Shostakovich - Symphonies Nos.6 and 12

Dimitri SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-1975)

Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 54

Symphony No. 12 in D minor, Op. 112 'The Year 1917'

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

Bernard Haitink

Recorded: 1983-12 (No.6)

Recorded: 1982-02-01 (No.12)

Of all Shostakovich's symphonies the 12th has been the one worst received by the Western critics. Much of this may (ironically) be due to the perceived lack of irony in the work, which is a relatively straightforward piece of romanticism. Maybe one is no longer allowed to be romantic in the modern world. Lenin (as opposed to Stalin) was always a great hero to Shostakovich. He had been one of the few present (as a 10 year old boy) at Lenin's return to Russia at the Finland Station and had also seen at first hand the cruelties of the old Tsarist regime when he witnessed the murder of a child much the same age as himself by a Cossack soldier shortly after this event.

In this work clearly Shostakovich is looking back at those events. No doubt there is idealism here but then that was the mood of Russia in 1917. Would it be "realistic" to depict it otherwise? And besides if we are to complain of idealism then we will have to dismiss a good deal of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Vaughan Williams etc.

I have to be honest and say I enjoyed this performance thoroughly. It's the sort of music that wants to make you want to stand up and cheer and if you can't get on your feet after a piece of music and shout "bravo" then maybe you should stick to disco. Haitink doesn't complain about lack of irony here, he just gets on with the job and portrays this work for what it is, a thoroughly positive experience. It reminded me a hell of a lot of Tchaikovsky No.4 , which is not a work noted for its irony either.

Should we be put off by Shostakovich's own later dismissive statements about this work? I don't think so. Psychologically Shostakovich was a very complex individual. Throughout his life he fought a long battle between the introspective, gloomy, personal aspects of his music and the more public, optimistic, positive forms it had to observe - Floristan and Eusebius. It is very notable though, how often he undertook public commissions for film music for example. Although he may have resented to some extent the public stance he was forced to take on occasion he recognized this as a genuine necessity, if art is not to become merely a form of narcissism, the predominant form it takes nowadays in the absence of any proper political focus and it is particularly significant that he should have chosen to make this particular statement not under the Stalin dictatorship but under the relatively freer conditions that followed. How, we might perhaps wonder, can it be that (relative) freedom results in greater orthodoxy? It would, nevertheless, be a great error and insult to say that this was music "made to order". It was clearly music that came from the heart, though DSCH himself might later have cursed this very fact.

The 6th symphony is perhaps a strange companion for the 12th but the contrast is nevertheless welcome. In this work, perhaps more than most, Shostakovich seems to have caught himself between two moods, forced to abandon the complex, pessimistic intensely personal fourth in favor of the more orthodox of fifth, while at the same time deeply pessimistic about the rise of Nazism, the scene was set for some jarring musical conflicts.

Oddly I find the 6th less satisfactory as music, despite its brilliant orchestration, than the 12th, which at the very least has a strong sense of its own form. It is interesting to compare the Shostakovich 6 with Vaughan Williams' 5th symphony , which are virtually contemporaneous. Both have long, slow opening movements, but while RVW's has a backbone of deep, innate confidence and self-belief, DSCH's has an empty, uncertain feel. Haitink's Tempo is extremely slow, one of the slowest tempi I have heard on a record, and this combined with the series of long trills, as in Beethoven's Op.111 Piano Sonata creates a strange almost stationary effect.

If Shostakovich 6's first movement is Mahlerian, the 2nd and the 3rd are pure Prokofiev. The second starts light and brilliant, if somewhat distant, gradually becomes more intense and threatening before erupting into a moment of violent conflict then dissolves again without any true sense of resolution. In the 3rd movement the brilliant surface is once more maintained, whilst again not creating any sense of certainty. Shostakovich made some curious experiments with symphonic form. At the conclusion there is some heavy irony in the shape of some pompous brass contributions, nevertheless I feel the three movements alone here are not sufficient, and that a fourth was needed, as the Vaughan Williams inevitably has, and that we are left merely worrying about what may be to come. Perhaps this was DSCH's intention.

Haitink's great virtue as a conductor in these performances is that he self-effacing. He gets the orchestra to play the music as it is written and leaves us to do the interpreting, which is the way it should be. I recommend this and indeed all of his performances of Shostakovich's music.

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