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Dmitri Shostakovich was born in St Petersburg in the early years of the last century. | 0:00:33 | 0:00:40 | |
He is one of Russia's finest, most popular and most controversial composers. | 0:00:40 | 0:00:46 | |
Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony is one of the great cultural documents of Stalinist Russia. | 0:00:52 | 0:00:58 | |
It was written during the purges | 0:00:58 | 0:01:01 | |
after vicious attacks on his opera Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk. | 0:01:01 | 0:01:06 | |
The symphony, subtitled A Soviet Artist's Reply To Just Criticism, | 0:01:06 | 0:01:12 | |
re-established Shostakovich's reputation as an ideologically sound Soviet composer. | 0:01:12 | 0:01:19 | |
But, since his death in 1975, the most extraordinary battle has raged over his soul. | 0:01:21 | 0:01:28 | |
Was he a loyal son of the Communist regime, or does his music represent a voice of protest and dissent? | 0:01:28 | 0:01:35 | |
This film explores the musical world of this complex man through his Fifth Symphony, | 0:01:35 | 0:01:42 | |
the towering masterpiece of early Soviet music. | 0:01:42 | 0:01:46 | |
We'll rehearse and perform its four movements with the great Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, | 0:01:46 | 0:01:53 | |
working for the first time with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. | 0:01:53 | 0:01:58 | |
Great. Well, I'm very impressed. It's very, very powerful. | 0:01:58 | 0:02:03 | |
What I need here is, "De-da! De-do! De-da! Where? Where? What? What? Who?" | 0:02:03 | 0:02:09 | |
Straight 32. | 0:02:09 | 0:02:11 | |
'Speaking about the Fifth Symphony, I have to maybe even insist | 0:02:11 | 0:02:17 | |
'that it is not only about evil and it's not only about the Soviet Empire.' | 0:02:17 | 0:02:24 | |
I think it's time to defend this man. | 0:02:24 | 0:02:26 | |
I think his life is much richer than... | 0:02:26 | 0:02:31 | |
this kind of simple, dramatic, tragic, but very simple, you know, struggle. | 0:02:31 | 0:02:38 | |
Today you can't repeat and repeat the same thing, so you just have to see more music in this music. | 0:02:38 | 0:02:45 | |
More music. | 0:02:45 | 0:02:48 | |
SINGING IN RUSSIAN | 0:03:09 | 0:03:11 | |
RUSSIAN | 0:03:14 | 0:03:16 | |
Dmitri Shostakovich grew up in quite extraordinary times. | 0:03:26 | 0:03:31 | |
He was born in Imperial Russia in 1906, so that meant he spent his youth in the Russian Revolution. | 0:03:31 | 0:03:39 | |
Against this backdrop of social and political unrest, modernism was flourishing in the arts. | 0:03:39 | 0:03:46 | |
THE INTERNATIONALE IS SUNG IN RUSSIAN | 0:03:46 | 0:03:50 | |
Russian art was now producing its own distinctive leaders, like Malevich. | 0:03:50 | 0:03:58 | |
After the 1917 Revolution, artists became a central force in the rebuilding of society | 0:04:10 | 0:04:17 | |
with an explosion of cultural innovation. | 0:04:17 | 0:04:21 | |
From the abstract Constructivism of Tatlin and Gabo... | 0:04:21 | 0:04:26 | |
to the graphics of El Lissitzky... | 0:04:27 | 0:04:30 | |
and the films of Vertov and Eisenstein. | 0:04:32 | 0:04:36 | |
In 1925, the year that Eisenstein produced Battleship Potemkin, | 0:04:36 | 0:04:42 | |
the star student of the renamed Leningrad Conservatoire, | 0:04:42 | 0:04:47 | |
19-year-old Dmitri Shostakovich, presented his First Symphony. | 0:04:47 | 0:04:51 | |
Here is energy which is his own, | 0:04:58 | 0:05:01 | |
but also there was an energy of the time which gave him so much support. | 0:05:01 | 0:05:06 | |
We shouldn't forget Shostakovich was part of this phenomenal cultural renaissance in Russia, | 0:05:07 | 0:05:15 | |
especially in Petersburg in the early 20th century. | 0:05:15 | 0:05:19 | |
It didn't start with Stalin. He was already Dmitri Shostakovich | 0:05:19 | 0:05:24 | |
when he composed his First Symphony. | 0:05:24 | 0:05:26 | |
When Shostakovich's father died, the family found itself in a parlous financial state, | 0:05:39 | 0:05:46 | |
so the young composer took jobs pounding the piano in local cinemas, | 0:05:46 | 0:05:52 | |
