of recordings do feel like the kind of lean in that direction again Not pushing through the ends of notes, but really kind of landing and lifting I think contraption has kind of nailed this feeling and attitude it feels like a fun amusement park ride Well fun in quotes that you can't get off it sounds Sinister. Yeah, am I having fun or am I terrified or is it both and I agree with you had contraptions It's easy for this to have a little bit too much of a V&U's lilt to it Yeah, you know, maybe that's what Chastakovic had in mind, but you know, it sounds more Russian in this recording And I can't help but feeling that's somehow quote unquote more correct Even though that's more a feeling than an intellectual conviction on my part I do really like this performance though. No, I agree with you and I think part of the way a part of the reason why it works to do it in more of that Russian style is that the trills that he uses which more user ton of trills of course too Don't land on the note, but rather push a little bit and they're not quite as long We have several other notes they need to get to to introduce the next bit Instead of more of this lilting kind of walls. It sounds kind of nervous Yeah, and there's something again This is more of a feeling than an intellectual sense on my part But there's something somehow very Russian and not so Germanic Not so V&E's about this scarlet so I'm not sure why but there's that kind of that mechanized sound That's part of the music of this era Maybe Chastakovic maybe has some more of a more of an ironic detachment than the very self-conscious Gustav Mahler I don't know Maybe he's more self-effacing in this music. I'm not really sure There's two things that I especially love about this about this movement I love the runs How he's ripping from one you know low note to a to a higher note it just pounds through the The texture and especially when they push all the way from First note to the last The second thing I especially love is how Chastakovic turns the entire orchestra into one instrument You have this fast kind of chaotic ripping motion and then this huge swell and decrescendo that takes a tremendous amount of control and what I love is this is just art because you have a hundred people on stage They have to be completely locked in yes to do this together. Yes very very precise Not a lot of room for error. No, and I think that I love about this movement John is such a strong rhythmic contrast from the first movement First movement we were talking about the 32nd note pickup and there's these Contrasting rhythmic things here. We have eighth notes and quarter notes for the most part dump "Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh." The rhythms are quite simple, it's the way he fills in the cord structures and the melodic directions, like you said, there's those long stretches going from low to high very quickly in this very sort of unsettling way. The rhythm has that, again, mechanistic, that kind of, almost clockwork kind of feel. And yet it never becomes pedantic or cold. There's a-there's a-like, like he was saying John, there's a sort of amusement park ride that's fun, but also maybe a little too scary. And I think part of what drives that is that very straightforward rhythmic language that he uses in this movement, and it's very different from the first movement. And it's much shorter, too. It's like, yes, five minutes long, and this is usually the kind of palette cleanser we expect before the finale to a symphony, not necessarily the second movement of a symphony, especially after that haunting end of the first movement. And I think one of the things that makes Shostakovich such a fascinating and unsettling composer to listen to is that sense of absurdity that he's very aware of the absurdity of life. And I really hear that in this second movement, like you were saying, the scary ride, it's fun, but it's scary. We're not sure if we're more scared than we are amused, and maybe that's the whole point. And there's that sense of that ironic detachment, and yet we're not divorced emotionally from the horror, but we're also not defeated by it. So there's this sense of just this sort of preposterousness of life that's very present in this particular movement, I think, and yet it doesn't descend into a point. it was nihilistic cynicism or sarcasm. [music] And after we've heard this so far, just these two movements, you might wonder, well, how was the premiere? What was it like? I mean, I can't imagine what it would be like to be at the premiere of this symphony. But that happened on November 21st in 1937 with the Lenin Grad Phil and conductor Yves Mavinsky and I guess everyone loved this at the premiere. Like intensely so. Huge triumph for Shostakovich. Like a 30 minute standing ovation that conductor held the score over his head much to the perhaps embarrassment to the authorities and the performance. But it was universally loved by the audience, by the critics. But that also might give the state some