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Eloq uence

SHOSTAKOVICH
Symphonies No. 13 Babi Yar
Symphony No. 15
MUSSORGSKY
Songs and Dances of Death
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Sir Anthony Hopkins
Sergei Aleksashkin
Chicago Symphony Orchestra & Chorus
Sir Georg Solti

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Western-style reforms in Russia. As with CD 1 7240

Songs and Dances of Death, Mussorgsky did DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-1975)
not live to orchestrate it, and both Rimsky- Symphony No. 13 in B flat minor, Op. 113 Babi Yar
Korsakov and Shostakovich contributed their 1 Babi Yar * 346
own completions of the opera. It is Rimsky- 2 I Adagio: Babi Yar 1554
Korsakovs orchestration of the prelude that 3 Humour * 156
is heard here. 4 II Allegretto: Humour 814
5 In the Store * 111
Raymond Tuttle 6 Fears * 232
7 A Career * 136
8 III Adagio: In the Store 1253
9 IV Largo: Fears 1148
0 V Allegretto: A Career 1250
* Poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko read in English by Sir Anthony Hopkins
The English translations of Babi Yar, Humour, Fears and A Career read by Sir Anthony Hopkins are by
C M George Reavey, contained in Yevgeny Yevtushenko: Early Poems, published by Marion Boyars, London C M 119.5MM
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& New York. The translation of In the Store is by Andrew Huth. (4.71)

CD 2 6456
MODEST MUSSORGSKY (1839-1881)
1 Khovanshchina Prelude 500
(orch. Rimsky-Korsakov)
Songs and Dances of Death
(orch. Shostakovich)
Recording producer: Michael Woolcock 2 I Kalbelnaja (Lullaby) 449

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Recording engineers: John Dunkerley, Andy Groves (No. 13); James Lock, Philip Siney, Duncan 3 II Serenada (Serenade) 426

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Mitchell (No. 15, Mussorgsky)
4 III Trepak 421
Recording editor: Nigel Gayler (No. 13); Simon Bertram, Matthew Hutchinson (No. 15, Mussorgsky) 5 IV Palkavodets (The Field Marshall) 535
Recording location: Orchestra Hall, Chicago, USA, February 1995 (No. 13 recorded live), March 1997
(No. 15, Mussorgsky); AIR Lyndhurst Studios, UK, March 1995 (poems for No. 13)
Eloquence series manager: Cyrus Meher-Homji
Cover illustration / Art direction: Chilu Tong

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DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-1975) The symphony also has been interpreted as a
Symphony No. 15 in A major, Op. 141 birth-to-death piece, but this also seems a
6 I Allegretto 800 little facile, and it only poorly explains the
7 II Adagio Largo Adagio Largo 1355 middle two movements. The rest of the
8 III Allegretto 350 symphony contains several other quotations
9 IV Adagio Allegretto Adagio Allegretto 1423 and near-quotations of music not just by
other composers (Wagners Gtterdmmerung
Sergei Aleksashkin, bass and Tristan und Isolde, a song by Glinka,
Men of the Chicago Symphony Chorus [CD 1] possibly others) but also by Shostakovich
chorus master: Duain Wolfe himself (the Seventh Symphony, an
Chicago Symphony Orchestra unfinished setting of a text by Yevtushenko,
Sir Georg Solti
and the four notes D-S-C-H or D-E flat-C-B,
the composers musical signature, if you will).
Twice in the Allegretto, we hear a ticking
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reminiscent of the composers Fourth
Symphony. It returns at the very end of the
Fifteenth, like the sound of the deathwatch
beetle. If Shostakovich suspected that this
was to be his final symphony, perhaps he felt
that a personal retrospective was in order.
Even so, he was to live for another four years
and complete two more major works in the
meantime his Fourteenth and Fifteenth
his great forebear, Modest Mussorgsky.
(Glazunov and Rimsky-Korsakov also created
their own orchestration of this work.)
Inspiration for this project came from
soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, a noted
interpreter of music by both of these
composers (and the wife of Mstislav
Rostropovich), and its performance no doubt
spurred Shostakovich to create his own
death-obsessed Fourteenth Symphony.
Death takes on four different personae in this
work. In Lullaby he is a nurse singing a fatally
ill child to a final sleep, as the horrified mother
stands helplessly by. In Serenade, Death is a
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knight who has come to claim a sickly maiden; Y B
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she need never fear growing old and the fading
of her beauty. In the third song, a drunken
peasant wanders out into a snowstorm and
finds Death. Together, they dance a trepak, and
Death urges him to lie down and sleep, covered
by a blanket of snow. Death mocks military
glory in The Field Marshal: soldiers from two
armies opposed in life are now united in death,
and Death holds eternal power over them,