including this one, the Parisiana on Nevsky Prospect. | 0:05:52 | 0:05:56 | |
Within three years, he was composing his own film scores. | 0:06:00 | 0:06:05 | |
By the age of 25, he was the most radical composer of the new Russia, | 0:06:05 | 0:06:11 | |
with two further symphonies, ballet scores, theatre works and an opera to his name. | 0:06:11 | 0:06:18 | |
But the world was changing fast. | 0:06:18 | 0:06:21 | |
Lenin's death in 1924 had given Stalin scope to orchestrate his own rise to power. | 0:06:21 | 0:06:28 | |
His supremacy brought rigid control to every aspect of life. | 0:06:30 | 0:06:35 | |
Intimidation and murder dealt with any opposition to the supposedly bright and beautiful new order. | 0:06:35 | 0:06:43 | |
The terror and tragedy of the 1930s had arrived. | 0:06:47 | 0:06:51 | |
Meanwhile Shostakovich continued to develop his daring musical language | 0:06:53 | 0:06:58 | |
with his biting new opera, Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk. | 0:06:58 | 0:07:03 | |
The opera was a triumph. | 0:07:23 | 0:07:25 | |
But in January 1936, Stalin came to a performance. | 0:07:25 | 0:07:30 | |
He left after the interval and in what must be the most famous review in history, | 0:07:30 | 0:07:36 | |
the composer was slated in the Party newspaper, Pravda... | 0:07:36 | 0:07:41 | |
"From first moment, listener is shocked by deliberately dissonant confused stream of sound. | 0:07:42 | 0:07:49 | |
"Music quakes, grunts and growls. | 0:07:51 | 0:07:55 | |
"Here we have leftist confusion, instead of natural human music. | 0:07:56 | 0:08:01 | |
"This is a game that may end very badly." | 0:08:11 | 0:08:15 | |
MAN SPEAKS RUSSIAN | 0:08:17 | 0:08:20 | |
Someone very strong, very powerful | 0:08:56 | 0:08:59 | |
forced Shostakovich | 0:08:59 | 0:09:01 | |
not to play this dangerous game any more with his fate. | 0:09:01 | 0:09:08 | |
I regret that there is not another great Russian opera | 0:09:09 | 0:09:14 | |
written by Shostakovich. | 0:09:14 | 0:09:16 | |
He was in a way saying goodbye to the music which involves words. | 0:09:18 | 0:09:23 | |
He just decided that symphony is his destiny from then. | 0:09:24 | 0:09:31 | |
In fact, Shostakovich was already working on a symphony when the Pravda attack hit, | 0:09:31 | 0:09:38 | |
his complex, tragic Fourth, which was not performed until 1961, eight years after Stalin's death, | 0:09:38 | 0:09:45 | |
so the first new symphony to be heard from the disgraced composer, in November 1937, was the Fifth. | 0:09:45 | 0:09:53 | |
At the beginning, please. | 0:09:54 | 0:09:56 | |
One... | 0:09:56 | 0:09:58 | |
The Fifth Symphony for me is what I call perfect, well-shaped, incredibly polished. | 0:10:22 | 0:10:29 | |
It starts with a big tension and for a long time only the string section is involved. | 0:10:30 | 0:10:37 | |
He starts to be more complicated, | 0:10:38 | 0:10:41 | |
so we have to avoid maybe there is unbelievable repetitiveness. Just... | 0:10:41 | 0:10:47 | |
HE HUMS ..like sleeping drug. | 0:10:47 | 0:10:51 | |
Figure one. | 0:10:51 | 0:10:53 | |
'You're getting used to a certain atmosphere, to a certain sound.' | 0:10:58 | 0:11:03 | |
You know... # Da-dee! | 0:11:03 | 0:11:06 | |
# Da-da-a! Da-da, da-da. # | 0:11:06 | 0:11:09 | |
You have at least two sides obviously struggling. | 0:11:09 | 0:11:13 | |
Then very carefully some winds start to play. | 0:11:22 | 0:11:27 | |
Yeah, yeah. Good. | 0:11:28 | 0:11:31 | |
Bassoons, very good, but don't show that there is a heavy force entering. | 0:11:31 | 0:11:36 | |
Join strings, play it very easily. | 0:11:36 | 0:11:39 | |
It should be like you come in and say...("What is going there?") | 0:11:39 | 0:11:43 | |
Not that, "Oh, woodwinds are playing a lot of music!" Just very, very carefully, please. | 0:11:43 | 0:11:50 | |
Strings, most important thing I invite you to maybe accept | 0:11:50 | 0:11:55 | |
is that there is no depression in this part of the symphony. | 0:11:55 | 0:12:00 | |
It's rather young hero speaking, # Ta-ra! Ta-ra! # | 0:12:00 | 0:12:04 | |
Or... # Ta-ra-ra... # Or maybe several of them. | 0:12:04 | 0:12:08 | |
But in no way, please, think that... FUNEREAL HUMMING | 0:12:08 | 0:12:13 | |