pause, right? Like, wait, why does everyone love this so much? It's just really popular. Maybe it's not something we can control. Right. So there is the question of, well, how do they interpret this? They, I think initially didn't really say much. There were a couple of authorities that were upset and they said like at a second performance that it was that it was a fans placed in the audience by Shostakovich and people to clap and do all this show boating for the symphony. But it's so popular. The state afterwards says pretty quickly, well, he did exactly what we asked. He's redeemed himself. He is now fine. He's now a good Soviet socialist and he's towing the party line just like we said he would. And thank you, Dimitri, well done. Yeah. So I mean, that's control of the arts is absolutely textbook and authoritarian and fascistic regimes. It's not so much that, oh, they just love opera and they want to preserve Del Conto singing. No. They want control over the message. So even if it's something like this with Shostakovich that seems a bit subversive, they can go ahead and say, oh, no, he's redeemed himself. We've done. He's done exactly what we want because the fear is that there is an idea which happened with that book, the Master and Margarita people read and it goes viral. People are quoting it in the streets, for example. And you don't want people whistling tunes in the street that might have a more subversive connotation. You were saying, John, I don't know of another symphony that has this much historical context surrounding it. I think you're absolutely right about that. I think that what we both mean by that is the historical context is so complex. So just mind-bogglingly complex and one can certainly appreciate the symphony without knowing that if you didn't know any history and just heard this piece, you'd probably find it quite thrilling and powerful. But the history is relevant in a way that's more true for this piece than for so many other creative works we could think of. This symphony isn't just a response to history. This symphony is history in and of itself. And we're all, let's remove from that history than we are from say, I don't know, we talk about Vivaldi, for instance. You know, this year's the 300th anniversary of the four seasons being published. The USSR existed in living memory and you were talking about a conductor that you knew and heist that you met in high school. His father knew Shostakovich. He came over to his house. I mean, this is living memory. And I can't deny I'm listening to this piece as an American. I grew up, you know, I'm Jen Exer. I grew up in Reagan's America and the day after and red dawn and all that kind of stuff. So I can't deny that's coloring my perception of things. My Ukrainian grandfather at the Thanksgiving table screaming about how terrible Stalin was and I don't disagree with that. But it's also true that the kinds of challenges Shostakovich faced are all too relevant for today's world. Yeah. Look at the world. What's happening in the world in Eastern Europe right now, these former Soviet block countries and people are protesting in the streets. Yeah. You know, Stalin's long dead, but the kind of evil that he represents unfortunately is not dead. It's very much still with us. So there's history in this symphony and the lessons of history are in this symphony. And I find it impossible to believe that Shostakovich didn't want us to think about both history and his own personal experience as we're listening to the fifth symphony. And that's worth repeating that this symphony, it's not just a response to history or something. It is history in and of itself. Now, if Shostakovich was already being daring with his first movement, splitting it up with that second movement, he could have really gotten in trouble for this third movement Largo, considered by many, I myself included, perhaps the most bold and most kind of in your face when it comes to what's happening in the moment. This has a very different kind of sound, the common word that people use is Requiem. This feels like a Requiem as the purge was happening in these years that he was writing. And it brought people to tears, which was also something not acceptable to really display in public as well. Well, again, if you're people are overcome with emotion, and the state can control those emotions, you have a real problem. And the opening or the movement in general, it has a very rich string sound. And I guess that's because it's divided into parts, almost a little choruses. Yeah, three violins, two violas and two cellos, plus the double basses. So you have eight parts, eight string parts. And the strings, again, as in the first movement at the beginning of the third movement really dominate, it's really about the strings and the ones telling the story. There are some beautiful solos you'll find in this movement. Some of them do feel like they are lines mourning lost Russians or lost people lost during this purge. And sometimes it's like they're saying