Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-1975) composed his Symphony No 5 in D minor, Op. 47 in 1937. A year after Stalin attended a performance of his acclaimed opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk Region. Outraged, he left the auditorium and Pravda Daily published the infamus editorial "Chaos insted Of Music". It unleashed a fierce discussion in which Shostakovich was branded with many sins: "formalism", "crude naturalism", "petty-bourgeois innovation", "anti-nationalism". Ten days later, a second article-warning "Ballet Falsehood" ( his ballet The Bright Brook being the target) was published. In those years of Stalinist terror, political trials and shootings, among the condemned "enemies of the people" were many close friends and relatives of Shostakovich. The composer was in a nervous depression, also awaiting his physical execution. He cancelled the premiere of the Fourth Symphony, fearing that it too fell far short of the aesthetic standards for clear, accessible and life-affirming music. A few months later, however, he was ready with the new, Fifth Symphony. Has Shostakovich, meanwhile, "re-educated" himself through this work and moved in the right direction of socialist realism? Has he repressed the troubles that have fallen upon him? In the composer's statements in the press that accompanied its presentation we can discern many verbal "masks". "A long internal preparation preceded the birth of the symphony, written according to the models of classical symphonic music in the usual four-movement form," he explains, announcing it as "The Soviet Artist's Answer to Fair Criticism"... He told about his conception in Vechernaya Moskva Daily: "The theme of my symphony is the elevation of the personality. I saw man with all his experiences at the centre of the conception of this work, lyrical in its character from beginning to end. The symphony's finale resolves the tragedy-laden moments of the first movements in a cheerful, optimistic way... I think Soviet tragedy as a genre has every right to exist." The symphony is a radical turning point in his oeuvre. It legitimises Shostakovich's musical lexis, which will undisguisedly speak in his subsequent symphonies the truth of everything experienced and suffered. It was premiered on November 21^st , 1937 in Leningrad with the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by the young Yevgeny Mravinsky. Everyone in the packed concert hall waited to hear the composer's "response". The vaunted classical balance of the symphony is deceptive. Already the epigraph-introduction sets the charge of raw melodic expression, and in its metamorphosis the main theme of the first movement becomes a triumphant march of evil. The parodic light-heartedness of the scherzo is a strong contrast to the third movement, the largo, which is the dramatic centre of the cycle. During the finale, according to eyewitness recollections, many listeners began to rise from their armchairs in the hall. It was as if an electric spark exploded out of the music a thunderous applause that did not cease for 40 minutes! Lyubov Shaporina, a friend from Shostakovich's circle, testified, "The audience gave unbridled cheers, demonstrative of all the venom to which poor Mitya was subjected. Everyone kept repeating the same phrase: 'He answered and how well he answered'. The writer Alexander Fadeyev noted in his diary, "The end does not sound like a way out (and even less like a triumph or victory), but like punishment or revenge." The Fifth Symphony was given a formal public recognition. The work's finale was hailed as a triumph of optimism. It was blessed for performance throughout the Soviet Union, its recording followed, and the score was sent abroad to famous conductors. To this day, the ambiguity of this symphony is an "object" of detailed research. Quotations from Bizet's opera Carmen are also encoded in its Aesopian language. They have been identified as echoes of the composer's love affair with the translator Elena Konstantinovska. The insistent repetition of the tone "la" in the coda of the finale is associated with the affectionate name Shostakovich used to call her - "Lyalya".