Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5: a symphony of bravery, intrigue, and survival

00:00:00

John Banther: I'm John Banther, and this is Classical Breakdown. From WETA Classical in Washington, we are your guide to classical music. In this episode I'm joined by WETA Classical's Evan Keely, and we're exploring one of the most iconic and inspiring symphonies of the 20th century, Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5. We get into it all, from its turbulent origins in the face of authoritarianism and why Shostakovich was under threat, to how he got away with what he wrote, and what to listen for in the music. And we also get into the big question on the finale's tempo.

Okay. So, multiple people, like Teresa K and Paul F, have requested an episode on a symphony by Dmitri Shostakovich. So, buckle up and get ready for a ride. Because I know of no other symphony, Evan, than this one that has so much historical context surrounding it. In order to really dive into it I think we need to be aware of what was happening in Shostakovich's life before and during this.

00:01:05

Evan Keely: Yes, you're quite right, John. I think Dmitri Shostakovich is one of the most fascinating and one of the most complex figures. We're looking at 20th century music. Born in 1906, died in 1975. Such a hard and polarizing figure to understand in so many ways. So many comments, and so much commentary, and scholarship, and study about his life and his music. Very easy to paint a very inadequate portrait of this composer. Either as this unblemished hero of personal free expression in a tyrannical situation, or conversely as this soulless sellout. The reality is actually much more nuanced and complex. And it's a story certainly of great integrity and great courage, but also of complicated compromises.

00:01:55

John Banther: And we are going to do a future episode on his life. But to bring you up to speed on what was happening as he was preparing this symphony we'll go back to, for a second, his birth. He was born in 1906 on September 25th. And he started piano as a child. He excelled. He started composing. And he was in a conservatory when he was a teenager. That's a pretty typical experience for composers that we talk about. And then in the '20s, after Lenin dies in '24 and Stalin takes power, things change in music. Lenin was pretty hands- off, but Stalin starts to really get involved and forbids performances of music, really much of the music we know, in the canon. Except for a composer like Beethoven and other Russian composers.

This also meant, you can imagine, it was exciting for these young composers. They're 18, 19, 20, they are now tasked to fill the void, define the sound, define their future, and write music that would have broad appeal and appeal to what Stalin, for example, envisioned. So, he wrote a lot of popular things like songs, he wrote great ballet music that pushed the envelope but still really within Stalin's ideals. And he also wrote many film scores, Evan. He was a film buff from what I understand. And one of his big successes was the 1932 film Counterplan.

00:03:17

Evan Keely: Yes. And a lot of the music we hear in the concert hall today by Shostakovich comes from a number of the different film scores that he composed.

00:03:25

John Banther: And it was in this film I believe, there was a song that Stalin really loved. And apparently it was also a very popular song, and one that Stalin loved, and one that might've saved Shostakovich in the years to come, or even the decades to come, because of Stalin's view or favorability with that particular song. But Shostakovich also starts to see dark changes around him.

In the 1930s people are arrested, put in black automobiles, never seen again, just disappeared. People in his own family exiled. Some people are executed, some are imprisoned. And these aren't violent people necessarily. These are also countless artists, poets, writers, painters, musicians, actors, vanished. They're things taken. And what was defined as too degenerate or too decadent was always fluid, and it was always ill- defined. And I think that was part of the point, Evan, when you make something it's banned this week or it's not this month. You become scared to even program a particular composer.

00:04:27

Evan Keely: Right? The sense of control that seeps into everything. You don't even know what the missteps are. And you feel like that's deliberate.

00:04:35

John Banther: And the Symphony No. 5, that comes in 1937. But in 1934, Evan, that's when he saw a huge success. His Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk opera. That was a huge success, not just with the audience, but with critics too.

00:04:49

Evan Keely: Yes, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, big hit in 1934, although it did have a revised version later on. And, yes, a huge success for the composer with audiences and the state alike. And then all of a sudden things, as we were saying, John, the rules keep changing. And one day something is approved and then suddenly you're in big trouble with the same exact statement. And this is how the state controls people.

00:05:19

John Banther: Yeah. So, in 1936 there is a performance of this opera. And Shostakovich hears that Stalin is going to be there. And so, of course Stalin runs down there, he goes to the hall, he's at this concert, of course hoping to see his music accepted and praised. But after intermission Stalin was not even in his seat. And two days later in the state- run paper, Pravda, the opera and Shostakovich were very strongly denounced as having pre- socialist, petty bourgeois Russian mentality of the previous era. He was fully denounced. And he quickly went from being this cultural hero to being a serious target. There were times after this he was sleeping in the stairwell of his building. I mean, just imagine that, Evan, you don't want your family to see your arrest, potentially violent. Maybe you need to have a bag ready to run at a moment's notice.

00:06:15

Evan Keely: Right. And as you were saying, John, a lot of creative people in the Soviet Union at this time are dealing with this kind of fear.

00:06:23

John Banther: And think about just trying to live in that situation, hiding. You can't really plan or think for the future. And now you also have this art to worry about. So, his fourth symphony, he withdraws, he doesn't even perform it. It would be decades later before that would even get performed. He was too worried. And then he starts on this symphony, No. 5. And the question is, well, what does he do? Does he write really positive propaganda music that is going to please the authorities? Does he do something subversive that is so bad he's gone by nightfall, or something in between? I mean, Shostakovich also liked codes and ciphers in his music too. He'd put his name in sometimes.

00:07:02

Evan Keely: Yeah. The initials of his name, like Johann Sebastian Bach did, as a Shostakovich style. And as you were saying, John, he loves these codes and ciphers and these secrets that only the cognoscente will discover in his music. And is this a kind of subversion? Is it a kind of compromise? Is it both? These are among the puzzles that Shostakovich leaves for us to continue to explore.

