Shostakovich 50: La Décima.

Dimitri Shostakovich

SYMPHONIE Nr.10, Op.93

Berliner Philharmoniker

Dir: Herbert von Karajan.

(DG)

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     Hoy hace 50 años, 9 de agosto de 1975, fallecía en Moscú Dimitri Shostakovich, probablemente el último gran compositor sinfonista en la gran tradición inaugurada por Haydn, y permanente piedra en el zapato del brutal régimen comunista de la entonces Unión Soviética.

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      Su muerte no fue anunciada por Pravda hasta tres días después, aunque se le dieron funerales ¨de estado¨ entre el 14 y 15 de agosto. Sin embargo la noticia se difundió casi inmediatamente en Occidente. Es célebre el momento de aquel 9 de agosto en que en medio del concierto de Tanglewood donde Rostropovich dirigía la 5ta sinfonía, se leyó en el intermedio el telegrama dirigido a Ozawa con la noticia y Rostropovich elevando la partitura y con lágrimas en los ojos la besó.

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       Aunque el tema es discutible, muchos consideran a la Sinfonía Nr.10 como su mejor obra sinfónica. La Décima arriba después de un largo silencio sinfónico. Fue iniciada por Shostakovich en julio de 1953 y terminada en octubre de ese mismo año, aunque varios de sus materiales ya estaban hace rato en las gavetas del compositor. La Premiére estuvo a cargo de Evgeni Mravinsky, quien la dirigió en Leningrado (actual San Petersburgo) el 17 de diciembre de 1953.

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     El 5 de marzo de 1953 moría Stalin, después de tres décadas de terror y de brutal opresión. Shostakovich se había mantenido en bajo perfil después del disgusto ocasionado al dictador por el episodio de la 9na Sinfonía y de la condena oficial de ésta obra así como de la Sinfonía Nr. 8. Con la muerte de Stalin y Zhdanov se dió paso a un ligero ambiente de distensión en todos los ámbitos de la sociedad soviética, y el mundo de las artes no escapaba a éste definitivo cambio de era. Ya Shostakovich era un valor nacional demasiado importante para poder tocarlo sin consecuencias, y de este modo ya no sentía tanta presión de transigir en cuanto a su lenguaje musical. Con coraje permitió que se presentara entonces la 10ma, una obra encriptada como las anteriores y totalmente alejada del optimismo y del "realismo socialista". 

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     Las reacciones fueron igual de encontradas que en los casos de sus dos antecesoras. La obra encontró oposición. Fue criticada por su complejidad, sus texturas lúgubres y sus tendencias nihilistas. El sindicato de compositores soviéticos se sumergió en la bizantina discusión sobre si la obra era suficientemente optimista, llegándose a una solución rocambolescamente insólita, al catalogarla como expresión de "optimismo pesimista". Como suele ocurrir en el socialismo, se injerta un significado políticamente conveniente a una expresión artística que no entienden.

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     A continuación anexo las siempre valiosísimas notas de Mark Wigglesworth, en éste caso referente a la obra que nos ocupa:

Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op.93

 

The first movement, a huge arching slow waltz that builds to a climax as inevitably as it recedes away from it is an amazing journey that, despite apparently ending where it began, has travelled an enormous distance. Structurally it is the most perfect single orchestral movement he ever wrote. Emotionally there is a tired and drained quality that reflects Akhmatova’s line: ‘How sad that there is no one else to lose, and one can weep.’ We feel the exhaustion of all who lived through the twenty-five years of Stalin’s tyranny.

 

It was a regime whose brutal inexhaustibility Shostakovich portrays in the breathtaking second movement. It begins fortissimo and is followed by no fewer than fifty crescendos. There are only two diminuendos. The effect is self-explanatory. The emotion is not so much a depiction of Stalin himself, but an anger that he ever existed. In fact, such was his hold over the people, that the hysteria greeting his funeral cortege was so great that hundreds of people were crushed to death by tanks trying to keep order and protect the coffin. It is typical of Stalin that he should have continued to be responsible for people’s deaths even from beyond the grave.