something a little bit different each time. But this is also maybe a not too veiled reference to Orthodox liturgy, which still would have been pretty familiar to listeners at the time, an atheistic regime, but the liturgy of the memory of that sound is still part of the Russian culture very much so. And we feel very still, very solemn, kind of religious, so I think in the first several minutes of this one. Yes. Also, the use of silences, Chusticovich is a master of this. We were talking about the Chalesta earlier or the piano coming in. At these long silences, these instruments are mute for long stretches. And here in this movement, you have this long statement by the strings and then toward the very end of a certain section, the harp suddenly comes in. And the harp has been silent for a long time. And then its entrance really makes us pay attention. Like here's a new voice and yet it blends in so beautifully, the subtlety of that writing is so effective. The silences that it uses, Evan, you're exactly right. And also how the harp enters also feels mower-like. I've not thought of mower so much with Chasticovich in my life since I have in the last couple of weeks with this, but you also get a sense of that here. And like I said, some solos for the winds. We have a beautiful plaintive one for the oboe, something similar for the clarinet and it's just, it feels like these are different either descriptions of people or moments in Chasticovich's life, perhaps when he was in that stairwell. And then about four minutes into the piece, the entire orchestra has a single beat of rest. And there's something about that that's like a collective gasp or there's this moment where they all just have to stop and say, "Oh, there's this moment of all this exhaustion." And then we go back to that low string writing which again has that sort of Eastern, Russian Orthodox chance kind of quality to it. The inquisitor of the low woodwinds, I think it's absent. We get a great moment for winds in here that is quite low, almost sounds like a harmonium, some kind of organ or read instrument that you would have in your room. So for the first half of this movement, Evan, we are not quite wandering around, but we are ensconced in this sound, in this material, this kind of orthodox type of sound. And then we suddenly build up to a huge kind of terrifying sound, right? This feels like a force a wall you cannot reckon with. In the xylophone, how it's punching out with these tremolo strings, they get higher and higher and higher. And again, that xylophone so shostakovichin in that sound quality and there's the tremolo in the piano as well that adds that incredible brilliance to the tone quality. And then it just collapses and then lower strings come in with a repeated iteration of that unbelievably anxious line. I mean, it feels like you're just kind of an a ball on. on the floor and these huge beats, are these huge downbeats in the low strings too, like on beat one, it turns us into a heavy procession. Like we are carrying the weight of the world on us just trying to take steps forward. - Yeah, and again, the cellos playing high in their range, like the oles, this kind of that straining, that joke, like a choke to lament. - Mm-hmm. I wonder what people were, perhaps, if Shostakovich was looking around, you know, maybe surreptitiously around the hall. What are people, what's their reaction, what's going on? I also get a sense that if it was so out of pocket, the orchestra would not want to play it themselves. - Yeah. - I mean, if it was, if it was so crazy, but that's what I think is also the plausible deniability or the ambiguity of this just kind of falls into exhaustion. It sounds like it just gradually descends, gradually goes away, kind of like a fading sunset. - Yeah, the sunset, the sense of loss, the sense of like, well, there goes another day, it's gone forever, and the sense of futility, maybe, a thing that's gone that can never be retrieved. And then we have this chelesta again, maybe church bells, like a Requiem, you know, tolling for the dead, I'm not sure. And then at the very end, we have this Piccadie third, this major chord at the very end, like what? Yeah, I don't even know what to make of that. And yet it's one of those moments in Shostakovich, it's so surprising, it's so odd, it's so weird, and then it happens, and then you think to yourself, nothing else could have happened. That was the right and only thing that could have happened. - Yeah, I mean, I was just thinking, I don't know who actually Piccadie was, whoever that guy, whoever that person was, but yeah, that's when you have something in minor, and then you raise a third for that last chord and you get this major chord. And especially how he creeps in with it too. - Yeah. - It slowly gets in, and then it, and then it crescendos and day crescendos, and you're right, it's like the only thing that could happen before what comes next, the finale. So Shostakovich knew that he had to deliver, and this is a finale opening