00:07:28

John Banther: And these are things that conductors are still exploring. The tremendous conductor, Michael Tilson Thomas, one of the greatest in our nation's history, he's had a lot to say about this work. And here's a clip that may give us an idea. Or maybe not.

00:07:44

Michael Tilson Thomas: Witnesses and musicologists in and out of Russia are still very divided on this question, accusing one another of everything from misremembering to outright forgery. So, what is the truth? Whatever it is, it's in the score. But I have to tell you, even the score is not all that helpful since the symphony, although it's very emotional, has almost no indications in its score of expression, other than from time to time play expressively. It's as if the composer wanted nothing on the page that could reveal his thoughts other than the notes themselves.

00:08:26

John Banther: So, Evan, even Michael Tilson Thomas can't give us the clearest answer on that. This is something that will, I think, continue.

00:08:34

Evan Keely: And this is an indication of the complexity of what we're dealing with when we're looking at a work like Shostakovich's fifth symphony, or a lot of music by Dmitri Shostakovich. And so, it helps us to feel maybe some humility as we approach the altar of this powerful and mysterious piece that, yes, it's in fact very difficult to understand.

00:08:55

John Banther: Exactly. And we're going to hear from another conductor, Michelle Merrill, later on. Who was on one of the earlier episodes of Classical Breakdown. But with all of that, let's dive into the first symphony. How does he open this?

00:09:29

Evan Keely: This very imposing theme, this canonical imitation with this weird and kind of frightening thirty- second note pickup that adds... Immediately this launches us into this sense of, I don't know, being trapped, or being in the midst of a conflict. And these two themes side by side, this one very jagged with this weird thirty- second note pickup, ta-hee, ta- dum. And there's this roughness, there's this edginess to it. And then immediately after that this kind of simple stepwise flowing. Ya, da-da dee, da- da dee. So, we're already on uncertain territory from the very beginning of this piece.

00:10:14

John Banther: It is such a powerful opening. And after those two phrases that you just described, there are these three beats. Bum, bum, bum. And Michael Tilson Thomas described those as a dead end. We're constantly reaching dead ends in this movement. A very strong or imposing theme, a more subdued repetition or variation of it, and then another dead end. And we constantly hit that. Also, there's another symphony that has a very ta- da opening. Beethoven's ninth.

So, we have this juxtaposition here of these jagged dotted rhythms alongside those dee da-da dum that you described. And then from there we have the strings dominating the first movement in a way that feels like we are maybe wandering around. We're wandering around in silence. We're just people looking at each other unable to say something. And particularly, I love Shostakovich's use of low woodwinds particularly. You have to play them, I think, with a very inquisitor type fashion. This feels like an inquisitor or someone you cannot trust that is imposing themselves on you.

00:11:31

Evan Keely: Yeah. You have the contrabassoon in the score, and the clarinets often play low in their range, and there's this sense of this unsettling, untrustworthy sound. But as you said, John, the strings really dominate at the beginning of the symphony. It's really the string choir that's the central figure. And you have this side commentary from the woodwinds in a lot of these places.

00:11:54

John Banther: And you'll also hear that the theme you're listening to oftentimes becomes the accompaniment to the next theme. So, I almost hear it like in... If you go to ballet and you see they have the screens that have different sets on them. And you can see behind them, they'll make a depth effect, if that makes sense. And I feel like I'm looking at these things like that. Or hearing them that way.

00:12:17

Evan Keely: There's a layering of sound in this symphony that's really compelling.

00:12:21

John Banther: And part of the anxiety that's built up in the strings is also because of this recording. They do not let up. They keep the energy going all the way to the ends of the notes. That's what I think is so important. A lot of times there's a lot of lift at the ends of notes. And for myself personally, I don't feel like that's what we need to have here.

00:12:41

Evan Keely: Yeah, I agree, John. Kirill Kondrashin, this 1967 recording with the Moscow Philharmonic, the phrasing is one of the things that makes this such a compelling and powerful performance. The really sense of completion of the phrases. There's a fullness of the sound. It isn't overly heavy- handed or pedantic, but there's a sense of fullness that really adds depth to your appreciation of the piece.

00:13:08

John Banther: So, this is 1967, that recording, which is after Stalin's death. And you'll also hear some technical issues with the tape, as you might be hearing in some of the examples. But the performance is so powerful. This is one of the most powerful performances I know of it. And I'll put a link to the playlist on the show notes page. And it says things in a way that I think other recordings don't quite get there. But it is also a little rough around the edges.

00:13:35

Evan Keely: Yeah. 1967, of course, when this recording was made is also an interesting time in Soviet history. It's the end of the Khrushchev era and the beginning of the Brezhnev era. And that whole time of reevaluating the whole Stalin period and how Stalin was rejected in that phase, and this country's trying to find a new direction. I don't know the extent to which that plays into this performance, but it's an interesting thing to think about.

00:14:02

John Banther: I think so too. There is something very personal about this, and from other Russian musicians you hear from who were alive and performing at this time. Amidst all of this we get this sudden sunshine in the music. And we also have an accompanying rhythm with it. Bum, bum, bum. One, two, three. One, two, three. Like those dead end notes, but now a little bit transformed for this accompaniment.

00:14:35

Evan Keely: And this is where we go into a new tempo. And in the middle of a measure actually. So, we're starting a new section of the symphony. There's this almost Lutheran chorale prelude kind of thing with this long notes in this high melody with this dum, dum dum dum, dum dum dum accompaniment that you were mentioning, John. And it gives us this momentary illusion that what came before, the slower section, was an intro and now we're in the sonata- allegro. But that's not really what Shostakovich is doing here. And we have that long melody there, which is a new theme, and yet the themes from the first part of the movement come back and they're all woven together. So, there isn't an introduction and then a main exposition in this movement. Not in a clear cut kind of way, I don't think.

