When Dmitri Shostakovich was buried as a Soviet national hero in 1975,
perception of him abroad was clouded with misrepresentation and contradictions.
He had roughly 150 opus numbers in his catalog, yet few in the West were aware
of the breadth of his output. Even fewer could claim that they knew who
Shostakovich really was. And with the publication in 1979 of Solomon Volkov's
controversial biography of the composer, Testimony, there was even more
debate as to what he was about — debate that's only grown more intense
over the past 20 years as the composer's popularity has burgeoned and more
material about his life and times has come to light.
In the comments below, Leon Botstein — music director
of the American Symphony Orchestra, president of Bard College in New York
State, co-artistic director of the Bard Music Festival and renowned in classical
music circles for his innovative thematic programming — talks about why he
is devoting the entire 2004 Bard Festival (13–15 and
20–22 August) to "Shostakovich and His World" and why the Soviet Union's most
prominent composer matters for listeners today.
Q: Why will you be focusing on Shostakovich at the 2004 Bard Festival
— a full two years ahead of the widespread attention the composer will
receive on the occasion of his 100th birthday?
Leon Botstein: Shostakovich is just obvious to our generation. He turns
out not only to have been the most talented Soviet composer in all genres, but
his emergence as the most popular composer of the 20th century is a complete
surprise and a great paradox. It's true, he was very popular in the United
States in the 1940s — because of our wartime alliance with the USSR,
the Siege of Leningrad, "Uncle Joe" [Stalin] being our pal and all the rest. But
even then, Bartók made fun of him in his Concerto for Orchestra and Copland used
to joke that it's hard to write Soviet Realist music!
Benjamin Britten was Shostakovich's only friend in the West after the War. So we wake up in the 21st century and there he is: Mahler's heir, every bit as surprising as Mahler was thirty or forty years ago. It turns out he's the 20th century's Mozart: its central musical figure, writing in every genre, even knocking Stravinsky off his pedestal.
Q: What are some of the issues you are hoping to explore with "Shostakovich and His World?"
LB: Some older people think Shostakovich's music is empty, formulaic,
hack, while many younger ones idolize him. That controversy gives us the need to
explore both sides. People come to blows over the things Solomon Volkov has
written [in Testimony]. And both sides of the political/artistic
questions require examination, after all. Because of the brutal Soviet
dictatorship, all arts were suppressed and controlled, but even in Stalin's era
music was an important part of public life. Of all the Soviet arts, only music
survives [as a vital force today]. Was it a secret language of resistance?
With the Cold War over, some have a need to rehabilitate Shostakovich posthumously as an opponent of the regime — though in fact, Shostakovich was like you or me, an ordinary person without the capacity for heroism. He wanted to have a career, but was always an idealist about Socialism and believed it could build a new world of brotherhood, justice, humanity and the rest. Socialism, after all, has a real point — it's attractive, unlike Nazism.
Shostakovich didn't join the Communist Party until 1960, well after Stalin's
death in 1953. But he signed the petition against Andrei Sakharov; even worse,
he was a loyal patriot and Presidium member during the Brezhnev era. But he was
clearly and obviously a person of great contradictions. He suffered from psychic
disfigurements — inner suffering and helplessness — not about
dissidence, but about his desperation and attempt to recover a sliver of
humanity despite Stalin and the rest of it. Still, he writes a mea culpa
to Stalin in the Tenth Symphony. And he dies wearing all his State medals.
When Shostakovich was criticized for Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, he took it seriously and he was hurt. How to make good music for the masses was his genuine artistic problem. His suffering is like that of any great artist in as complicated a situation as ever existed — he didn't try to be a hero; he's just like ourselves.
Q: Some critics have noted the variable quality of Shostakovich's music. Is that a fair criticism?
LB: His music isn't like Haydn's: it's not consistently good. There are
huge high points and low points; he's erratic and, yes, inconsistent. The 14th
Symphony is truly great, the Second Symphony not so — especially the
end. But overall, Shostakovich is a powerful figure who represents a successful
resolution of the tradition of classical music. His base of communication was
with a wide public, and he understood this — it's ironic that he came
out of the USSR, of all places. It's important to realize he succeeded in a
place where many others have not, and it made it difficult for younger composers
born after World War II in the shadow of his great and successful effort. In its
way, Shostakovich's success was far greater — given the circumstances
— than Benjamin Britten's.
Q: So in some ways his music is a reaction to artistic rather than political struggle?
LB: Certainly! What doesn't exist in the West is the emotional/political tension caused by terror and by the absence of freedom and commerce. That can inspire a lot of creativity — or not! [The latter] is state-controlled art. You can say that nowadays in the West, the energy that might have gone into the creative arts goes into "reality TV" and other pop culture. Today social historians write about, say, the popular novel of the 19th century. In a few decades they'll be writing about Friends and other sitcoms as a reflection of cultural life.
Q: How is music — by Shostakovich, or by anyone else, for that matter — reheard as the context changes? How do we reinvent it as listeners?
LB: The rediscovery of some art is done by a generation that has survived that art's bad imitators — the way Jugendstil was rediscovered by the generation that survived bad fake Bauhaus. The magic of instrumental music is that it eludes its context: rebellion or resistance or any other political or historical or aesthetic movement. Here is a great composer who raises the questions of art vs. politics and the independence of art, [its ability] to break free of its history.
The 2004 Bard Music Festival, "Shostakovich and His World,"
features (among others) the American Symphony Orchestra, contralto Ewa
Podles, violist Kim Kashkashian and cellist Zuill Bailey and runs from
13–15 and 20–22 August at the Fisher Center for the Arts at Bard
College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. More information, including a complete schedule
of concerts, lectures and symposia, is available at www.bard.edu/bmf/.
A schedule of related events at the Fisher Center, including stagings
by director Francesca Zambello of Shostakovich's opera The Nose
(28 July–7 August) and his musical comedy Moscow: Cherry Tree Towers (12–15 August), can be found at http://summerscape.bard.edu.
