Such a disjointed cycle without a traditional sonata form, with such enormous content disparity between the Largo and the rest of the symphony, made some of Shostakovich’s colleagues consider the Sixth somewhat of a failure. But when the symphony premiered in Leningrad on November 21, 1939, and then in Moscow on December 3 of that same year, not only was there no trace of the poem (or any Lenin reference whatsoever), but the form of the symphony itself seemed odd: two fast, seemingly light-hearted movements (the Allegro and Presto) followed by a long, slow, pensive Largo. The composer himself contributed to the confusion by announcing in the fall of 1938 that he had started a monumental new symphony, “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin,” with verses from Vladimir Mayakovsky’s famous poem. Barsova on the Finale of the Shostakovich’s Fifth SymphonyĪmong Dmitri Shostakovich’s fifteen symphonies, the Sixth has been perhaps the most misunderstood. “In the odd hybrid of two diametrically opposed semantic complexes is thus concealed the brutal truth of Soviet reality in the 1930s, when the auto-da-fe of an entire nation was carried out to the accompaniment of hymns and marches.” Written for the concert The Circle of Shostakovich, performed on Apat Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |