Program notes for the There and Back Again concert on May 24, 2007, featuring the works of Avner Dorman, Béla Bartók, Osvaldo Golijov, and Dmitri Shostakovich.
Rudolf Barshai arranged Chamber Symphony for Strings, Opus 110a from Dmitri Shostakovich’s Quartet No. 8. Shostakovich composed the Quartet in a three-day period in 1960. At the time, the “official” story behind the Quartet was that Shostakovich had been so shocked and distressed upon witnessing the destruction in Dresden that he composed the piece to express his horror of Fascism. The quartet’s subtitle, “To the Memory of the Victims of Facism,” no doubt helped to fuel this myth. But in fact, the “victim” to which Shostakovich was referring is himself: he composed Quartet No. 8 as a musical and autobiographical suicide note. However deep his despair, Shostakovich did not commit suicide – he died fifteen years later of natural causes.
With the composer’s permission, the violist and conductor Rudolf Barshay transcribed Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110 (1960) for chamber orchestra, which, in accordance with Shostakovich’s wishes, was given the title of “Chamber Symphony.” Subtitled immediately after a visit to Dresden, Germany. He was overwhelmed with emotion after learning of the complete devastation of the city, a result of Allied bombing raids in February 1945, in which 140,000 people died. Consisting of a sequence of five uninterrupted movements, the emotions range from quiet poignancy to violent, faster sections, including one depicting the actual bombings. Often described as autobiographical since the dominant theme consists of Shostakovich’s musical signature D-S-C-H (D-Eb-C-B), it is at the very least an extremely personal outcry against war. He also includes quotes from many earlier works, including his Symphonies Nos. 1, 5, 8 and 10, his Piano Trio No. 2 and the revolutionary Russian song Languishing in Prison. Most telling is Shostakovich’s inclusion of a quote from the line “Tortured by merciless enslavement” from his opera Lady Macbeth.
Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony expands his Eighth String Quartet for full string orchestra. Composed in 1960, this music encapsulates his life’s work, both spiritually and literally. Its numerous themes come from previous compositions, forming a musical autobiography that connects his First and Tenth Symphonies, First ’Cello Concerto, Piano Trio, and opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsinsk. The first theme is his own motto – D.S.C.H. (D – E-flat – C – B in Cyrillic script), heard previously in his Tenth Symphony (1954). The Quartet originated in a commission for the film Five Days, Five Nights, about the bombing of Dresden in 1945. Shostakovich visited the city in the summer of 1960: profoundly moved by the destruction, he composed the music in three of the most intensely creative days of his life. However, the Dresden context gives only the most obvious layer of meaning. According to Izvestia, the music was ‘dedicated to the victims of fascism and war’; it is also possible to hear in the work a lament for the tragedy of the Russian people’s suffering under Communism.
The solemn, lamenting character of the first movement, dominated by the DSCH motif and a second, a tightly chromatic melody introduced by solo violin, and a more serene idea, is shattered rudely by the second movement’s unceasing evocation of a musical hell. Fast and furious, DSCH is now screamed out by in the high register of the violins, before it exhausts itself, leading directly to the third movement, a skeletal ‘danse macabre’. A contrasting middle section introduces a theme from the First ’Cello Concerto, reappearing as a connection to the fourth movement. Now we hear a Jewish melody and a folk song, ‘Languishing in Prison’, whose significance needs no explanation. The final movement echoes the first, now slowly fading into cold silence.