Post by erik on Jan 9, 2021 19:03:53 GMT -5
In this week's Classical Works Spotlight, the second of 2021, it will be Shostakovich's sop to his nation's "patriotic" Communist party, a symphony that "celebrates" the Bolshevik Revolution.
Shostakovich: SYMPHONY NO. 12 IN D MINOR, OP. 112 (THE YEAR 1917)
Much like his fellow Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitri Shostakovich found himself for the better part of three decades, including World War II (or “The Great Patriotic War”), in the artistic sights of his country’s totalitarian leader Joseph Stalin, a man with a tin ear when it came to music. Nevertheless, like Prokofiev, he often had to compose music to please the powers-that-be, meaning music that was patriotic. Stalin’s death in 1953, however, meant a bit of an easing up on those dictums set forward by Stalin’s right-hand man Andrei Zhdanov in 1948. The Tenth Symphony, composed in the aftermath of Stalin’s demise, made Shostakovich to be the first major composer to break the “Curse Of The Ninth” that had hung over every major composer since Beethoven; and his 11th Symphony (The Year 1905) found receptive ears on the other side of the Iron Curtain in 1958. Three years later, after some fifteen years of hemming and hawing about doing it, the composer went about creating a symphony about Vladimir Lenin, Russia’s first true Communist leader, in what became his 12th Symphony, sub-titled “The Year 1917”, referring to the year that Russia’s Tsarist government was overturned in the Bolshevik Revolution by Lenin. The work is decidedly programmatic in nature as can be gleaned by its sub-title, and in four movements: (1) Revolutionary Petrograd; (2) Raziv (referring to the town that had Lenin’s headquarters); (3) Aurora (referring to the cruiser that fired on the tsar’s palace, kicking off the Bolshevik Revolution); and (4) The Dawn Of Humanity. The 12th Symphony was fairly well received inside the Soviet Union at its 1961 premiere because of its “patriotic” nature (Nikita Khrushchev being a more pliable character than Stalin), but its perceived pro-Communist nature made it unpalatable for Western audiences for many decades, even after its British premiere at the Edinburgh Festival in 1962. Although several major European orchestras have recorded it, the 12th Symphony still remains the least performed of any of Shostakovich’s fifteen symphonies; and even after its U.S. premiere in the 1960s, no known recording of the work by any of America’s major orchestras has been made.
Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam/BERNARD HAITINK (London/Decca)
Included:
SYMPHONY NO. 6 IN B MINOR, OP. 54
Shostakovich: SYMPHONY NO. 12 IN D MINOR, OP. 112 (THE YEAR 1917)
Much like his fellow Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitri Shostakovich found himself for the better part of three decades, including World War II (or “The Great Patriotic War”), in the artistic sights of his country’s totalitarian leader Joseph Stalin, a man with a tin ear when it came to music. Nevertheless, like Prokofiev, he often had to compose music to please the powers-that-be, meaning music that was patriotic. Stalin’s death in 1953, however, meant a bit of an easing up on those dictums set forward by Stalin’s right-hand man Andrei Zhdanov in 1948. The Tenth Symphony, composed in the aftermath of Stalin’s demise, made Shostakovich to be the first major composer to break the “Curse Of The Ninth” that had hung over every major composer since Beethoven; and his 11th Symphony (The Year 1905) found receptive ears on the other side of the Iron Curtain in 1958. Three years later, after some fifteen years of hemming and hawing about doing it, the composer went about creating a symphony about Vladimir Lenin, Russia’s first true Communist leader, in what became his 12th Symphony, sub-titled “The Year 1917”, referring to the year that Russia’s Tsarist government was overturned in the Bolshevik Revolution by Lenin. The work is decidedly programmatic in nature as can be gleaned by its sub-title, and in four movements: (1) Revolutionary Petrograd; (2) Raziv (referring to the town that had Lenin’s headquarters); (3) Aurora (referring to the cruiser that fired on the tsar’s palace, kicking off the Bolshevik Revolution); and (4) The Dawn Of Humanity. The 12th Symphony was fairly well received inside the Soviet Union at its 1961 premiere because of its “patriotic” nature (Nikita Khrushchev being a more pliable character than Stalin), but its perceived pro-Communist nature made it unpalatable for Western audiences for many decades, even after its British premiere at the Edinburgh Festival in 1962. Although several major European orchestras have recorded it, the 12th Symphony still remains the least performed of any of Shostakovich’s fifteen symphonies; and even after its U.S. premiere in the 1960s, no known recording of the work by any of America’s major orchestras has been made.
Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam/BERNARD HAITINK (London/Decca)
Included:
SYMPHONY NO. 6 IN B MINOR, OP. 54