Last night: What Shostakovich tells us right now
NewsA Russian friend of Ukrainian extraction refused to join me at last night’s Shostakovich’s eighth symphony at the Royal Festival Hall, performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Vasily Petrenko. She felt too conflicted to listen to Second World War music at the present moment.
My own feeling was the never in my life had I needed more to hear Shostakovich’s wartime symphony, ostensibly a celebration of Russia’s fightback against Germany but rippling with details that complicate the official narrative.
I once heard Kurt Sanderling, who was close to Shostakovich, tell an orchestra that the bassoon solo midway through the piece was a Communist military apparatchik all puffed up at being sent on a mission abroad. That sort of sarcastic detail reveals the composer’s total commitment to telling the truth and overriding the propaganda.
I wondered how the symphony would sound on the day that Russia committed yet another modern war crime, destroying a dam and the lives of tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians.
Complicated is how. Petrenko held back on the temptations of bombast to deliver a reading of disturbing ambivalence, of pride mingled with horror, bringing out many aspects of belonging and non-belonging that are expressed better in music than in words. The RPO’s woodwind soloists were the heroes of the piece. The strings were find, the brass terrifying. The conductor is a major asset among London’s random assemblage of music directors. I shall still be digesting the performance for many months to come.
Shostakovich had as much to say to our time as he did to his own.
At the outset of the invasion I listened to the Leningrad Symphony, but this time I wasn’t rooting for the Russians.
Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony would be very appropriate for today’s Russo/Ukrainian war, especially with Ukraine’s long awaited Spring Offensive starting.
I was at that performance last night. Petrenko really got the best out of his players. For me the 8th sym is one of his finest, and never more needed than now!
Excellent review. I wasn’t there – wish I had been – but I can imagine it. I have always seriously rated Shostakovich and am not surprised at your comment that he has:
“as much to say to our time as he did to his own”
I was introduced to Shostakovich in a Secondary Modern school music class in Wiltshire at the age of 14 . I am now approaching my late 60’s and still marvel at his music everyday – especially his Symphonies. If I could meet one person again in a Fantasy world it would be him . Oh to hear all about his music and his stories..
The first half of that performance (June 7, RFH, Royal Phil) featured the more banal Tchaikovsky piano concerto no. 1, with soloist Nobuyuki Tsujii. (The performance received great applause and standing ovations.) The juxtaposition of the two Russian works is significant. Tchai 1 represents the euphoric Russia that most people now realize is nothing but a mirage. Vasily Petrenko is an underrated conductor.
The greatness of Shostakovich lies in him being a voice for humanity, not for Russian nationalism. His 8th is, among other things, one of the best artistic depictions of the horror of war. And yet, I can understand those who find it hard to listen to, these days. Like all things Russian his monumental music had been appropriated by the regim, not unlike what happend 90 years ago to all things German. Perhaps the time is better suited for his 15th quartet.
What if Ukraine destroyed the dam? Wouldn’t you feel stupid?
I guess French satellite measurements of rising water levels upstream from the dam in Ukrainian controlled Dniepr before it was bombed is a disturbing fact for your cozy narrative…
There should be no attempt to equate what is going on now in this awful Putin/Ukraine war with what Dmitri Shostakovich portrayed in his so-called ‘war’ symphonies – a western tag by all accounts. It should never be forgotten just what Shostakovich himself endured under Joseph Stalin’s oppression at the time of composing these immensely powerful symphonies. We need Russian music of that period. It has much to teach us. A little bit of education would help overcome such prejudice. Read, learn and listen!
Forgetting the politics, this concert was musically extremely fine. The Tchaikovsky concerto, from the first bars, was played with a great deal more finesse than usual and as a result sounded more a masterpiece. Petrenko got some marvellously soft and resonant string playing at times. The pianist was, to my ears, pretty flawless and although in command of a formidable technique, never abused it. All in all, I went expecting to be a bit bored by it, and was instead gripped. The Shostakovich (three outstanding movements, a finale that doesn’t quite live up to its predecessors)
was stunning, as evidenced by an audience, that had come largely one suspects to hear the Tchaikovsky, being pin-drop quiet during even the softest of moments in the symphony. (Although two people near me were taking out their mobile phones every 5 minutes to scroll through them, which made me feel rather murderous.) I haven’t heard such good orchestral playing in London for a while, and this from the RPO, considered by some to be the rather poor relation set against the LPO, LSO and Philharmonia. Not a bit of it, everything was played with immense accuracy and sensitivity, and real bite and venom when required. Countless solos deserve praise, though the drummer’s climax in the third movement perhaps took the crown in its rhythmic exactitude combined with dynamic nous (I noted the splendidly calculated reduction in volume prior to the final thwacks). For all this, praise to the players and, above all, Petrenko, who is working marvels at the moment. I had previously advised you should never miss a Jurowski concert – to that I now say the same for Vasily Petrenko.
‘Russian friend of Ukrainian extraction’ No such thing. You have a Ukrainian friend.