00:15:23

John Banther: Because when I listen to this, it does feel like we enter into new areas or open doors before we realize we're in a new place. And you feel like, well, there's something unsettling close by, but there is this momentary rest. Now, part of the writing that I think adds to the drama of the symphony is the high register writing that he writes. We've talked about it with Tchaikovsky particularly, who does great contrast of high and low. And with Shostakovich writing high in this viola section, it makes it feel more anxious and uneasy than it would if it was just a major third down.

00:16:03

Evan Keely: Yeah. Or why not give that high writing to the violins, it's more in their range. You see the same thing with the cello section. They often play very high in the tessitura of that range. And it creates that almost strained quality that, I don't know, there's a tension in that sound. Violas playing high versus violins playing the same pitches has a very different kind of sound. Shostakovich really knows how to play upon those colors.

00:16:39

John Banther: And I really meant it when I said it feels like you are pushed into something new before you quite realize what it is. We go to this middle development section in a very creepy way. Because we have almost the three note dead end motif, da dee dum, da dee dum, brought in a way, and the piano comes in. It is terrifying. This is so unsettling.

00:17:01

Evan Keely: Dum dum dum. Yes. Yes.

00:17:04

John Banther: It feels like there is... It's almost as if something has attached itself to you and you can't get away from it.

00:17:09

Evan Keely: I really feel the same way. And Russian composers of this era are so good at this. This is such a Shostakovich- ish sound. Prokofiev has a similar kind of a sound quality in some of his music. There's something about this, this 1930s, 1940s Soviet era, Russian musical mindset, that can create that sense of claustrophobia.

00:17:32

John Banther: Part of it for me is that they include the piano in symphonies, and especially in very creative ways, especially with, I think, articulation. They combine articulation of the piano with other instruments. Even some of the low instruments.

00:17:46

Evan Keely: Yes.

00:17:46

John Banther: Prokofiev does that with tuba and piano, but this is just so terrifying. And it starts to speed up. And I get a feeling that this develops faster than we want or than we realize, and the anxiety has just over overcome us. And it feels like we are in a situation where we can no longer think but merely react to what's happening around us.

00:18:08

Evan Keely: It's not even clear to me where the development section actually starts. And I think that ambiguity, like I said, this is not your 18th century sonata- allegro form. It kind of is, it plays upon that, and yet it kind of distorts it like a fun house mirror. So, we're sort of like, " Okay, this is a first movement of the symphony. I think I can make sense of this." And yet we feel like we're always a little bit off balance. Like Shostakovich is just two steps ahead of us. Speaking a new musical language but also referring to an old one that we kind of know and we're hearing it underwater. So, there's a sense of confusion that really makes you want to listen even more intently.

00:18:49

John Banther: There is an instrument that Shostakovich uses quite often in his music, and to great effect, and that is the snare drum. He brings the snare in eight or so minutes into the music. It is a ruthless march. The trumpets are screaming, they're yelling orders behind you. And then this even speeds up. And the low brass come in with just an existential repeat of the original theme. Which then gets brought into strings. And the xylophone, again, with articulation, like how I think about the piano, is just pounding away.

00:19:21

Evan Keely: Yes. And that's another very Shostakovichian sound to my ears. That xylophone doubling the other instruments in that way. That just sounds like... And it's easy for that to be this ham- fisted cliche, but Shostakovich maintains a level of, I don't know if it's an ironic distance or there's the sense of that secret code we were talking about. The way he uses these ambiguous ways of expressing himself. Michael Tilson Thomas says, " The score doesn't tell us what his feelings are." And we hear this xylophone pounding away. What is that? Is it a joke? Is it terror? Is it laughter? Is it both? There's a sense we're... There's a message there that we are supposed to decipher and we don't have the code to break.

00:20:08

John Banther: Well, the terror does come not too long after this. I mean, it feels beyond existential and terrifying. And it's what I mean particularly about this performance. And remember, Shostakovich is supposed to be redeeming himself right now. If I was at the premiere, if I heard, oh, Shostakovich, new symphony, I'm going down there. If I was sitting there and then I heard this, and if I was with somebody, I might whisper, " I'll go get the car. I'm out of here."

It's like, I don't know how many guards it's going to take, but I know how many there are here. And I don't want to be around Shostakovich when this symphony is over. I don't even know what they're thinking as they're hearing this because it goes to this massive monophonic line is how I described it with the strings playing all in unison, basically together. Which sounds like this is something horrifying against the state, or perhaps it can be interpreted as the strength of the Soviet people.

00:21:06

Evan Keely: Yes. Yes. This is one of the fascinating things about this piece, John, when is he being critical and when is he applauding? And I think he doesn't want us to know. I think to save his own skin he didn't want anyone to know. Are we even asking the wrong question in asking that? And yet I can't help but wonder it.

00:21:26

John Banther: Just the question itself I think says a lot as we're exploring the music. And another beautiful moment is nearby. And he does it with the going from minor to major with the winds, the flute, and then the horn imitation. This is a beautiful moment that I really hear a lot from Beethoven often, especially with the oboe leading the orchestra from minor to major. We suddenly feel safe all of a sudden.

