'Shosta' should have written the Enigma Variations

I suppose, at heart, all men are a mystery but the late, and very great, Dimitri Shostakovich was a personal example of Churchill's famous dictum that Russia was "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma".  It hasn't helped in understanding him that so many different 'friends' and 'acquaintances' and 'experts' have written so many different, and sometime contrary, opinions about him.  Now, apparently, the novelist Julian Barnes has written a fictional book about him entitled "The Noise of Time".  It is discussed at length in The New Yorker by Nikil Saval - and no, me neither!  Even so, it is an interesting article to read particularly if, like me, you admire, nay, love, an enormous amount of his music. 

Almost his entire life was the equivalent of skating up the Moskva river the day before Spring when the ice is visibly cracking!  Constantly expecting arrest, not least because so many others 'disappeared' I don't suppose he was too surprised when he was called in for interrogation by an officer called Zakrevsky:

Before long, Zakrevsky is asking Shostakovich to “shake” his memory and “think a little harder,” especially when it comes to “the plot against Comrade Stalin,” of which he was “one of the chief witnesses.” Shostakovich prepares himself for arrest and execution. Then, like something out of Dostoyevsky, he is spared: Zakrevsky himself is taken in. “His interrogator interrogated. His arrester arrested.”

No wonder there are sometimes passages of sardonic 'humour' in some of his music!  Twice in his career, Stalin's finger was pointed at him in disapproval because his music had failed to meet with Party requirements.  From everything I read his life seems to have been one of unremitting misery and fear and yet ... and yet ... he produced some of the very greatest music of the 20th century.  Intensely moving in places even if, like me, you don't know the difference between a crotchet and a quaver!  Best to start with his 5th symphony, then perhaps his 10th, but as you gradually get to know him, treat yourself to his String Quartets which encompass most of his working life, the ups as well as the downs.  The 8th Quartet is sublime.

 

Comments

[Whyaxye]

I was accidentally listening to his Concerto for Trumpet and Piano yesterday. My wife plays the trumpet, and her mother, who is staying with us for a few days, is a pianist. They've both played this piece. They both think he is brilliant.

I still maintain that he was a talented technical musician without a scintilla of aesthetic sensibility. He knew how to put together musical symbols to create exactly the sounds he wanted, but unfortunately did not know what good music is. No taste. This condition is rare in a composer (usually in the west it is the other way around: aesthetically sound people who are technical bunglers are far more common) but we must make allowances for the Soviet system.

I dare say this to you because you are safely tucked up in deepest Zummerzet, but I'm not brave enough to state my case so robustly here at home!

[David Duff]

Harrumph! Snort! Splutter! "Where's my shotgun?"

[gunner]

Dear Whyaxye, Try listening to his 24 preludes and fugues (op. 87) several times through preferably, and as played by Alexander Melnikov. You will no doubt see the error of your ways, and come to agree with Mr. Duff and myself that DSCH is the greatest of the great.

[Dom]

Whyaxe, the 5th is miraculous, especially the first movement, possibly the greatest and most stirring sonata since Beethoven's 5th. I don't know why the 7th is hailed as a great symphony. It just does nothing for me. I have to get hold of the string quartets.

[Dom]

And that novel sounds interesting. I'll have to read it. Thanks, DD, for pointing it out. "Reading book reviews so the rest of us don't have to" -- that should be your motto.

[David Duff]

The interesting thing about the String Quartets is that they more or less cover his working life. So the early ones are more straightforward, almost cheerful (yeeeees quite!), and then the middle ones become more anguished and fretful and then at the end they become more sombre but restful as though the state of high anxiety had passed.