Run Time: Approx. 53 minutes

Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony stands as one of the most significant artistic portrayals of Soviet-era oppression. Premiered just a few months after Stalin’s death in the spring of 1953, it is closely tied to the circumstances that inspired its creation.

Shostakovich’s relationship with the Soviet regime was extremely precarious, and many once believed the symphony was written in response to Stalin’s death, based on a now-debunked biography of the composer. However, a friend insisted she had heard fragments of the symphony as early as 1949. This account aligns more closely with Shostakovich’s working method—he typically worked on music for an extended period, often entirely in his head, before committing it to manuscript.

Regardless of the timeline, the symphony certainly comments on life under the Soviet regime. Shostakovich lived in constant fear for his life. Many of his family members and friends disappeared in the night without a trace, and he feared he would meet the same fate, especially after the premiere of his opera Lady MacBeth led to Stalin’s public condemnation of him and his music. Stalin demanded that music portray joy and strength, reflecting the supposed happiness of the Soviet people.

After Stalin’s denunciation, Shostakovich’s compositions divided into two categories: works intended for public consumption that aligned with Stalin’s demands, and those he kept hidden, hoping for a time when he could safely publish them. Unsurprisingly, many of Shostakovich’s most cherished works come from the latter group.

One of Shostakovich’s favorite compositional techniques was the use of a musical signature. This practice, where composers spell out their names using notes, was not new—Bach famously employed his own musical signature in many of his works. Shostakovich used the abbreviation DSCH (for the German spelling of Dmitri Shostakovich) in his compositions, utilizing the German notation system, which creates the theme D, E-flat (Es in German), C, and B-natural (H in German).

This motive appears throughout his compositions and is particularly prominent in the Tenth Symphony. While it could simply be a compositional flourish, it’s also possible Shostakovich embedded his signature so prominently to ensure that his music would be correctly attributed to him if it were discovered after his death.

Shostakovich also deeply admired Alexander Pushkin’s works, who similarly struggled with censorship. Shostakovich resonated with Pushkin’s themes of suppression and resistance. Several years earlier, he had set several of Pushkin’s poems for Soprano and piano, one of which tells the story of an artist whose work is blacked out in a barbaric act of censorship. Slowly, over years, the black paint chips away, and eventually, the artist’s work is allowed to see the light of day.

Another poem in this collection, “What Does My Name Mean to You?”, operates on two levels. On one hand, it’s a love poem that questions how the beloved will remember the poet after his death. On another level, it ruminates on the idea of legacy: what will endure of me, and how will I be remembered? Shostakovich incorporates a passage from his setting of this poem into the first movement of the Tenth Symphony. In doing so, he frames the central question of the work: What is my name to you?

The first movement immerses the listener in the 1950s USSR, creating a lonely and desolate atmosphere with harmonies that evoke a sense of impending doom. The strings, joined by a solitary clarinet, paint a vivid picture of isolation. As the music builds, it takes on the quality of a horror film soundtrack—monsters lurk around every corner.

Then it begins to waltz. The waltz, typically a lighthearted party dance, starts innocently but soon turns grotesque. Here, its distortion hints at the darker realities lurking beneath the surface. The poet Osip Mandelstam’s haunting description of the time captures this duality: “We were capable of coming to work with a smile on our face after a night in which our home had been searched or a relative arrested. It was essential to smile. If you didn’t, it meant that you were afraid or unhappy. Nobody could afford to admit this.”

The second movement is widely thought to be a musical portrayal of Stalin. The music conjures images of a military march—relentless, terrifying, and nightmarish. The continuous movement never ceases, never allowing rest, reflecting the oppression of the era.

In the third movement, Shostakovich introduces a new motif: the Elmira theme (E La Mi Re A), which combines French and German musical notation. This theme is repeated twelve times by the horn and represents Elmira Nazirova, a student whom Shostakovich admired. By the end of the movement, the two themes—the Elmira theme and the earlier DSCH motive—become closer, though they never fully overlap, highlighting the composer’s unfulfilled longing.

Shostakovich noted that the Elmira theme resembled the call of the ape in Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, a piece he had been obsessively listening to. The call in Mahler’s work symbolizes hope for humanity—something Shostakovich perhaps sought as well amid his struggles against tyranny. This movement offers a brief reprieve from the horrors of the first two, evoking both innocent, unrequited love and a glimmer of hope for the world.

The final movement opens with a long, plaintive oboe melody—surely the saddest of instruments—before transitioning through the wind section, always featuring solo voices. Echoing the despairing opening of the first movement, there’s a sense that perhaps nothing will ever change. After all the tumult of the previous movements, it seems we are right back where we started. Yet, Shostakovich quickly rejects that notion. The music erupts into a jaunty march, led by the clarinet, filled with swirling melodies that are the happiest we’ve heard so far. The music races, gathering confidence and energy, until it explodes into a massive eruption of the DSCH theme.

After the eruption, things calm down, and the orchestra pauses to take stock. Yet the DSCH theme will not abet. It lingers, echoing in subtle aftershocks that haunt the orchestra as it attempts to move on. The clarinet resumes its flurry, but the DSCH theme continues to resurface, growing more insistent, until it is repeated nine consecutive times, bringing the piece to its conclusion.

At the beginning of the symphony, Shostakovich poses the question, “What is my name to you?” Who will remember me when I’m gone? An hour later, he practically screams his name, again and again, as if to defiantly proclaim “I will not be erased!” How vindicated he must have felt, finally getting to premiere the work just months after Stalin’s death.