00:21:54

Evan Keely: Yeah. And that's preceded by these dead- end notes that you were saying, that three- note motif there. And there's this almost vulgarity that we hear in Shostakovich's music and a lot of his pieces. But I find even in Shostakovich's best music, and the fifth symphony is certainly among his greatest works, even ugliness is beautiful. There's this sense of chaos and terror and absurdity, and in the midst of all that there's a sense of striving, there's a sense of nobility. Even when it's sarcastic there's a sense like... We don't lose the sense that life still has meaning. And then we have these beautiful moments like you were just describing. This moment where we're coming back to a place of rest, a place of tranquility. And we're reminded that there's still beauty in the world.

00:22:40

John Banther: And the way the movement ends is, I think, really what you're describing. It's, is this haunting or is this beautiful? What is this? Because we have these light ta- dum rhythms coming back in, nice flute and violin solo that takes us to the end. And then the ascending lines in the celesta, another keyboard instrument. This feels so, is this ugly or beautiful, or is it all at the same time?

00:23:05

Evan Keely: Yes. We think of Tchaikovsky with this instrument. Actually, I had to look this up. The celesta wasn't invented until 1886. Tchaikovsky was one of the first composers to use it in an orchestral score. We all think of the Sugar Plum Fairy and The Nutcracker, but we are far away from the sweet innocence of the Sugar Plum Fairy in this Shostakovich symphony.

00:23:33

John Banther: And before we get to the next movement, Evan, I just wanted to tell a quick story about my own experience that paints to what was happening at this time. When I was in high school, in youth orchestra, we had a weekend workshop thing with conductor Stefan Sanderling, who was music director of the Florida Orchestra at the time. Stefan Sanderling is the son of Kurt Sanderling, the famous conductor that was very close with Shostakovich. And the conductor that I was working with, Stefan, grew up in this.

And he told stories. One was he remembered Shostakovich would come over regularly. And what they would do is they would go into the main room of how all these places were built, the main room, the phone would be taken off the hook, the radio would be turned on as high as possible. They said you couldn't even hear anything it's just blasting music. The phone off the hook. And they sat close to each other and spoke very softly. Like whispering.

00:24:32

Evan Keely: It's like a spy movie. And yet, this is real life. This is history.

00:24:36

John Banther: Yes. There is a real fear of what you say and how it's interpreted that's happening at this time. So, it was a very, very real thing that was all- encompassing for Shostakovich.

00:24:49

Evan Keely: Yeah. There's a cultural paranoia in this whole era of Soviet history. And there's also the reality that it isn't paranoia when in fact your life is in danger.

00:24:59

John Banther: That's true.

00:25:00

Evan Keely: Which is a reality that a composer like Shostakovich is dealing with every day. And it's of course not just him, it's people that he knows, it's friends of his, it's musicians that he's known his whole life. Or he reads about things, or he hears about things that are whispered on the street. It's this literal state of constant terror.

00:25:23

John Banther: Now, the second movement is a scherzo. And you might be forgiven, actually, you would be forgiven if you thought this was the opening to a scherzo by Gustav Mahler. And a lot of recordings do feel like they lean in that direction. Again, not pushing through the ends of notes but really landing and lifting. I think Kondrashin has nailed this feeling and attitude. It feels like a fun amusement park ride, well, fun in quotes, that you can't get off. It sounds sinister.

00:25:52

Evan Keely: Yeah. Am I having fun or am I terrified, or is it both? And I agree with you on Kondrashin's interpretation. It's easy for this to have a little bit too much of a Viennese lilt to it that maybe that's what Shostakovich had in mind. It sounds more Russian in this recording. And I can't help but feel like that's somehow, quote unquote, more correct. Even though that's more a feeling than an intellectual conviction on my part. I do really like this performance though.

00:26:18

John Banther: No, I agree with you. And I think a part of the reason why it works to do it in more of that Russian style is that the trills that he uses, which Mahler used a ton of trills of course too, don't land on the note but rather push a little bit. And they're not quite as long, they have several other notes they need to get to introduce the next bit. Instead of more of this lilting kind of waltz. It sounds kind of nervous.

00:26:43

Evan Keely: Yeah. And there's something, again, this is more of a feeling than an intellectual sense on my part, but there's something somehow very Russian and not so Germanic, not so Viennese about this scherzo. I'm not sure why. There's that kind of mechanized sound that's part of the music of this era. Maybe Shostakovich maybe has some more of an ironic detachment than the very self- conscious Gustav Mahler. I don't know. Maybe he's more self- effacing in this music. I'm not really sure.

00:27:13

John Banther: There's two things that I especially love about this movement. I love the runs, how he's ripping from one low note to a higher note. It just pounds through the texture. And especially when they push all the way from the first note to the last. The second thing I especially love is how Shostakovich turns the entire orchestra into one instrument. You have this fast kind of chaotic ripping motion, and then this huge swell and decrescendo that takes a tremendous amount of control. And what I love is this is just art because you have 100 people on stage to have to be completely locked in to do this together.

00:27:57

Evan Keely: Yes. Very, very precise. Not a lot of room for error.

00:28:01

John Banther: No.

00:28:01

Evan Keely: And I think what I love about this movement, John, is that it's such a strong rhythmic contrast from the first movement. First movement we were talking about the thirty- second note pickup, and there's these contrasting rhythmic things. Here we have eighth notes and quarter notes for the most part. Dum, da da da da dum, da da da da dum. The rhythms are quite simple. It's the way he fills in the chord structures and the melodic direction. Like you said, there's those long stretches going from low to high very quickly in this very unsettling way. But the rhythm has that, again, that mechanistic, that almost clockwork kind of feel. And yet it never becomes pedantic or cold. Like you were saying, John, there's a sort of amusement park ride that's fun, but also maybe a little too scary. And I think part of what drives that is that very straightforward rhythmic language that he uses in this movement. And it's very different from the first movement.