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String Quartets. dancing on their graves after everyone else has

In addition to completing his Thirteenth
Symphony, Shostakovich also spent part of
1962 orchestrating Songs and Dances of
Total timing: 13736 Death, a cycle of songs for voice and piano by
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forgotten them.
Mussorgskys Khovanshchina is set in the late
1600s, and deals with political intrigue and
unrest resulting from Peter the Greats

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change his music, however. While the
symphony was never banned outright in the
Soviet Union, performances were not
encouraged, and so Shostakovichs Babi Yar Symphonies, was not a programmatic
took some time to catch on its homeland. Its
international acceptance was much quicker.
On this recording, the movements are prefaced
by an English translation of Yevtushenkos
poems, spoken by Sir Anthony Hopkins. The
texts of the third, fourth, and fifth movements
are read without pause, as there is no break in
the music between these movements.
Seldom in fine health, Shostakovich had
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he suffered his first heart attack. As his
sixtieth birthday passed, hospitalisations and
long periods of treatment became more and
more frequent. One of his projects,
apparently begun during one of his stays in
the hospital, was to select the texts that were
to be used in his Fourteenth Symphony
poems about death by Lorca, Rilke,
Apollinaire and others. The result was
another symphony with vocal parts this
time for soprano and bass.
However, his Fifteenth Symphony, composed
in July 1971 at the Composers Union retreat
in Repino, marked a return to purely
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orchestral writing. It also marked a return to
abstract music, in the sense that this
symphony, unlike the Eleventh and Twelfth
description or interpretation of historical
events. (According to the composer, it is
obliquely related to his projected opera, The
Black Monk, based on the story by Chekhov.
This project never came to fruition, however,
so it impossible to determine how the two
works might have been interrelated.)
Although the Fifteenth Symphony is not
programmatic, that does not mean that it has
no hidden meanings or is not speaking in code.
In fact, it is replete with ambiguous messages.
Since the symphonys premiere (conducted in
January 1972 by the composers son Maxim),
musicologists and commentators have tried to
decipher this mysterious final symphony. What,
for example, should one make of the
quotations from Rossinis William Tell overture
in the first movement? The composer
commented that this movement described
childhood, and that it was a representation of a
toyshop. While the atmosphere is light, it is not
carefree, and there are eerie passages later in
the movement which suggest that all may
not be as innocent and happy as it initially
appears to be.
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Sir Georg Solti writes tremendous actuality, because it was fifty years
I came very late in my life to Shostakovich ago that all the concentration camps were
for a very simple, political reason. I didnt opened in Nazi Germany. And of course that
know much about his life, I didnt realise how horror story from the Kiev, which I did know
much he was oppressed under the Stalinist or about, is so wonderfully thought and composed
Khrushchev regime. I didnt trust what I and felt by Shostakovich and Yevtushenko.
heard, and everything that was Stalinism was
The first performance was under very serious
suspect: so I didnt want to touch it. Until I
police surveillance and only party members
heard the Fifth Symphony, and that made an
were invited nobody else could go
enormous impression on me. I thought That
because they were afraid of some sort of pro-
must be genuine, because there is such Yevtushenko demonstration. Young Russian
oppression in the piece, such a real, hopeless, people had begun to read Yevtushenko. So
Mussorgskyian oppression. That cannot be a the authorities were afraid. I know also that
political fake, it is real. the next morning in Pravda there was a single
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Shostakovich was performed. Full stop
began with the First and Ninth Symphonies. I
Which I think is disgraceful for any
was particularly amused to learn that the Ninth
newspaper, particularly a paper called Pravda
was an official commission: after the war he was
(The Truth)! Because this is a masterpiece.
supposed to write a victory symphony, but the
Ninth Symphony came out as a joke, like sticking I felt I had to do this symphony now. I will do
your tongue out that was his victory all that I can to show what a musical
symphony, which I thought was a marvellous, masterpiece it is, and what a glorious
courageous gesture. Then I turned to the Eighth, partnership there is between Shostakovich
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gripping. I feel its my duty to do it. And of
As to the Thirteenth, I didnt at first know the
course duty is not enough it should be as
text: I knew there was a symphony called Babi
good as possible. Thats the duty.
