The conditions under which Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his Fifth Symphony were so extreme that any misstep could easily have led to his arrest and death. It’s remarkable that the Russian composer was able to produce anything at all, let alone a work that would see him immortalised in concert halls around the world.
Dmitry Shostakovich in the audience at the Bach Celebration, 28 July, 1950. Photo by Roger & Renate Rössing, Wikimedia Commons
“It is difficult to imagine with what fear and trembling we lived through the Stalinist reign of terror,” Shostakovich’s friend and fellow composer Venyamin Basner recalls in Elizabeth Wilson’s biography Shostakovich: A Life Remembered. “Dmitri Dmitriyevich was in some ways broken by this terror.”
In 1937, Shostakovich was reeling from the official condemnation of his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District – famously condemned as ‘muddle instead of music’ in Pravda after Stalin attended a performance – and had, in December 1936, pulled the plug on the premiere of his Fourth Symphony....
It has long been a “given” that there are only two Soviet-era composers of international standing – Prokofiev and Shostakovich. Even Prokofiev’s claim is open to question as he received his training before the Revolution and did not return to Russia until the mid-30’s, by which time he had built up his reputation in the West, mainly as a pianist. Also making up the triumvirate, although with reservation, is Khachaturian, who, although an accomplished composer in his own right is primarily remembered for pop exotica such as the Sabre Dance. It is as if Ravel’s reputation existed on his Bolero alone.
I am a composer who owns to a triple identity: British by birth and training, Australian by residency and naturalisation, Jewish by culture and identification. It has often been put to me that “Jews are known as great performers (especially on the violin) but where are your composers?” – naming Mendelssohn and Mahler and then drawing a blank. I have responded by naming over 100, only citing those whose music I have actually heard, with multiple entries for each letter of the alphabet. While I failed to find candidates for Q (only Quantz and Quilter among the general population of composers) or X (for Xenakis) I was also beached where it came to V. I had read somewhere about a composer called Moshe Vainberg (sic0 but didn’t know anything about him.
On research I found that he had been born Mieczyslaw Weinberg( theaccepted spelling of his last name in 1919 in Warsaw, where his father was musical director of the famed Yiddish theatre, and he had attended the Conservatory in that city. He was on the lip of an international career as a pianist when the Nazis invaded Poland. He escaped over the Soviet border, arriving in Minsk, Belarus – it was here that he acquired the characteristically Jewish forename Moisei – where he received his first formal composition lessons, although he had composed several works already, mainly for piano and strings. When the Nazis arrived, aided by the local population who had yet to experience the reality of German rule, he travelled several thousand kilometres to Tashkent. Uzbekistan, with the help of the Red Army, to whom he dedicated his first symphony. While in Tashkent he made to life-altering contacts; the dramaturge Solomon Mikhoels, whose daughter he married, and Dimitri Shostakovich, who was impressed by his work and who persuaded him to move to Moscow, where he lived over half a century until his death in 1996. In the meantime his parents and sister had remained in Poland and had been murdered by the Nazis. While this and many other details of his life add up to a tragic picture, he enjoyed the friendship and patronage of Shostakovich, who saw him not as a follower, but as an equal, an opinion held by many who have belatedly come upon his music, which has been virtually unheard in the West until the present century, and in Australia not at all.
Why and how has he taken so long to be recognised for the great composer that he is? The precariousness of his existence as a Jew did not end with the defeat of the Nazis. He was among those targeted by Stalin in the reactionary post-war years and like Shostakovich, was forced to walk a tightrope between the demands of “socialist realism” and being true to his own exacting standards. Although during the relatively liberal years of the ’50’s and ’60’s he began to receive recognition among Russia’s brightest and best musicians -Rostropovich, the Oistrakhs, Kondrashin – he stayed below the horizon and did not promote himself. He remained an outstanding pianist – he and Shostakovich played 4-hand transcriptions of each other’s numerous symphonies -Shostakovich wrote 15, Weinberg 22 – bur did not tour and did not take students. His opera The Passenger went into rehearsal in 1968 with the Bolshoi and then was inexplicably shelved; it did not receive a staged performance until 2010 when it revealed as a 20th century masterpiece.
Shostakovich died in 1975 after years of ill-health and diminishing standing. Weinberg, although his own star was fading continued to compose symphonies of distinctive character, although, racked by Crohn’s disease, he seemed indifferent as to whether they were performed or not. His symphony no.21, subtitled “Kaddish” after the Jewish prayer for the dead, is his last completed work in this form. It is dedicated to the Warsaw ghetto revolt and is a worthy memorial to its victims and survivors. Throughout his career Weinberg never abandoned his Polish and Jewish roots and the score incorporates a quote from a Chopin ballade as well as the sound of Klezmer – Jewish wedding music. Other influences detectable his work include Mahler, Bartok and Britten
Like his mentor he composed an immense amount of music in all genres, orchestral, chamber, concertos, ballets, choral and solo vocal as well as a huge volume of music for film. One of the best-loved of his film scores is for an animated feature “Vinni-Pukh” which is none other than our old friend Winnie-the-Pooh.