00:28:58

John Banther: And it's much shorter too. It's like five minutes long. And this is usually the kind of palette cleanser we expect before the finale to a symphony, not necessarily the second movement of a symphony. Especially after that haunting end of the first movement.

00:29:15

Evan Keely: And I think one of the things that makes Shostakovich such a fascinating and unsettling composer to listen to is there's that sense of absurdity. That he's very aware of the absurdity of life. And I really hear that in this second movement. Like you were saying, the scary ride, it's fun but it's scary. We're not sure if we're more scared than we are amused. And maybe that's the whole point. And there's that just sense of that ironic detachment. And yet we're not divorced emotionally from the horror, but we're also not defeated by it. So, there's this sense of just this preposterousness of life that's very present in this particular movement, I think. And yet it doesn't descend into a pointless nihilistic cynicism or sarcasm.

00:30:11

John Banther: And after we've heard this so far, just these two movements, you might wonder, well, how was the premiere? What was it like? I mean, I can't imagine what it would be like to be at the premiere of this symphony. But that happened on November 21st in 1937 with the Leningrad Phil and conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky. And I guess, Evan, everyone loved this at the premiere. Like intensely so.

00:30:34

Evan Keely: Yes. A huge triumph for Shostakovich.

00:30:36

John Banther: Like a 30- minute standing ovation. The conductor held a score over his head, much to the perhaps embarrassment to the authorities, in the performance. But it was universally loved by the audience, by the critics. But that also might give the state some pause, right? Like, wait, why does everyone love this so much?

00:30:54

Evan Keely: Yeah. This guy's really popular. That maybe is not something we can control. Mm.

00:31:01

John Banther: Right. So, there is the question of, well, how do they interpret this? They, I think, initially didn't really say much. There were a couple of authorities that were upset and they said at a second performance that it was fans placed in the audience by Shostakovich and people to clap and do all this showboating for the symphony. But it's so popular, the state afterwards says pretty quickly, " Well, he did exactly what we asked. He's redeemed himself. He is now fine."

00:31:30

Evan Keely: He's now a good Soviet socialist and he's toeing the party line just like we said he would. And thank you, Dmitri, well done.

00:31:37

John Banther: Yeah. Control of the arts is absolutely textbook and authoritarian and fascistic regimes. It's not so much that, oh, they just love opera and they want to preserve bel canto singing. No, they want control over the message. So, even if it's something like this with Shostakovich that seems a bit subversive, they can go ahead and say, " Oh, no, he's redeemed himself. He's done exactly what we want." Because the fear is that there is an idea, which happened with that book, The Master and Margarita, people read and it goes viral. People are quoting it in the streets, for example. And you don't want people whistling tunes in the street that might have a more subversive connotation.

00:32:22

Evan Keely: You were saying, John, I don't know of another symphony that has this much historical context surrounding it. I think you're absolutely right about that. I think that what we both mean by that is the historical context is so complex, so just mind mind- bogglingly complex. And one can certainly appreciate the symphony without knowing that. If you didn't know any history and just heard this piece you'd probably find it quite thrilling and powerful. But the history is relevant in a way that's more true for this piece than for so many other creative works we could think of.

This symphony isn't just a response to history, this symphony is history in and of itself. And we're all less removed from that history than we are from say, I don't know, we talk about Vivaldi, for instance. This year is the 300th anniversary of The Four Seasons being published. But the USSR existed in living memory. And you were talking about a conductor that you met in high school. His father knew Shostakovich. He came over to his house. I mean, this is a living memory. And I can't deny, I'm listening to this piece as an American, I grew up a Gen Xer, I grew up in Reagan's America, and The Day After, and Red Dawn, and all that kind of stuff. So, I can't deny that's coloring my perception of things. My Ukrainian grandfather at the Thanksgiving table screaming about how terrible Stalin was. And I don't disagree with that. But it's also true the kinds of challenges Shostakovich faced are all too relevant for today's world.

00:33:54

John Banther: Yeah.

00:33:54

Evan Keely: Look at what's happening in the world, in Eastern Europe right now, these former Soviet Bloc countries. And people are protesting in the streets. Stalin's long dead, but the kind of evil that he represents unfortunately is not dead. It's very much still with us. So, there's history in this symphony. And the lessons of history are in this symphony. And I find it impossible to believe that Shostakovich didn't want us to think about both history and his own personal experience as we're listening to the fifth symphony.

00:34:24

John Banther: And that's worth repeating. That this symphony, it's not just a response to history or something, it is history in and of itself. Now, if Shostakovich was already being daring with his first movement, splitting it up with that second movement, he could have really gotten in trouble for this third movement largo. Considered by many, myself included, perhaps the most bold and most in- your- face when it comes to what's happening in the moment. This has a very different kind of sound. The common word that people use is requiem. This feels like a requiem. As the purge was happening in these years that he was writing. And it brought people to tears. Which was also something not acceptable to really display in public as well.

00:35:14

Evan Keely: Well, again, if people are overcome with emotion and the state can't control those emotions, you have a real problem.

00:35:22

John Banther: And the opening, or the movement in general, it has a very rich string sound. And I guess that's because it's divided into parts that are almost little choruses.

00:35:47

Evan Keely: Yeah. Three violins, two violas, and two cellos, plus the double basses. So, you have eight parts, eight string parts. And the strings, again, as in the first movement, at the beginning of the third movement really dominate. It's really about the strings and they're the ones telling the story.

00:36:04

John Banther: There are some beautiful solos you'll find in this movement. Some of them do feel like they are lines mourning lost Russians, or people lost during this purge. And sometimes it's like they're saying something a little bit different each time. And this is also maybe a not too veiled reference to orthodox liturgy, which still would've been pretty familiar to listeners at the time, an atheistic regime. But the liturgy of the-

00:36:38

Evan Keely: The memory of that sound is still part of the Russian culture, very much so.

