Stuck in Context

by Peter Burwasser

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Published: Feb 10, 2009

Nobody thinks of Napoleon when listening to Beethoven's Third Symphony, and yet he was the composer's direct inspiration for the stirring work — even though he later crossed out the dedication in anger when the Grande Armée attacked Vienna. In the same way, it would be appropriate to expect that the music of Shostakovich is great enough to transcend the layers of politics that enshrouded it during the Soviet composer's lifetime. It is beginning to happen; the Fifth Symphony, while very much a product of the composer's tortured relationship with Stalin, is part of the standard orchestral repertoire now, and stands on its own as great art.

In anticipation of the Cleveland Orchestra's performance of the Shostakovich Seventh Symphony this past Sunday, I wondered if this music was yet divorced from the tremendous symbolism it has engendered. For this listener, anyway, the answer is no. It is impossible to hear the colossal march in the first movement and not envisage the monumental clash of the Wehrmacht and the Red Army across the Russian steppes. In the dirges of the slow movement, I could not displace images of the city that the work was dedicated to, Leningrad, which at the time of the première, 1942, was under siege by the Nazis. The great metropolis of Peter the Great had become a hell on Earth, with people randomly dropping dead of starvation by the droves. The pickup ensemble that first played the music there, in formal concert suits draped over emaciated bodies, was broadcast onto the streets. The audience was openly weeping, and when the work was revived in Russia 15 years later, the tears were no less public, or bitter.

The Leningrad Symphony is a bruiser of a work, 70 minutes in length and scored for an immense orchestra (the magnificent Cleveland brass section was augmented by horns, trumpets and trombones set off to the sides of the stage). It is not one of Shostakovich's best symphonies, lacking the thematic power and structural discipline of the Fifth, Eighth or 10th. All the more the reason, perhaps, to allow it to stand as a work of indelible historical iconicism, even as that conception has evolved and acquired layers of meaning. The composer himself, years after war, was said to have described the meaning of the work this way: "It's about the Leningrad that Stalin destroyed and that Hitler merely finished off."

(p_burwasser@citypaper.net)

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