For much of the 20th century, one would not have seen Prokofiev's Hail to Stalin or Shostakovich's The Fall of Berlin on a Carnegie Hall program. Fifty years ago any musical work that could even remotely be linked to Socialist Realism — sometimes even Copland's A Lincoln Portrait was included — was taboo in the United States.
Times have certainly changed. From 19–23 February, Carnegie Hall hosts Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Czech Philharmonic in the festival "Music and Dictatorship: Russia Under Stalin," which includes a number of works in which Prokofiev and Shostakovich glorified the achievements of the Communist regime in general and the "Dear Father and Teacher" in particular. In addition to the cantata Hail to Stalin (Zdravitsa) of 1939, the festival will feature Prokofiev's festive tone poem The Meeting of the Volga and the Don (1951) and music for the film Ivan the Terrible (1942–45). The Shostakovich works on the program include the Festive Overture (1954) and music for the films The Fall of Berlin (1949) and The Unforgettable Year 1919 (1951).
The festival also includes works that, in their reflection of the tragedies of life under Stalin, implicitly resisted the Soviet regime. Among them are Prokofiev's Symphony No. 6 (1945–47); Shostakovich's Eighth Quartet, arranged for string orchestra by Rudolf Barshai, and Symphony No. 13, "Babi Yar" (1962); and Dmitri Kabalevsky's Cello Concerto No. 2. The one openly anti-Stalin work on the program is Shostakovich's satirical one-act opera Antiformalist Rayok, which was never performed during the composer's lifetime.
Though the political significance of these works has faded, some critics continue to express disdain for Soviet-approved music — and for the composers' willingness to write it. Calling Dmitri Shostakovich "Soviet Russia's most loyal musical son," Richard Taruskin writes that "it is important to quash the fantasy image of Shostakovich as a dissident ... because it dishonors actual dissidents like [Aleksandr] Solzhenitsyn or Andrei Sakharov, who took risks and suffered reprisals." New York Times music critic Bernard Holland has denounced Shostakovich as a coward, "a mediocre human being" who "toadied and cringed before his Soviet bosses."
Ashkenazy has created the festival, in part, to challenge this view. "I want to inform the public about the unbelievable pressure that Soviet composers were subjected to," said Ashkenazy in an interview last August at the San Sebastián Music Festival. "People forget easily or simply know nothing [about that time], so the main purpose [of performing these works] is to remind people in the West how difficult it was for great composers to live and create in the Soviet Union."
The pianist and conductor also thinks that these works, though written at the bidding of the Soviet regime, have much to offer musically. "Even though these compositions are not of the highest quality," he said, "they are still written by geniuses, and they have numerous episodes that can bring real satisfaction to the audience."
Ashkenazy disputes the notion that Prokofiev and Shostakovich — as well as Khachaturian, Kabalevsky and others — composed propaganda and Socialist Realist works voluntarily. "Many days and nights were spent agonizing over those compositions," he said.
And, he added, had these composers not cooperated to some degree with the Soviet
regime, their work would have been lost to the world entirely: "Shostakovich is often
blamed for his conformism and cowardice. The irony is that if he hadn't played
those conformist games, then we wouldn't be able today to discuss much of his
work, simply because he could have easily ended his life in one of the labor
camps." Nor, he said, would we be able to hear his monumental Thirteenth
Symphony, "which is a total condemnation of the Soviet
regime."