00:36:43

John Banther: And we feel very, still, very solemn, kind of religioso, I think, in the first several minutes of this one.

00:36:51

Evan Keely: Yes. Yes. Also, the use of silences, Shostakovich is a master of this. We were talking about the celesta earlier, or the piano, coming in after these long silences, these instruments are mute for long stretches. And here, in this movement, you have this long statement by the strings, and then toward the very end of a certain section the harp suddenly comes in. And the harp has been silent for a long time. And then its entrance really makes us pay attention. Here's a new voice. And yet it blends in so beautifully. The subtlety of that writing is so effective.

00:37:29

John Banther: The silences that he uses, Evan, you're exactly right. And also how the harp enters, also feels Mahler- like. I've not thought of Mahler so much with Shostakovich in my life since I have in the last couple of weeks with this. But you also get a sense of that here. And like I said, some solos for the winds. We have a beautiful plaintive one for the oboe, something similar for the clarinet. And it's just... It feels like these are different either descriptions of people or moments in Shostakovich's life, perhaps when he was in that stairwell.

00:38:03

Evan Keely: And then about four minutes into the piece the entire orchestra has a single beat of rest. And there's something about that that's almost like a collective gasp. There's this moment where they all just have to stop and say, ugh, there's this moment of all this exhaustion. And then we go back to that low string writing, which again has that Russian Orthodox chant kind of quality to it.

00:38:34

John Banther: The inquisitor of the low woodwinds I think is absent. We get a great moment for winds in here that is quite low. Almost sounds like a harmonium, some kind of organ or reed instrument that you would have in your room. So, for the first half of this movement, Evan, we are not quite wandering around, but we are ensconced in this sound and this material, this kind of orthodox type of sound. And then we suddenly build up to a huge terrifying sound, right? This feels like a force, a wall you cannot reckon with. And the xylophone, how it's punching out with these tremolo strings, and it gets higher and higher and higher.

00:39:29

Evan Keely: Yeah. And again, that xylophone is so Shostakovichy in that sound quality. And there's a tremolo in the piano as well that just adds that incredible brilliance to the tone quality.

00:39:47

John Banther: And then it just collapses. And then lower strings come in with a repeated iteration of that unbelievably anxious line. I mean, it feels like you're just in a ball on the floor and these huge beats, or these huge downbeats in the low strings too on beat one, it turns us into a heavy procession. Like we are carrying the weight of the world on us just trying to take steps forward.

00:40:16

Evan Keely: Yeah. And again, the cellos playing high in their range, like violas, that's kind of it's straining like a choked lament.

00:40:23

John Banther: Mm- hmm. I wonder what people were, perhaps if Shostakovich was looking around, maybe surreptitiously around the hall, what's their reaction? What's going on? I also get a sense that if it was so out of pocket, the orchestra would not want to play it themselves. I mean, if it was so crazy. But that's what I think is also the plausible deniability or the ambiguity of this, just kind of falls into exhaustion. It sounds like it just gradually descends, gradually goes away. Kind of like a fading sunset.

00:40:57

Evan Keely: Yeah. The sunset, the sense of loss, the sense of, well, there goes another day, it's gone forever. And the sense of futility maybe. A thing that's gone that can never be retrieved. And then we have this celesta again, maybe church bells like a requiem tolling for the dead. I'm not sure. And then at the very end we have this Picardi third, this major chord at the very end. Like, what? I don't even know what to make of that. And yet it's one of those moments in Shostakovich, it's so surprising, it's so odd, it's so weird. And then it happens. And then you think to yourself, nothing else could have happened. That was the right and only thing that could have happened.

00:41:38

John Banther: Yeah. I mean, I was just thinking, I don't know who actually Picardi was, whoever that person was. But, yeah, that's when you have something in minor and then you raise a third for that last chord and you get this major chord. And especially how he creeps in with it too. It slowly gets in and then it crescendos and decrescendos. And you're right, it's like the only thing that could happen before what comes next. The finale. So, Shostakovich knew that he had to deliver. And this is a finale opening like none other.

Like I said, this is an opening like none other. The sound, and the attitude and how this settles into the groove, and the high strings, they just take off. It's another reason, again, I love this recording. Because Kondrashin, maybe again it's my imagination, but when I'm hearing him conduct, and I only know him really with some of these works, he feels like a Carlos Kleiber to me, or a Mariss Jansons, in that the tempos, how he shapes them and phrases them with the orchestra feels extremely natural and organic compared to some others which are more mechanized.

00:43:15

Evan Keely: It's really easy for a passage like this with this very marcato brass and percussion to just be these pedantic, heavily beating notes. And what we have in this performance is a real sense of phrase. There's actually this very long phrase at the beginning of this very exciting, very dramatic, very dynamic finale. And yet there's this breadth to it that Kondrashin's performance and the orchestra really brings out here that I think is so effective.

00:43:46

John Banther: And Shostakovich is pretty effective with the ambiguity that he uses. Because you're hearing this, and is this fear, or no, is this strength? Is this the terror of people against a tyrant, or no, this is us as a society being super strong, nothing is wrong, everything is great?

00:44:05

Evan Keely: Is this a victory lap or is this the defiance of the people rising up against Stalin? What's happening here? There is definitely an unanswered set of questions.

00:44:20

John Banther: I mean, it gets pretty frantic. The xylophone, as we mentioned, comes in. The trumpet soars over high strings in this very intense moment. I remember how Chris Gekker described this kind of playing in that trumpet episode. I mean, this is almost dangerous physically. And with this xylophone pounding away it sounds like we are headed for abject terror, we are headed for the final scene.