 

Like the first movement, the third is another attempt to dance. This waltz is more macabre and is based on a theme that is the first four letters of the composer’s own initial and surname. When the letters DSch are turned into German musical notation, they spell the notes D-E flat-C-B. But defining his identity like this does not seem to get him anywhere. The music keeps falling back on itself. There seems no way out until the cellos and basses, in a desperate crescendo, stumble as if by chance upon an an initially enigmatic horn call. This five-note theme appears no less than twelve times – every time almost identical – and bears a striking resemblance to the opening horn fanfare of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde. The message of this deeply optimistic work would have undoubtedly struck a chord with Shostakovich. Despite all the horrors, life itself is beautiful and will always be so despite man’s attempts to ruin it. The world will always renew itself. Another possible meaning for the theme is that, using the French system of notation as well as the German one, the horn call can be taken to spell the name ELMIRA: E-L(a)-Mi-R(e)-A. Elmira Nazirova was an Azeri pianist and composer who had studied with Shostakovich. He had become infatuated with her and wrote her numerous letters during the summer of 1953. Maybe both ‘translations’ are relevant. One represents eternal nature, the other human love. Both are forces for good and as such, the most powerful weapons against an evil like Stalin’s. The horn call symbolises an alternative. Unfortunately there seems no way of connecting with it. The movement recapitulates the DSch waltz and it becomes increasingly desperate. There is a story that Gogol used to stare constantly into a mirror and, in mad self-contemplation, repeatedly call out his own name. There is something of this mania here. Over and over again the DSch motif is repeated, frantically trying to assert its individuality. At its almost hysterical climax, the eternal love theme returns, this time on all four horns and fortissimo. Yes, that is the answer. That is the alternative. But you wonder if the realization has come too late. The final horn call is a long way away, beyond our grasp again.

 

The finale opens in a Siberian landscape with solitary woodwind voices trying to communicate with each other across the barren plains. It is the slowest music of the whole symphony, a timely reminder of the desolation that the prisoners were actually experiencing. To survive the camps was a miracle. It was not uncommon for forty men to be kept in a cell built for four. In fact many were simply shot as their sentence came to an end on the presumption that if they were still alive they had either worked less than they should have or eaten more than their share. At home, life goes on and the ensuing Allegro depicts the humdrum and meaningless existence of people trying to avoid their own deportation. The symphony is not sure which is worse. At least the prisoners were allowed to cry. The fast music never really gets going. As Shostakovich said, ‘it is very hard to run free when you are constantly looking over your shoulder.’ You can pretend to be playing games but you will always be playing them in a kind of prison. The poet Osip Mandelstam’s description of the time is haunting: ‘We were capable of coming to work with a smile on our face after a night in which our home had been searched or a relative arrested. It was essential to smile. If you didn’t, it meant that you were afraid or unhappy. Nobody could afford to admit this.’

 

The purges had made virtually everyone an accomplice. It was like a snowball, gathering up all it touched. As the somewhat gossipy bassoon begins the finale’s coda, it is joined one by one by almost everybody else. Galloping alongside is the evil rhythm of the second movement – the return of the snare drum giving us no option but to realize that Stalin is the one pushing the snowball down the hill. But the horns and timpani fight back, hammering out the DSch motif and with it the desire to remain individual. ‘I will not be beaten’, he is shouting. ‘You will never get me.’ The defiance is remarkable. The fact that the opposition to it is still there, however, lends credence to the fact that Shostakovich could have conceived this work before Stalin died. Perhaps he just realized that after Stalin would simply come somebody else to repress the people. Either way, there is no sense of relief at the end of this work, just a triumphant assertion that, despite the continued presence of tyranny, an individual with a strong enough spirit can survive. ‘Even if they chop my hands off,’ he said, ‘I will continue to compose music – even if I have to hold the pen between my teeth’. Only Shostakovich can be so optimistic, pessimistic, and ultimately realistic in one work without any sense of contradiction. It is what makes all his symphonies such vital chronicles of the Twentieth Century.

 

© Mark Wigglesworth 1998

DISCOGRAFÍA.

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     En cuanto a la discografía de la Décima, como una de las obras más conocidas y populares de Shostakovich, es de entender que cuente con una amplia discografía recomendable, desde las típicas y enérgicas grabaciones de Mravinsky, quien hizo la primera grabación, pasando por otros grandes directores soviéticos, las emblemáticas grabaciones de Dimitri Mitropoulos y de Karel Ancerl, éste último ya publicado en ARPEGIO y llegando hasta nuestros días con grandes registros como el de Semyon Bychkov en Colonia o el de Vasily Petrenko en Liverpool.  De entre las grabaciones más memorables del Op. 93 están adicionalmente dos hechas por Herbert von Karajan al frente de la Filarmónica de Berlín y que cuentan con una altísima reputación bien ganada entre la crítica. Sin ser un director asociado a Shostakovich, por alguna razón Karajan tomó a la Décima como un caballito de batalla, dirigiéndola varias veces y dejando dos grabaciones comerciales para el sello Deutsche Grammophon: una de los años 70´s y luego una más reciente con la entonces tecnología digital. Las dos son un portento interpretativo, por supuesto ganando la versión digital el calidad y nitidez sonora. Aún dentro de una amplia gama de grandes registros, ésta es la recomendación más fácil y estandarizada.

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In Memoriam, Maestro DSCH.

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M-S.