Schostakovich – look into the future

Schostakovich stood on the side of the Russian Revolution. The 11th Symphony op. 103 with the title “Die Jahr year 1905”, which sounded in May at the Leipzig Schostakowitsch Festival from the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Andris Nelsons, impressively testified. The work is reminiscent of the Petersburg Blutsonntag of January 9, 1905: In the machine factories, shipyards, manufacturers and weaving mills, a general strike took place, and on Sunday, tens of thousands of workers, supported by large parts of the civilian population of Petersburg, pulled before the winter palace of the tsar, for human -livelible forms, the abolition of the censorship, but also for to demonstrate the creation of a representative representative. In the 1st sentence of his symphony, “Place in front of the palace”, Schostakovich wrote one of his most beautiful music, which of course is not a surprise, because what are there more wonderful than tens of thousands of people who stand against tyranny for their rights? But the first, or should we say: original, Russian revolution of 1905 was brutally reflected by the tsarist military.

Damped pianissimo sounds of the strings, fifths and octaves, supported by harp, give something magical to the start of the symphony. The sound, which Andris Nelsons impressively besminates in Leipzig, is reminiscent of the wonderful dawn, with which Mussorgski’s »Chowantschina« begins, this too is a musical folk drama (and here and there bells play an important role). At Schostakovich we hear a fourth-tone motto of the timpani, fanfare calls of the subdued trumpets, liturgical »Lord, mercy on our« posts of the strings lead to a revolution song. You can call this static, but as it sounded in Leipzig, this sentence seems to me to be brimming with banging expectations, to reflect on the tense atmosphere full of uncertainty in view of the great risk that workers and population are taking into account in their protest against the tsar.

In the 2nd set, the demonstration rises until the tsar’s soldiers shoot on the defenseless people, we hear mercilessly roaring sheet metal and percussion: fire on the peaceful demonstrators, rifle salvons, percussion doners. A last trumpet fanfare, the revolutionary song in the flutes, returns the timpani motif of the 1st sentence and leads to the great adagio of the 3rd set, “in memoriam”. A funeral march in which Schostakovich builds the workers’ song “Immortal victims”. And in the last sentence a furious storm ringing, Andris Nelsons let it pop, which is a look into the future, a fierce hope for political change, without hiding the despair in the face of the massacre in the demonstrator.

At the end of wild drums accompanied by forissimo bell ring, always alternately two bars in the G minor and the G majorterz, i.e. the outcome openly. In the Leipzig program, Ann-Katrin Zimmermann called it a “wordless preaching pathos”: the violent bell strikes “call up and announced something big, significant”. The October Revolution, “The Year of 1917”, that is, Schostakovich’s 12th Symphony?

The 11th symphony was published in 1957, four years after Stalin’s death. In the fake memoirs of Schostakovich, which Solomon Volkov published in 1979 in the United States and the FRG, the impression is to be given that the composer wanted to remind you of the Hungarian uprising in 1956. Others think that the work is witness to the oppression of people by the dictator Stalin. It seems to be obvious that the symphony, the performance of which was planned for the 40th anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution, refers to the roots of the Bolshevik Revolution, to 1905, when the first Russian revolution could not yet be victorious.

Undoubtedly, the work can also be simply listened to as a fanal against oppression, against violent acts of defenseless. In parallel to the impressive performance in the Gewandhaus, the no less impressive Bernhard Heisig special exhibition “Birthday life with Ikarus” with his nightmarish paintings (“When I wanted to paint the international battle”) and the anti-war lithograph folding (“Problems of military pastoral”, “Marching soldiers on the Battlefield «).

The seventh and eleventh are certainly program music. They contain insights into Schostakovich’s composition in Nuce. You won’t be able to think of Schostakovich without Gustav Mahler: the “sampling” invented by Mahler, ie the side by side of different motifs without working out; The use of motifs from everyday music, folk or revolutionary songs is also available from Schostakovich. With him it is always Jewish melodies and songs, which is not only a statement against latent anti-Semitism. There are the big orchestras that let the huge sound worlds drown onto the audience, but which must also be able to play so quietly that the music is hardly audible. Impressive the slope for exaggeration, Scherzi converted into the grotesque; Last but not least, the courage to simply vanish and make symphonies, if necessary, instead of breaking a deliberate final of the fence- although, like Mahler, furious orchestral tatti and brass or impact folding are by no means foreign. And no coincidence that one of the greatest Shostakovich conductors, Kirill Kondrashin, his friend and conductor of some premieres, was also an excellent Mahler interpreter.

We take Schostakovich’s 4. Symphony C minor op. 43, which was composed in 1935/36, but was only premiered by Kondrashin in 1961. The composer had withdrawn her on the previous evening of the planned premiere that she would spark a new scandal and could be dangerous to him, and the four -handed piano version, which the composer performed with his friend Mieczyslaw Weinberg in front of the Moscow composer association in 1945, was no official support.

In the fourth we experience catastrophic worlds of the world and decay in chaos. The orchestra marches Mahler-hugging. A mighty tamtam wall. What remains – a lonely, hurt fagot melody. Later an English horn, which in its melodic hesitation is measured with the old shepherd’s way at the beginning of the third act of Wagner’s “Tristan”. There is a furious string joint, fanfares and almost violent striking devils. A grotesque. The six flutes with shrill tones in the ears. And finally an endless, first -time chord. Quiet bang strikes. The skeleton of a melody. The Celesta and one last C minor.

This symphony is a miracle, especially when it is listed as great as in Leipzig from the Gewandhaus Orchestra under Andris Nelsons, who is not only chief conductor of the Boston Symphony, but also a crops band champion. Here you felt the Leipzig Schostakovich competence, which has existed since the world’s first cyclical performance of all Schostakowitsch symphonies under Kurt Masur from 1976 to 1978 (at that time the works were related to Beethoven’s symphonies).

Part 1 and Part 3 of Berthold Seliger to Schostakovich are also available online.