00:44:47

Evan Keely: This catastrophe is just about to unfold, yes.

00:44:50

John Banther: But instead we get triumph.

00:44:54

Evan Keely: Yes.

00:44:55

John Banther: Kondrashin keeps the tempo moving pretty quickly, because this does collapse a moment later. But it feels like wonderful propaganda for the state.

00:45:04

Evan Keely: Well, and again, is it heroic or is it just getting frantic? What's happening here? And I think one of the great things about this performance is it really leaves us in that ambiguous place. It doesn't answer the question for us.

00:45:19

John Banther: And some of these things that happen are pretty quick. Because this moment collapses, we get another moment of the massive low and other brass is pounding away. But this suddenly fades into the background and we get this more chorale, lyrical type moments. There's this constant tension release that he's building. Another Mahler- esque thing, to wear out Mahler's name, is how he introduces, Shostakovich that is, this oscillating ostinato pattern in the strings that slowly emerges.

Very much reminds me of the first symphony by Mahler. Which is, well, very naturalistic in nature, in its inspiration, the earth and everything. But this starts what feels like a very long road ahead. We have a long journey ahead of us still. Then we get to a moment, Evan, where, I think we've heard it in plenty of Tchaikovsky's symphonies, for example, where there's this tune, even if it's in minor, this maybe march, it comes back bigger and often happier, more triumphant. But now it's soft, it's slow. Sounds like a dirge.

00:47:08

Evan Keely: Yeah. Sort of this distant approach of something. Again, is it victory or is it defeat?

00:47:14

John Banther: This really gets quite terrifying. It feels like we are trying to escape something. And remember, Shostakovich is redeeming himself here with this music. We're in D minor and it is punishing, it is getting higher, it is getting more tense with these pounding eighth notes. And then it feels like we just throw our corpse over the line into D major, just barely making it through.

00:47:39

Evan Keely: And victory has been achieved at last. Or is it? Or is it a Pyrrhic victory? Have we sacrificed too much? Another victory like this and I'll be vanquished at last. It's not really clear.

00:48:08

John Banther: And again, I love this recording because of how Kondrashin shapes the moment when this explodes into D major. It's a little unclear. Then when it settles into these A's that you're hearing that are pounding out in the strings, and also xylophone and piano, that really sets up the moment for the following entrance. Which feels like a big, slow fanfare. We have these pounding out of the timpani and bass drum, which feels like the downbeats, and it sounds like this big fanfare. And then we get to these chords which are alternating between major and minor. Is this victory? Is it defeat? Is it the Pyrrhic victory like you said? What's happening here? And then we get this big completion. And you can read this in a couple of ways. Is this triumph, or is this something else?

00:49:03

Evan Keely: And again, kudos to Kirill Kondrashin, a really great interpreter of Shostakovich. And the Moscow Philharmonic plays so magnificently. Even in this recording with its technical limitations. And the pacing, the phrasing, is so powerful. And this ending with a sense of triumph, also a sense of fatigue maybe, but that's not complete exhaustion. There's still energy to the very end. There's still power, there's still strength, there's still courage. And the ambiguity, again, we're not given the answer by this performance. There's so many questions about this symphony. And we're just left with deeper questions. That's one of the things I appreciate about this performance and about this score is it doesn't tell you what it's trying to say. It leaves you wondering and you bring your own experience and your own feeling to it in a way that's so compelling.

00:50:12

John Banther: And one of the biggest questions of the entire work, that continues today and will continue as long as we're still playing music, is that tempo. What is happening here at the end? Why does this sound so slow? Because, for example, you can play it pretty quick. Like Bernstein, we hear this for example. That is more than twice as fast. And when Shostakovich heard it, he was like, " Oh, I love it. Sounds great." Which I also love because that's also part of art. Maybe Shostakovich did love it, maybe he didn't at all. But he just... That's great, perfect.

00:50:58

Evan Keely: Yeah. Well, again, that sense of the absurdity of life that's so inherent to Shostakovich's music and his whole outlook. Bernstein with literally twice as fast tempo. And Shostakovich, " Yeah, sounds good." Like, wow. Okay. Why does he say that? Is he just being polite? Is he really agreed? Does he think, gosh, maybe that's what I should have done? Oh, well, move on to the next symphony. I don't know. And again, we don't know. It just leaves us with questions.

00:51:23

John Banther: Yeah. No other symphony I think has this kind of big tempo question ending, especially from the 20th century. And part of this is what he actually writes into the score. The moment where it slows down, when you get into D major, it says eighth note equals 188. Which for a musician looking at this music, it does look a little odd.

00:51:44

Evan Keely: It's weird.

00:51:45

John Banther: You would expect to see maybe quarter note equals 94. Because most of the time tempos are noted in quarter notes. Quarter note equals 60, or 120, or whatever. But other times it's a half note. Or sometimes it's an eighth note. When it's an eighth note, that usually means that this is slower. We're subdividing the beats as we're playing this. And that usually lends to a playing style which is a bit more heavier as opposed to a clip like moving forward. And this is opposite of what he does in the first movement. So, this does look strange. It does look odd in the score. And it does perhaps make one think, well, was that a mistake? Is it quarter note equals 188? There've been these kinds of questions. And w e get these kinds of performances.

00:52:35

Evan Keely: And 188 is weirdly fast. I wonder if I could do this if we... Here's my metronome. That's 188.

00:52:43

John Banther: Right.

00:52:44

Evan Keely: It's just really... How do you even find your, as a performer, how do you find your tempo? Wow. Okay. Okay, where's my beat? It's really fast. There's a kind of frantic, weird... Why isn't it 94? That would be much more sensible in terms of seeing a larger beat. But I'm just left feeling really confused by that.

