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Programme Notes

DMITRY DMITRYEVICH SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-1975)

SYMPHONY No 9 IN E FLAT Op 70

  • Allegro
  • Moderato
  • Presto
  • Largo
  • Allegretto

 

The Ninth Symphony's two predecessors, Nos 7 and 8, are Shostakovich's war symphonies: tragic, stern in feeling, and plainly depicting the struggle of the Russian people against the invading German army. Official favour was his reward for these patriotic works: he was given the Stalin Prize, First Grade, for the Seventh Symphony, which he had begun in besieged Leningrad in 1941, and the Eighth, likewise, was approved of as an expression of the people's resolution and defiance against a cruel enemy.

And so the Ninth, written in 1945, was expected to be the composer's 'Victory' symphony, the last of a trilogy of war symphonies which would bring the series to a heroic conclusion. 'We were prepared to hear a new, monumental fresco,' said a fellow musician, Dmitry Rabinovich: bombastic pride and exultation would have brought a satisfied nod from the Soviet establishment, and Shostakovich could do either when required...but now, instead, they were given something no other composer could have conceived.

Ostensibly the Ninth Symphony is jocular, even waggish. We hear vaudeville trombone solos, parody military band noises and caricature gopaks - these do not so much appear to celebrate the victory as send it up rotten. The trombone interventions, incidentally, are Shostakovich's allusions to the kind of bovine military bandsmen he had been obliged to listen to during the war: the trombonist's entries are intended to be 'wrong' as well as inappropriate.

The second movement comes closer to what the musical community of Stalinist Moscow would have been expecting, a sad threnody more appropriate to the nation's feelings about the dead outside Stalingrad, Leningrad and Moscow itself. Then the remaining three movements follow without a break, with unforeseen changes of mood. The Presto is marked by a spirit almost of burlesque, while the ensuing Largo, dominated by the brass, has a requiem-like gravity; then at last the final movement celebrates victory over the fascists with the kind of triumphalist sounds convention demanded, except that Shostakovich, letting the revelry have its head, throws in a kind of can-can that succeeds in being both ribald and derisive. One of Shostakovich's favourite composers was Offenbach.

Another curious feature are the quotations from other ninth symphonies. Shostakovich, a superstitious man, was uneasily aware that Beethoven's Ninth and Mahler's Ninth were their last complete symphonies, and sought to propitiate the fates with veiled references to both at the beginning of his own last movement. The references may be inconspicuous, but it doesn't take great insight to recognise the element of profound irony in this extraordinary symphony. Fascism may have been defeated, but the enemy at home remained and would not be seen off for another forty years. And the point is that the ribaldry, exuberance and outrageous merriment are not far away from grief and despair: these apparently opposite emotions add up to a strikingly individual response to one of the 20th century's most appalling tragedies. Only Shostakovich could have articulated it in music.

Programme Notes by Paul Vaughan ©

 

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