like none other. (dramatic music) (dramatic music) Like I said, this is an opening like none other, the sound and the attitude and how this settles into the groove and the high strings just, they just take off. It's another reason, again, I love this recording because "Condrosion" maybe again, it's my imagination, but when I'm hearing him conduct, and I only know him really with some of these works, he feels like a Carlos Clibor to me, or a Mauriziancens, and that the tempos, how he shapes him and phrases him with the orchestra, feels extremely natural and organic, compared to some others which are more mechanized. - It's really easy for a passage like this with this very marquato brass and percussion to just be sort of these pedantic, heavily beating notes. And what we have in this performance is a real sense of phrase. There's actually this very long phrase at the beginning of this very exciting, very dramatic, very dynamic finale. And yet there's this breadth to it that "Condrosion"'s performance and the orchestra really brings out here that I think is so effective. - And Shostakovich is pretty effective with the ambiguity that he uses because you're hearing this in, is it fear? Or is it strength? Is this the tear of people against a tyrant? Or no, this is us as a society being super strong, nothing is wrong, everything is great. - Is this a victory lap or is this the defiance of the people rising up against Stalin? Or is this, what's happening here? There is definitely an unanswered set of questions. It gets pretty frantic. The xylophone, as we mentioned, comes in. The trumpet soars over high strings in this very intense moment. I remember how Chris Gecker described this kind of playing in that trumpet episode. I mean, this is almost dangerous physically and with the xylophone pounding away, it sounds like we are headed for abject terror, like we are headed for the final scene. - It's catastrophes just about to unfold, yes. - But instead, we get triumph. - Yes. - Condrashant keeps the tempo moving pretty quickly because this does collapse a moment later, but it feels like wonderful propaganda for the state. - Well, and again, is it heroic or is it just getting frantic? Or like what's happening here? And I think one of the great things about this performance is that it really leaves us in that ambiguous place. It doesn't answer the question for us. - And some of these things that happen are pretty quick because this moment collapses. We get another moment of the massive low and other brass is pounding away, but this slowly just, or suddenly fades into the background and we get this more cruel, lyrical type moment. There's this constant tension or release, that he's building. (soft music) - Another molar-esque thing to wear out Moller's name is how he introduces Shostakovichet is this oscillating ostinato pattern in the strings that slowly emerges, very much reminds me of the first symphony by Moller, which is well very naturalistic nature and its inspiration, the earth and everything. But this starts what feels like a very long road ahead. We have a long journey ahead of us still. (soft music) Then we get to a moment, Evan, where I think we've heard in plenty of Tchaikovsky symphonies, for example, where there's this tune, even if it's in minor, this maybe march, it comes back bigger and often happier, more triumphant. But now it's soft, it's slow, sounds like a dirge. (soft music) - Yeah, this sort of distant approach of something, is it victory or is it defeat? - This really gets quite terrifying. It feels like we are trying to escape something and remember Shostakovich is redeeming himself here with this music, we're in D minor and it is punishing, it is getting higher, it is getting more tense with these pounding eighth notes. And then it feels like we just throw our corpse over the line into D major, just barely making the crew. (soft music) - And victory has been achieved at last, or is it, or is it a peric victory? Have we sacrificed too much? Another victory like this, and I'll be vanquished at last. You know, like where it's not really clear. And again, I love this recording because of how congestion shapes the moment, when this explodes into D major, it's a little unclear. Within when it settles into these a's, that you're hearing that are pounding out in the strings and also xylophone in piano, that really sets up the moment for the following entrance, which feels like a big slow fanfare, we have these pounding out of the tempo you based on it feels like the downbeats, and it sounds like this big fanfare. And then we get to these chords, which are alternating between major and minor. Is this victory, is it defeat, is it, you know, is it the pirating victory, like you said, what is happening here, and then we get this big completion, and it is, you can read this in a couple of ways. Is this triumph, or is this the, or is there something else? (dramatic music) And again, you know, kudos to Kyrgyl Kondrasch and a really great interpreter of