Listening to Shostakovich’s 4th symphony at a time of political upheaval is salutary. Written in 1936 at a time of terror in the Soviet Union, the symphony was not played until 1961. Ian MacDonald in his brilliant book, “The New Shostakovich’ describes what happened in January 1936. As Shostakovich was waiting for a train he read an article in Pravda. “On page three was an article, headlined ‘Muddle Instead of Music’, attacking his opera Lady Macbeth as a cacophonous and pornographic insult to the Soviet People and threatening that unless the composer of this degenerate work changed his ways things ‘could end very badly’. Though unsigned, the article was obviously by Stalin himself.”
“To be publically condemned by Stalin was tantamount to a death sentence. In a single day, Shostakovich went from being a cosseted piece of Soviet property to an anathematised outcast – and this at a time when outcasts were being packed off to Siberia in scores of thousands every month.”
“The composer’s fall was resounding. To know him was dangerous, to associate with him suicidal. Like millions of others, he now lay awake every night, listening for the sound a car drawing up outside, of boots thudding on the stairs, of a sharp rap at the door.”
One out of every ten Soviet citizens were arrested and ‘disappeared’ during this period. Most went to the Gulags in Siberia. Hundreds of thousands were taken away and shot. Everyone knew what was going on but no-one could say anything. Fixed false smiles were the order of the day. If you looked unhappy it was taken as evidence that you knew about the disappearances and so you were a threat to the authorities – and taken away.
It is an astonishing piece of work. Played brilliantly by the BBC Philharmonic it is not easy listening. Menace, sadness and fear combine with manic fairground music to give a flavour of life lived under constant threat.
It is worrying that there are moves in Russia to rehabilitate Stalin and to rewrite history.
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