00:53:05

John Banther: We're all confused. As Michael Tilson Thomas said, the score isn't even all that helpful. And I personally love that we get these things. I also reached out to Michelle Merrill, who is a conductor. She was on one of our first episodes, number 10, on what does a conductor do? And I asked her, " What are your thoughts when you are preparing this work?" I wanted her to tell me, what do you do? What's the ending? What do you do?

But she wrote back and she said, " The tempo of the last movement is always the big conductor question. Did Shostakovich mean for it to be a rejoicing finale or a snarky sentiment veiled in majesty? With Shostakovich I always go with the latter. You get that hint with the inscription he put when he released the fifth. 'A Soviet artist's reply to just criticism.' The fact that he included just in there tips went off to the fact that he is doing this to appease his oppressors. I also had the privilege back in 2014 to conduct Shostakovich's fourth symphony, which was pulled from performance when the criticism began. And it was not performed for another 30 years. The fourth symphony will break you. It to me is a sonic picture of what it was like to live in Soviet Russia during that time period."

Now, this is where it gets even more interesting, I think. She writes, " And then what actually strikes me most about the final movement is not necessarily the tempo question of the ending march, but rather the music that is quoted in the slow music directly before this ending. It actually comes from a song Shostakovich wrote, called Rebirth. Which was a hidden composition Shostakovich wrote as his first reaction to the news in that newspaper Pravda," that we read earlier. And Evan, I'll read a little bit of the text of this song because I think it tells us something.

" An artist- barbarian, with his lazy brush, blackens the painting of a genius. And senselessly he covers it with his own illegitimate drawing. But with the passing years, the alien colors fall off like threadbare scales. The creation of the genius emerges before us in its former beauty." And that's just a little bit of the text. We'll put a link to the poem elsewhere. But that is quite something, isn't it, here?

00:55:24

Evan Keely: So, this poem, Rebirth, that Shostakovich set to music probably around the same time he was writing the fifth symphony, is a poem by Alexander Pushkin. Who is of course a very interesting figure to explore as we're looking at Soviet history. 1937, the year this symphony was written and first performed, was also the centennial year of Pushkin's death. And there were many celebrations of this in Soviet Russia. Pushkin, arguably the single most important figure in Russian literature, and a hugely significant figure in world literature.

So, there's this great Russian pride in him. Justifiably. On the other hand, Pushkin was an aristocrat. He was this very important figure in pre- revolutionary Russia. He represents that whole world of the Russian Empire and the House of Romanov and so forth. The original and innocent times. Maybe in this poem, I'm not sure. So, there's this ambivalence about Pushkin in 1937 in the atmosphere in which Shostakovich is writing the symphony. He writes a song that is a setting of a poem by Pushkin around the time he's writing the symphony. He quotes that music from that song in this symphony. What's he trying to say? Is Shostakovich himself this figure like Pushkin? There's this crazy love- hate relationship that the society has with him. He's a hero, but he's also a villain. We love him, we hate him, we revere him, we want nothing to do with him.

The Soviets can't figure out what to do with Shostakovich any more than they can figure out what to do with Pushkin. What do they do with this beauty? What do they do with this genius? What do they do with this great art? Do they say, oh, look at us, we're the greatest society in the world. Look at these geniuses that we've created. Oh, look at us, we don't like that because that subversive thing was against the thing we say we believe in, but we're not sure if we believe in it or not because we're kind of hypocrites. Oh, well, shut up or we'll shoot you.

I mean, I'm oversimplifying a bit, but there's also this sense of lunacy that a genius like Shostakovich has to live with. And he expresses his defiance of that with his, quote unquote, response to just criticism. And yet he puts in this dig where he's quoting him himself in a way that the audience is not going to, like, oh, yeah, that's Shostakovich, that's that song he wrote on that Pushkin poem. Maybe some people might've known about that, but I think for the most part that's very much flying under the radar.

00:57:48

John Banther: Well, that song, I believe that's one that he kept hidden for a while. That did not come out. So, that's something that we have context for that even earlier people may have not had.

00:57:58

Evan Keely: Yeah.

00:57:59

John Banther: I mean, this is really a.. It's a tremendous work. There's a lot you can read about this. We've really tried to dig into some of the music we find compelling and perhaps what was going on with Shostakovich at this time. Last bit here from Michelle Merrill that continues from the song. She says, " So, to me, that section is the most poignant part of the entire symphony, and I intentionally take that section a little slower than marked in some scores. It's marked at half note equals 80. I'll go around 50 to 60 because of the weight of those words. It's marked half note equals 80, but I'll go around 50 to 60 around the original tempo of the original song. For me, if that part is set in such a poignant way, the following finale has even more magnitude." I love that, Evan. I would not have known this, or really understood this, unless we heard from Michelle on this point.

00:58:54

Evan Keely: Well, definitely I want to encourage our listeners to go back to episode 10 from season one of Classical Breakdown. What does a conductor do? That's a really great conversation the two of you had. And she's so insightful here about Shostakovich.

00:59:07

John Banther: So, that is Shostakovich's fifth symphony. Thank you so much, Evan. I feel like I'm going to be listening to more recordings of this for I think the next few months.

00:59:17

Evan Keely: I feel the same way, John. Thank you so much. And again, the unanswerable questions of this symphony are part of what makes it so irresistible.

00:59:29

John Banther: Thanks for listening to Classical Breakdown, your guide to classical music. For more information on this episode, visit the show notes page at classicalbreakdown. org. You can send me comments and episode ideas to classicalbreakdown@ weta. org. And if you enjoyed this episode, leave a review in your podcast app. I'm John Banther, thanks for listening to Classical Breakdown from WETA Classical.