Yar, and I was told by a friend of mine that I
should perform it next. When I opened the score Sir Georg Solti
and saw the text, I realised that this has a 1995
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Dmitri Shostakovichs career as a composer
was coloured by his unpredictable and ever-
changing relationship with the Soviet
government. One cannot always take the
music he composed (or the words he wrote
and spoke) at face value; in his life,
acquiescence, compromise and defiance
could be nested closely together like those
wooden Russian dolls popular with tourists.
At the same time, it can be tempting to read
too deeply into his music. Sometimes, as
Freud said, a cigar is just a cigar. At any rate,
Shostakovich is one of those historical figures
whose life and work paradoxically can be
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about him.
One can hardly overestimate the effect that
fearful Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had on all
aspects of life in the Soviet Union in the 1930s
and 40s. Nothing escaped his often fatal
attention, including the arts. When Stalin died
in 1953, Shostakovich, who had run afoul of
him several times over the decades, was
profoundly affected, but it would be naive to
think that the artistic climate in the Soviet Union
changed overnight. Nikita Khrushchev rose to
power, and while his oversight was less
absolute than Stalins, the arts continued to be
scrutinised, and there were consequences for
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not pleasing Party leaders. Despite a perceived
relaxation of Soviet control in the years after
Stalin sometimes referred to as The Thaw
true artistic freedom did not exist.
By 1960, Shostakovichs post-Stalin
rehabilitation as a Soviet artist had progressed
to the point where he joined the Communist
Party and was given a position of authority in the
union of composers. A year later, the
appearance of his Twelfth Symphony (The Year
1917, dedicated to the memory of Lenin)
suggested that he was being assimilated into
the Soviet artistic culture.
Also in 1961, the young Soviet poet Yevgeny
Yevtushenko published a poem called Babi
Yar, a denunciation of anti-Semitism, not
just during World War II, but also as it
continued to exist in Soviet society. (Babi Yar
is a ravine near Kiev where, between 1941
and 1943, Nazis executed over 100,000
Russians, both Jews and non-Jews.) The
poem created a sensation, and Soviet censors
tried to inhibit its dissemination, but to little
avail. Shostakovich, who, like so many other
Soviet citizens, read Babi Yar and was
galvanized by it, requested the poets
permission to set it to music. Yevtushenko
readily agreed.
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Originally, Babi Yar was to have been a one- Hurt, Shostakovich offered the score to
movement cantata, but because of conductor Kiril Kondrashin (who left the Soviet
Yevtushenkos enthusiastic collaboration, Union in 1978) and Kondrashin accepted. A
four more of his poems not as bass named Viktor Nechipailo was suggested,
inflammatory as Babi Yar, but still and rehearsals commenced. As the dress
unmistakable acknowledgments that life in rehearsal neared, tensions rose; with its texts
the Soviet Union was not as ideal as by Yevtushenko and its clear indictment of
previously had been portrayed were added, anti-Semitism, Shostakovichs new symphony
and a full-length symphony for orchestra was troubling important Party members. On
with solo bass voice and male chorus took the day of the performance, Nechipailo called
shape. The new symphony, which became in sick, and so his understudy, Vitaly
known as Babi Yar, was completed in 1962. Gromadsky, was quickly summoned. Then
Kondrashin received a telephone call from the
Predictably, the road to its premiere was not a
Minister of Culture hinting that perhaps the
smooth one. Immediately after completing the 119.5MM
premiere should be cancelled, or at least that C M
score, Shostakovich showed it to Boris Gmyrya, Y B
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the symphony should be given without its
an esteemed bass whom he hoped would sing
controversial first movement.
the premiere performance. Apparently under
pressure from Party leaders, Gmyrya declined. A Kondrashin was not one to be scared off, and
second candidate declined as well. the premiere took place as planned. It was a
Shostakovich also showed the score to tremendous popular success; after the first
conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky, who had given movement, there was a demonstration of
the premieres of all of Shostakovichs approval from the audience. Then there was
symphonies since the Fifth in 1937. (The a second performance. Before the third,
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premiered under wartime conditions by Samuel changes to his poem, acknowledging that
Samosud.) Claiming to lack an aptitude for not only Jews but also non-Jewish Russian
choral music, Mravinsky also declined, although citizens were massacred at Babi Yar, and
it seems almost certain that the conductors real celebrating the heroism of the Russian people
reasons were political in nature. in fighting Fascism. Shostakovich did not
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