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2008 Series II Concerts
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Today’s ACO concert features music by arguably the finest Russian composers of both the 19th and 20th centuries, Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Dimitri Shostakovich. In both cases we are hearing composers who wrote in a style that embraced music from the western musical tradition, in opposition to those Slavic schools that renounced the west and its myriad influences on Russian art and society. In essence, like all of 19th and 20th century Russian art, we again confront the profound influence that political and social currents had on artists and the conception and content of their creations during this period in Russian history.
Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) was born in Votkinsk, in the district of Viatka, Russia. His father was an engineer, his mother a Russian of French ancestry. Despite showing early signs of musical ability he attended the School of Jurisprudence in Saint Petersburg and upon graduation became a civil servant in the Tsarist imperial service. Tchaikovsky’s career as a civil servant soon ended and he studied music at the Conservatory in Saint Petersburg with the famous composer Anton Rubenstein. Upon graduation he took a teaching position at the Moscow Conservatory, eventually leaving teaching altogether to work exclusively as a composer.
The Serenade for Strings was composed during the fall of 1880 and was premiered in Saint Petersburg in October 30, 1881 to immediate success. Composed at the same time as the rather bombastic 1812 Overture, Tchaikovsky’s inspiration for the Serenade for Strings was the Austrian composer whose serenades are the artistic acme of this musical form- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart! Tchaikovsky revered Mozart, whom he once called “the Christ of music,” and his Serenade pays homage to Mozart’s considerable accomplishments in this genre. Tchaikovsky states in a letter to his patroness Nadezhda von Meck that, “The (1812) Overture will be very showy and noisy, but will have no artistic merit because I wrote it without warmth and without love. But the Serenade, on the contrary, I wrote from inner compulsion. This is a piece from the heart.” In a later letter he states, “I am violently in love with this work and cannot wait for it to be played.”
In four movements, the Serenade for Strings does not sound typically “classical;” perhaps an appropriate way to describe the piece musically is a romantic homage to classical form and spirit. Tchaikovsky states in another letter to von Meck that the Serenade, “…is my homage to Mozart; it is intended to be an imitation of his style, and I should be delighted if I thought I had in any way approached my model.” Of particular interest is the finale, subtitled Tema Russo, which utilizes two Russian folk tunes discovered and cataloged by Russian composer and musicologist Mily Balakirev, because Tchaikovsky rarely made use of native musical materials in his compositions. The first is a slow tune sung by Volga boat-haulers, which appears in the violin during the andante introduction. The second is an animated Russian dance which is scored at times with a balalaika-like pizzicato in octaves.
Tchaikovsky was truly a musical cosmopolitan- his musical models came mainly from the western tradition and his music is undoubtedly romantic in form and content, including a melodic gift that has rarely been equaled by any composer. This put him at odds with a group of intensely nationalistic contemporary composers of Tchaikovsky known as the “Mighty Five.” Formed by the above mentioned Balakirev and Cesar Cui, the group also included Mussorgsky, Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov. Their aim was to produce a specifically Russian kind of art music rather than one that imitated older European music or relied on European-style conservatory training. The 19th century was a time of great ferment in Russia, with the gradual dissolution of the absolute power of the Tsar and the royal family and the gradual weakening of the absolute religious power of the Russian Orthodox Church. Liberals (as well as radicals) of every political and religious belief possible were chipping away at the temporal and religious power of both church and state, led perhaps most famously by the acknowledged spiritual leader of 19th Century Russian art, the great writer Leo Tolstoy. Along with this unrest there was a burgeoning feeling of nationalism in Russia, a pride in all things Russian, and the “Mighty Five” must be seen as a result of the divergent currents in thought at this time.
And out of the restive 19th Century too came World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the Ten Days that Shook the World in the words of author John Reed, brought to power the Communist Party. Led by Vladimir Lenin, throughout the 1920’s the Communists worked to consolidate power and institute a “workers paradise” in Russia. Music, not surprisingly, was a key aspect to educating the proletariat. Lenin himself states, “Art belongs to the people. It must have its deepest roots in the broad masses of workers. It must be understood and loved by them. It must be rooted in, and grow with, their feelings, thoughts and desires. It must arouse and develop the artist in them. Are we to give cakes and sugar to a minority when the mass of workers and peasants still lack black bread? So that art may come to the people, and the people to art, we must first of all raise the general level of education and culture.” Throughout the 1920’s thousands of concerts were given, free of charge, to workers throughout the Soviet Union, often in makeshift concert halls, in factories and on collective farms. It was a very idealistic period, and Soviet musicians were instrumental in bringing music to the masses. It is from this background that our second composer on our concert, Dimitri Shostakovich, emerges.
Dimitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) was a student at the Petrograd Conservatory from 1919-25, the city which was also the birthplace of the October Revolution of 1917. Shostakovich’s relations with and ultimately his feelings on Communism and the Communist Party are still a subject of much conjecture and discussion. Shostakovich was denounced several times during the height of the Stalin era for his compositions, but yet later in his life he was not only a Communist Party member but represented the party on numerous occasions. It is generally acknowledged that he disliked the communist regime, but his feelings on communism itself have never been fully explored, and it is in that distinction that perhaps the answer to this enigma lies. Much effort has been expended in developing widely varying interpretations of his works, and what can truthfully be said is that the greatness of his art is confirmed in these interpretations- all great art can be understood on more than one level.
Shostakovich’s Fourteenth Symphony was completed in the spring of 1969 and premičred in Moscow on September 29th, 1969, by the Moscow Chamber Orchestra. Like many of Shostakovich’s late compositions it reveals a preoccupation with death. This preoccupation is understandable- later in life Shostakovich suffered from perpetual ill-health, including polio and several heart attacks. Shostakovich wrote concerning death and the 14th Symphony, “…I always thought that I was not alone in my thinking about death and that other people were concerned with it too, despite the fact that they live in a socialist society in which even tragedies receive the epithet ‘optimistic.’ I wrote a number of works reflecting my understanding of the question, and as it seems to me, they’re not particularly optimistic works. The most important of them, I feel, is the Fourteenth Symphony; I have special feelings for it. I think that work…. had a positive effect… I fear death less now…I’m used to the idea of an inevitable end and treat it as such.”
Written for soprano, bass, string orchestra and percussion, the symphony consists of eleven songs with texts by four poets (Federico García Lorca, Guillaume Apollinaire, Wilhelm Küchelbecker and Rainer Maria Rilke) divided into a conventional four-movement structure. In this symphony we can discern Shostakovich’s major musical influences: Berg, in the use of tone rows and a quasi “parlando” setting for voice; Bach, in the extensive counterpoint; Beethoven’s late string quartets, in the writing for string orchestra; and Mahler, in the symphonic form, use of voice and songs and the theme of death. Ultimately, Shostakovich transcends contemporary musical, social and political influences by writing a work that is universal in its message, as death is the common experience of all mankind and the attempts to understand and derive meaning from the experience are universal.
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