Shostakovich and the Moscow Philharmonic place, so magnificently, even in this recording with its technical limitations. And the pacing, the phrasing is so powerful, and this ending with a sense of triumph, also a sense of fatigue maybe, but that's not complete exhaustion. There's still energy to the very end, there's still power, there's still strength, there's still courage, and the ambiguity, again, we're not given the answer by this performance. So many questions about this symphony, and we're just left with deeper questions. And one of the things I appreciate about this performance, about this. score is it doesn't tell you what it's trying to say. It leaves you wondering and you bring your own experience and your own feeling to it in a way that's so compelling. And one of the biggest questions of the entire work that continues today and will continue as long as we're still playing music is that tempo. What is happening here at the end? Why does this sound so slow? Because for example, you can play it pretty quick. Like Bernstein, we hear this for example. That is more than twice as fast. And when Shostakovich heard it, he was like, oh, I love it. Sounds great. Which I also love because that's also part of art. Maybe Shostakovich did love it. Maybe he didn't at all. But it's great. Yeah. Well, again, that sense of the absurdity of life that's so inherent to Shostakovich's music and his whole outlook. Bernstein, literally that twice as fast tempo. And Shostakovich, yeah, sounds good. Wow. OK. Why does he say that? Is he just being polite? Is he really agreed? Does he think, gosh, maybe that's why I should have done. Oh, well, move on to the next symphony. I don't know. And again, we don't know. We just leave us with questions. Yeah. No other symphony, I think, has this kind of big tempo question, ending, especially from the 20th century. And part of this is what he actually writes into the score. The moment where it slows down when he gets into that into D major, it says eighth note equals 188, which for a musician looking at this music, it does look a little odd. Weird. You would expect to hear-- you'd expect to see maybe quarter note equals 94. Because most of the time, tempos are noted in. And quarter notes, quarter note equals 60, or 120, or whatever. But other times, it's a half note. Or sometimes it's an eighth note. When it's an eighth note, that usually means that this is slower. We're subdividing the beats as we're conducting or playing this. And that usually lends to a playing style, which is a bit more heavier as opposed to a clip, like moving forward. And this is opposite of what he does in the first movement. So this does look strange. It does look odd in the score. And it does perhaps make one think, well, is that a mistake? Is it quarter note equals 188? Or there have been these kinds of questions. And we get these kinds of performances. And 188 is weirdly fast. I wonder if I could do this if we-- here's my metronome. That's 188. Right. It's just really-- how do you even find your-- as a performer, how do you find your tempo? Wow, OK, OK, where's my beat? It's really fast. There's a kind of frantic weird-- like why isn't it 94? That would be much more sensible in terms of seeing a larger beat. But we're just left-- I'm just left feeling really confused by that. We're all confused. As Michael Tillerson Thomas said, the score isn't even all that helpful. And I personally love that we get these things. I also reached out to Michelle Merrill, who is a conductor. She was on one of our first episodes, number 10 on, what does a conductor do? And I asked her, what are your thoughts when you're preparing this work? I wondered to tell me, what do you do? What's the ending? What do you do? But she wrote back and she said, the tempo of the last movement is always the big conductor question. Did Shostakovich mean for it to be a rejoicing finale or a snarky sentiment veiled in majesty? With Shostakovich, I always go with the latter. You get that hint with the inscription he put when he released the fifth, a Soviet artist replied to just criticism. The fact that he included just in there, tips went off to the fact that he is doing this to appease his oppressors. I also had the privilege back in 2014 to conduct Shostakovich's fourth symphony, which was pulled from performance when the criticism began. And it was not performed for another 30 years. The fourth symphony will break you. It, to me, is a sonic picture of what it was like to live in Soviet Russia during that time period. Now, this is where it gets even more interesting, I think, she writes. And then what actually strikes me most about the final movement is not necessarily the tempo question of the ending march, but rather the music that is quoted in the slow music directly before this ending. It actually comes from a song Shostakovich wrote called Rebirth, which was a hidden composition Shostakovich wrote, as his first reaction to the news and that newspaper profdom that we read earlier. And I'll read a little bit of a text of this song, because I think it tells us something. An artist barbarian with his lazy brush, blackens the painting of a genius. And senselessly, he covers it with his own illegitimate drawing. But with the passing years, the alien colors fall off like threadbare scales. The creation of the genius emerges before us in its former beauty. And that's just a little bit of the text. We'll put a link to the poem elsewhere, but that is quite something, isn't it, here? So this poem, Rebirth, is that Shostakovich said to music, probably around the same time he was writing the Fifth Symphony, is a poem by Alexander Pushkin, who is, of course, a very interesting figure to explore, as we're looking at Soviet history. 1937, the year this symphony was written in first perform, it was also the centennial year of Pushkin's death. And there were many celebrations of this in Soviet Russia. Pushkin, arguably, the single most important figure in Russian literature, and a hugely significant figure in world literature. So there's this great Russian pride in him, justifiably. On the other hand, Pushkin was an aristocrat. He was this very important figure in free revolutionary Russia. He represents that whole world of the Russian Empire in the House of Roman Office, and so forth. The original and innocent times, maybe, in this poem, I'm not sure. So there's this ambivalence about Pushkin in 1937, in the atmosphere in which Shostakovich is writing the symphony. He writes a song that is a setting of a poem by Pushkin, around the time he's writing the symphony. He quotes that music from that song in this symphony. What's he trying to say? Is Shostakovich himself this figure like Pushkin? He's this crazy love-hate relationship that the society has with him. He's a hero, but he's also a villain. We love him. We hate him. We revere him. We want nothing to do with him. The Soviets can't figure out what to do with Shostakovich anymore that they can figure out what to do with Pushkin. What do they do with this beauty? What do they do with this genius? What do they do with this great art? Do they-- what is that? Oh, look at us. We're the greatest society in the world. Look at these geniuses that we've created. Oh, look at us. We don't like that because that subversive thing was against the thing we say we believe in. But we're not sure if we believe in it or not because we're kind of hypocrites. Oh, well, shut up. We will shoot you. You know, I mean, I'm oversimplifying a bit, but there's also this sense of lunacy that a genius like Shostakovich has to live with. And he expresses his defiance of that with his quote-unquote response to just criticism. And yet he's also-- he puts in this dig where he's quoting himself in a way that the audience is not going to look. Oh, yeah, that's Shostakovich. That's that song he wrote down, that Pushkin poem. Maybe some people might have known about that, but I think for the most part, that's very much flying under the radar. Well, that song, I believe, that's one that he did not-- he kept hitting for a while, that did not come out. So that's something that we have context for. That even earlier people may have not had. That's-- I mean, this is really a-- it's a tremendous work. There's a lot you can read about this. We've really tried to dig into some of the music. We find compelling and perhaps what was going on with Shostakovich at this time. Last bit here from Michelle Merrill, that continues from the song, she says, "So to me, that section is the most poignant part of the entire symphony. And I intentionally take that section a little slower than marked in some scores. It's marked at half note equals 80. I'll go around 50 to 60. Because of the weight of those words, it's marked half note equals 80. But I'll go around 50 to 60, around the original tempo of the original song. For me, if that part is set in such a poignant way, the following finale has even more magnitude. I love that, Evan, I would not have known this, or really understood this, unless we heard from Michelle on this point. Well, definitely, I want to encourage our listeners to go back to episode 10 from season one of classical breakdown. What does a conductor do? That's a really great conversation, the two of you had. And she's so insightful here about Chastikovic. So that is Chastikovic's fifth symphony. Thank you so much, Evan. I feel like I'm going to be listening to more recordings of this for, I think, the next few months. I feel the same way, John. Thank you so much. And again, the unanswerable questions of this symphony are part of what makes it so irresistible. Thanks for listening to classical breakdown, your guide to classical music. For more information on this episode, visit the show notes page at classicalbreakdown.org. You can send me comments and episode ideas to [email protected]. And if you enjoyed this episode, leave a review in your podcast app. I'm John Panther. Thanks for listening to classical breakdown from WETA Classical. [BLANK_AUDIO]