Shostakovich - Symphony No. 5, 2nd Mov. | Stéphane Denève | New World Symphony

On January 26, 1936, Joseph Stalin walked out of Dmitri Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District during the third act. Two days later, the official Communist party newspaper published a scathing review titled “Muddle instead of Music,” in which the critic warned, “It is a game of clever ingenuity that may end very badly.” Deeply shaken by what he knew was no idle threat, Shostakovich was understandably cautious with his next works, withdrawing his Fourth Symphony before the planned debut in 1936 and shelving his only other major work of the year, Four Romances on Poems by Pushkin, until 1940.

Shostakovich began his Fifth Symphony in April of 1937, and he completed the scoring that fall. No established conductor would take on the score, so the task of preparing the debut fell to Yevgeny Mravinsky, a young conductor who had recently joined the Leningrad Philharmonic.

The premiere of the Fifth Symphony on November 21, 1937, was a watershed moment in Shostakovich’s career, capped by curtain calls that lasted some 30 minutes, until the stunned composer was escorted out of the hall. It was a remarkable redemption for Shostakovich, coming less than two years after his official rebuke.

In the second movement scherzo, the opening heavy bass line promises more of the first movement’s intensity, but ultimately a juxtaposition of bombastic and silly music creates a carnival-like atmosphere.

– © 2024 Aaron Grad

#shostakovich #symphony #orchestra #classicalmusic

Originally performed October 5, 2024.

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