LPO-0034_Shostakovich_booklet

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-1975)

Symphony No.10 in E minor, Op.93

55:00

01 24:40 02 4:06 03 11:42 04 14:09

Part I Moderato Allegro Allegretto

Andante – Allegro

BERNARD HAITINK conductor LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA David Nolan leader

Recorded live at the ROYAL ALBERT HALL London

LPO – 0034

SHOSTAKOVICH SYMPHONY NO.10 IN E MINOR BERNARD HAITINK conductor LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA

A BBC recording

SHOSTAKOVICH SYMPHONY NO.10 Of Shostakovich’s fifteen symphonies, the Tenth occupies a central position, emotionally and stylistically, if not numerically. He composed it in 1953, a crucial year for Soviet art, and indeed for Soviet life in general. Stalin’s death in March 1953 heralded an end to a period of extreme artistic repression, during which Shostakovich himself had suffered severe rebukes from the Party authorities. In 1936 his second opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, had been pilloried in a notorious Pravda editorial entitled ‘Chaos instead of Music’; and then in 1948, along with most other Soviet composers of worth, he had been condemned by Stalin’s aide Andrey Zhdanov for alleged ‘formalistic’ and ‘anti-democratic’ tendencies in his music.

Just as the former incident caused Shostakovich to withhold from performance his bold, rhetorical Fourth Symphony (composed in 1935-6, but not performed until 1961), so the Zhdanov censures encouraged him to concentrate for the time being on potentially uncontroversial works - film scores, cantatas - and to keep to himself a handful of works which, in such an adverse political climate, would almost certainly have caused a stir: the song cycle From Hebrew Folk-Poetry (1948), the Fourth String Quartet (1949) and the First Violin Concerto (1947-8).

All were eventually performed in the mid-

1950s, by which time conditions were more favourable: in fact, only months after Stalin’s death Pravda was already asserting the composer’s right to ‘independence, courage and experimentation’. In a famous resolution (passed on 28 May 1958) the Party, while claiming that the criticisms of 1948 had ‘played, on the whole, a positive role in the subsequent development of Soviet music’, also acknowledged that ‘Shostakovich... and others, whose works at times revealed the wrong tendencies, were indiscriminately denounced as the representatives of a formalist, anti-people trend’.

Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony was the first significant orchestral piece to emerge in the post-Stalin era, and it was also the first symphony that Shostakovich had attempted for about eight years (his Ninth was written in 1945, at the end of the war). As such, the Tenth was the subject of a fevered three day debate (on 29 and 30 March, and 5 April 1954) at the Moscow branch of the Union of Soviet Composers. Some commentators, regarding the symphony as a ‘non-realistic’ work, condemned its pessimism: others emphasised the composer’s right to be guided by his own artistic integrity. And the young composer Andrey Volkonsky found a neat description for it: an ‘optimistic tragedy’.

It is the first three movements in particular that lend the symphony its aura of tragedy.

The first movement, with its vast span, broad, intensely lyrical thematic material and dark orchestral sonorities, is an essay in deep introspection, unrelievedly sombre in its language - a mood not exactly unfamiliar in Shostakovich’s earlier music, but certainly one he was to explore even more earnestly in his latest symphonies, quartets and songs. This sense of brooding (which recurs in the slow introduction to the finale) sets the tone for the whole work; but grave and despairing though the symphony is, it is also a work of sharp musical contrasts. The second movement, for example, is brutal and savage in its gestures, with those incisive, terrifying rhythmic traits and characteristics of scoring (bustling strings, prominent brass and woodwind) so typical of Shostakovich in his more demonstrative vein.

The third movement is more wistful, an eerie, tentative dance which has as a dominating feature a rumbustious waltz-theme based on the notes of Shostakovich’s personal musical monogram, DSCH – the notes D, E flat, C and B natural. This tiny motif not only has a distinctive melodic outline but also implies an ambiguity of harmony that renders it highly fruitful as a compositional seed; and it permeates much of Shostakovich’s music, either overtly - as in the First Violin Concerto or the Eighth String Quartet (1960) - or in

rather less immediately recognizable guises, as in the First Cello Concerto (1959), and, more quirkily, the Fifteenth Symphony (1971).

It recurs, too, at the dramatic climax of the finale of the Tenth Symphony, a movement which is ostensibly fresh and bright but which, like the scherzo, has an underlying grim power.

Geoffrey Norris

London Philharmonic Orchestra The London Philharmonic Orchestra is known as one of the world’s great orchestras with a reputation secured by its performances in the concert hall and opera house, its many award winning recordings, its trail-blazing international tours and its pioneering education work. Distinguished conductors who have held positions with the Orchestra since its foundation in 1932 by Sir Thomas Beecham include Sir Adrian Boult, Sir John Pritchard, Bernard Haitink, Sir Georg Solti, Klaus Tennstedt, Franz Welser-Möst and Kurt Masur. Vladimir Jurowski was appointed the Orchestra’s Principal Guest Conductor in March 2003, becoming Principal Conductor in September 2007, succeeding Kurt Masur.

The London Philharmonic Orchestra has been resident symphony orchestra at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall since 1992 and there it presents its main series of concerts between September and May each year.

In summer, the Orchestra moves to Sussex where it has been the resident symphony orchestra at Glyndebourne Festival Opera for over 40 years. The Orchestra also performs at venues around the UK and has made numerous tours to America, Europe and Japan, and visited India, Hong Kong, China, South Korea, Australia, South Africa and Abu Dhabi.

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ŠErich Lehner

Bernard Haitink conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra

Bernard Haitink’s conducting career has spanned more than five decades. Principal Conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since 2006, he has been music director of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Dresden Staatskapelle, the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, and Principal Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra between 1967 and 1979. He is Conductor Laureate of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Conductor Emeritus of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Haitink has recorded extensively with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic orchestras and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. His most recent recordings include a highly acclaimed Beethoven cycle with the London Symphony Orchestra, Mahler’s Symphonies Nos.3 and 6, and Bruckner’s Symphony No.7 with the Chicago Symphony. He has also made many opera recordings with the Royal Opera, the London Philharmonic Orchestra at Glyndebourne, Bavarian Radio Orchestra and Dresden Staatskapelle.

Haitink has received many international awards, including an honorary KBE and Companion of Honour. He was named Musical America’s ‘Musician of the Year’ for 2007.

© Clive Barda

BERNARD HAITINK conductor

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