Dimitri Shostakovich

Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47

Everyone in the concert hall in Leningrad on that chilly night in November 1937 knew that Dmitri Shostakovich’s artistic reputation, and very possibly his life, were on the line. They were there to hear the premiere of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony. Before the night was over, they also witnessed the dramatic rehabilitation of Shostakovich as the Soviet Union’s preeminent composer.

Earlier in the decade, Shostakovich had been fêted as the darling of Soviet cultural critics, but in 1936 the Soviet newspaper Pravda published a vicious denunciation of Shostakovich’s opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. Shostakovich’s response to the Pravda review was to immediately withdraw his Fourth Symphony, which he was then rehearsing (he did not perform it in public until 1961, eight years after Joseph Stalin’s death). This was not an overreaction; many of Shostakovich’s friends and associates were “disappeared” or executed for reasons far less public. Any response Shostakovich made to his critics had to be meticulously planned, lest he suffer the same fate. With his Fifth Symphony, which a reviewer famously called “A Soviet artist’s response to just criticism,” Shostakovich both mollified government critics and simultaneously reasserted his artistic integrity.

Although the Fifth Symphony is an “absolute” piece of music (i.e., there is no specific narrative attached to it), Shostakovich did include a brief description of “a lengthy spiritual battle, crowned by victory” in the program notes. The Moderato sets the tone for that “spiritual battle,” beginning with the strings’ menacing theme. Its dotted rhythms suggest a bitter march toward an implacable foe. Later, the violins introduce a lyrical second theme, in contrast to the angular rhythmic quality of the first.

The playful Allegretto juxtaposes frisky winds with stentorian brasses. In the trio section a solo violin teases and flirts, before being interrupted by the full orchestra, which transforms the violin’s merry tune into a pompous, galumphing parody of itself. A whiff of something grotesque permeates this music.

The Largo is the emotional core of the Fifth Symphony, and its power lies in its poignant melodies. Here Shostakovich gives the brass section a rest and showcases other instruments: first strings, then a solo flute and finally the full orchestra, sans brasses. Wistful cries from the oboe, a sobbing upwelling of notes from the clarinet and a brief comment from the flute follow before the whole orchestra comes together, amidst quivering string tremolos, in heart-wrenching sadness.

The Allegro non troppo opens with a firestorm, announced by pounding timpani and a blazing brass fanfare. Shostakovich returns to this theme again and again, and unleashes his seemingly endless power of invention with defiant abandon. In a quiet interlude that directly precedes the coda, Shostakovich quotes a song in the violins (later in the harp) that he set to words of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin:  “And the waverings pass away/From my tormented soul/As a new and brighter day/Brings visions of pure gold.” Despite this quotation and the blast of brassy triumph that ends the Fifth Symphony, Shostakovich, perhaps enigmatically, called the conclusion an “irreparable tragedy.”

At the end of the premiere, a member of the audience remembered: “The whole audience leapt to their feet and erupted into wild applause – a demonstration of their outrage at all the hounding poor Mitya had been through. Everyone kept saying the same thing: ‘That was his answer, and it was a good one.’ [Shostakovich] came out white as a sheet, biting his lips. I think he was close to tears.”

The Fifth Symphony also succeeded as a musical work, despite negative responses from some critics who saw it as a musical capitulation to government restrictions placed on artists’ works, or a shameful compromise by a world-class composer with the dictatorial political system in which he lived. Pravda, unsurprisingly, termed it “a farrago of chaotic nonsensical sounds.” Despite the mixed critical reaction, audiences both within and outside the Soviet Union hailed the Fifth Symphony as a masterpiece. Today, it is Shostakovich’s most popular and most frequently performed symphony.

© Elizabeth Schwartz

NOTE: These program notes are published here by the Modesto Symphony Orchestra for its patrons and other interested readers. Any other use is forbidden without specific permission from the author, who may be contacted at www.classicalmusicprogramnotes.com