{ program notes affair.“ He asked me to turn the pages for him; but— heaven help me!— that was easier said then done. I saw almost nothing but empty leaves; at the most on one page or the other a few Egyptian hieroglyphs wholly unintelligible to me scribbled down to serve as clues for him; for he played nearly all of the solo part from memory since, as was so often the case, he had not had time to put it all on paper.”
First Movement: The bold C-minor principal theme is stated immediately by the strings. It is a quintessential Beethoven theme, clear and simple in outline, strongly rhythmic, ideal for later development and so instantly memorable that we will be able to follow its transformations easily as this sonata-form movement unfolds. Beethoven also uses its short-long rhythmic tail later in his development and as an accompanimental figure throughout this lengthy movement. In fact, the opening orchestral exposition is so long that for a time it appears that Beethoven has forgotten all about the soloist. As though he were launching the first movement of a symphony, he modulates to E-flat Major for a warm, lyrical second theme in violins and flutes, and even shows signs of wanting to get down to the business of developing his material. But suddenly he remembers the waiting pianist and returns to C minor.
Beethoven was interested in the sense of adventure and tension created by juxtaposing very distant keys.
After this protracted introduction, the soloist establishes himself very strongly with three dramatic scales followed by a heroic declamation of the principal theme in double-fisted octaves. Later, those bold scales also signal the beginning of the development section. In the closing coda, Beethoven adds a mysterious duet between the soloist and timpanist on the short-long rhythm.
The elegiac slow movement provides maximum contrast in both mood and tonality. Beethoven was interested in the sense of adventure and tension created by juxtaposing very distant keys: this Largo movement is in E Major, a key far from the opening C minor. On this languid pulse, the soloist spins a long, graceful melody that presages the Romantic language of composers far in the future: Schumann and even Chopin. A middle section features a melancholy dialogue between solo flute and bassoon.
The rondo finale returns to C minor, but there is no minor-mode pathos in this playful, witty movement. The central episode features a charming theme for clarinet and bassoon. In the Presto coda, now in brightest C Major, all the heroism of the first movement, the reflective melancholy of the second is swept away in a comic-opera finish.
Instrumentation: Two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani and strings.
Symphony No. 10 in E minor
Dmitri Shostakovich
Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, September 25, 1906; died in Moscow, August 9, 1975
On March 5, 1953, Joseph Stalin died. He had ruled over the Soviet Union for nearly 30 years, and his brutal purges had killed millions of Russians from peasants to generals, many of them dying in the harsh Siberian camps of the Gulag. Shostakovich, too, suffered under the Stalinist Terror. In 1936 and again in 1948, his music had been denounced, and he had lain awake waiting for the nocturnal visitors summoning him to exile or death. For eight years, he had not written a symphony, and since 1948 had hidden away any serious works— such as his somewhat subversive First Violin Concerto.
With Stalin’ s death began a cultural thaw that lasted through the Khrushchev era. Shostakovich was among the first to test the waters of what was now permissible. Working at a fierce pace through the spring and summer of 1953, he composed his Tenth Symphony, considered by many to be the greatest of his family of 15.
The Russian music scholar Boris Schwarz called it“ a work of inner liberation,” while Shostakovich biographer Ian MacDonald declared it“ a musical monument to the fifty million victims of Stalin’ s madness.” But at the symphony’ s premiere in Leningrad on December 17, 1953, Soviet critics, not sure which way the political winds were blowing, waffled between denunciation and praise. The Tenth became the topic of hot debate at the Composers Union Conference the following April. Having learned through bitter experience to keep his head down, Shostakovich gave only the blandest comments on the symphony:“ In this composition, I wanted to portray human emotions and passions.” When asked if it had a program, he replied,“ No, let them listen and guess for themselves.” Ultimately, the Tenth received the official stamp of approval, and Shostakovich was awarded the highest Soviet artistic honor:“ People’ s Artist of the U. S. S. R.”
But surely this symphony— with its powerful mixture of mourning, anguished protest and sardonic celebration, and its incorporation of Shostakovich’ s own initials as a musical motive for the third and fourth movements— has a very personal program imbedded within. In Solomon Volkov’ s controversial book Testimony, reputed to be the composer’ s dictated memoirs, Shostakovich bluntly explained,“ I did depict Stalin in music in … the Tenth. … It’ s about Stalin and the Stalin years. … Of course, there are many other things in it, but that’ s the basis.”
Tragic in tone and comprising nearly half the length of the symphony, the first movement, in the home key of E minor, seems a remembrance of the suffering of the Russian people under Stalin. It is generated by three themes, each growing out of the previous one. First we hear a brief idea rising darkly from the orchestral cellar; it is hesitant and fearful, frequently halting in its tracks. It gradually rises through the strings until the solo clarinet enters, intoning the poignant second theme atop the first. After this sequence concludes, the flute introduces the third theme: a nervous, stuttering idea coiled tightly within a narrow range. More dark
September – November 2016 | Overture 35