No. 2028 Subscription (Program A)

Born eleven years before the Russian Empire ceased to exist, Dmitry Shostakovich (1906–1975) lived mostly as a Soviet citizen. He composed his all fifteen symphonies behind the Iron Curtain, while many compatriot musicians such as Rachmaninov and Stravinsky fled to (or decided to stay in) the West after the 1917 Revolution.
Saint Petersburg where Shostakovich was born and bred was the Russian Empire’s capital for about two hundred years before the new Soviet regime relocated the capital to Moscow. In 1924 when Shostakovich was in late teens, his birthplace was renamed Leningrad after the death of Vladimir Lenin. It was to retain that name until the collapse of the USSR. During World War II, the city suffered heavy casualties while enduring the 872-day destructive Siege of Leningrad by Hitler’s troops (September 1941 – January 1944), which made the city a symbol of anti-Nazi resistance for the Allies. And it was mainly in besieged Leningrad that Shostakovich, driven by his love for his hometown, penned the Symphony No. 7 from July to December in 1941 (Germany’s surprise invasion of the Soviet Union had started in June). The world premiere took place the next year in Kuybyshev (now Samara) where Shostakovich had evacuated to: the concert was radio broadcasted across the Soviet Union for a boost in patriotic fighting spirit. The subsequent European and American premieres in 1942 were both greeted with loud cheers.
A few weeks earlier than the world premiere of No. 7, a rehearsal report by the novelist Alexei Tolstoy appeared in the Soviet Communist Party’s official newspaper, Pravda. It had prepared the first listeners to accept the symphony as the Russians’ combat and triumph against the fascism. Some recent sources, however, suggest that Shostakovich resisted by stealth all sorts of totalitarianism including Stalinism in this monumental work.
No. 7 calls for a colossal orchestra with a banda (an additional brass section). It is cast in four movements that Shostakovich originally entitled “War,” “Reminiscence,” “Our Country’s Expanses” and “Victory” respectively. The opening movement introduces the brave first theme in C major and the peaceable second theme in G major following the Classical sonata form. Then a surprise comes: a new element, well-known as the “invasion theme,” is restated multiple times over a snare drum’s monotonously-repeated rhythm pattern evoking Ravel’s Bolero (1928). A dramatic gradual increase in volume leads this development section to a ferocious climax. The Second movement in B minor is an idyllic scherzo, while the third movement in D major is a slow lyrical one reminiscent of the Baroque era. And without a break, the finale begins in C minor with the string crooning with a slight sentiment. The symphony is concluded in C major by the whole orchestra crying out loudly the brave first theme from the opening movement as if to come full circle, to affirm an overwhelming victory.

[Kumiko Nishi]