Bad. Too bad. | 0:12:16 | 0:12:19 | |
It will come later. There will be some problems this hero will face, but it's not yet. | 0:12:19 | 0:12:25 | |
So, before the horn section is introduced, | 0:12:25 | 0:12:29 | |
you are already a very serious way into the symphony, you know. | 0:12:29 | 0:12:35 | |
It's a lot already happening. Then you suddenly see there are trumpets also playing. | 0:12:35 | 0:12:42 | |
Then you see that a trombone has finally started to move. | 0:12:42 | 0:12:47 | |
Then suddenly you have piano. | 0:12:47 | 0:12:50 | |
Great. One warning. | 0:12:58 | 0:13:00 | |
Pizzicato should work hard, but by far the interesting timbre is piano. | 0:13:00 | 0:13:06 | |
By far. We have harp, we had a lot of strings already, timpani is silent, | 0:13:06 | 0:13:12 | |
trumpets practically didn't play, strings worked quite hard. It's the way Shostakovich orchestrated this. | 0:13:12 | 0:13:19 | |
Everything he does is so measured. There is no nonsense. | 0:13:19 | 0:13:23 | |
You can't say, "They all play." They are NOT playing for so much. | 0:13:23 | 0:13:27 | |
Discipline is everywhere in a symphony, | 0:13:35 | 0:13:39 | |
as he was clear. It was totally finished, was a freedom for people. | 0:13:39 | 0:13:45 | |
To move freely was a problem. To speak freely was impossible. | 0:13:47 | 0:13:52 | |
To trust in many was a risk. | 0:13:53 | 0:13:56 | |
And Shostakovich absorbed and felt this quite new atmosphere. | 0:14:03 | 0:14:08 | |
Today I read Herald Tribune. | 0:14:09 | 0:14:12 | |
The front page was saying, "In this vast and chaotic country," that was about Russia today. | 0:14:12 | 0:14:19 | |
Well, it was vast country in '37. | 0:14:19 | 0:14:22 | |
It was not chaotic. | 0:14:24 | 0:14:27 | |
It was iron structure and iron will. | 0:14:27 | 0:14:31 | |
Horror, you know... | 0:14:31 | 0:14:34 | |
and fear. | 0:14:34 | 0:14:36 | |
But no chaos. They could see everything in this huge country. | 0:14:36 | 0:14:42 | |
Figure 27. Please, play it with your instruments lifted up | 0:14:42 | 0:14:47 | |
and with the widest, largest sound you ever use in your professional practice. | 0:14:47 | 0:14:54 | |
# Da! Da! Da! Dee! # | 0:14:54 | 0:14:57 | |
It should be like a laser burning all on its way - burning. | 0:14:57 | 0:15:02 | |
In two...one. | 0:15:02 | 0:15:05 | |
He became so economical, so clever, so smart. | 0:15:21 | 0:15:26 | |
It's like a boxer who doesn't really need 15 rounds to move his big hands, you know. | 0:15:26 | 0:15:34 | |
He maybe knows how to find the moment and do something extremely dangerous, extremely effective. | 0:15:34 | 0:15:41 | |
This is what Shostakovich learnt so quickly in these difficult years. | 0:15:41 | 0:15:46 | |
It was a huge change, huge change. | 0:15:46 | 0:15:48 | |
And he never lost this ability. | 0:15:48 | 0:15:51 | |
MAN SPEAKS RUSSIAN | 0:32:09 | 0:32:12 | |
Was it Shostakovich's own idea to use this subtitle, "A Soviet Artist's Reply To Just Criticism"? | 0:33:23 | 0:33:31 | |
No problem, no problem. We're getting there. | 0:34:13 | 0:34:18 | |
It should be a little bit more like a soccer game. You start to play...pshshsh! Run. | 0:34:18 | 0:34:24 | |
The beginning should give this impression, then it settles. So... Bam! Bam! Bam! | 0:34:24 | 0:34:30 | |
In the Fifth Symphony, the huge first movement demands a contrast in the second movement. | 0:34:30 | 0:34:37 | |
Shostakovich had tremendous love for life, tremendous love for life. | 0:34:37 | 0:34:43 | |
He smoked. | 0:34:43 | 0:34:45 | |
He... | 0:34:45 | 0:34:47 | |
was able to drink a big glass of vodka... | 0:34:47 | 0:34:51 | |
just in one go. | 0:34:51 | 0:34:53 | |
He loved football, Shostakovich, | 0:34:54 | 0:34:57 | |
and you hear it in the scherzi which he composed, but still there is some kind of demon in him. | 0:34:57 | 0:35:05 | |
-So, when you have that violin solo in the second movement... -HE HUMS THE TUNE | 0:35:47 | 0:35:54 | |
..is that not with a smile on the face, do you think? | 0:35:54 | 0:35:58 | |
I think it's a little girl, like a little flower, | 0:36:00 | 0:36:05 | |
under the boot of... | 0:36:05 | 0:36:08 | |
..you know, a soldier. | 0:36:08 | 0:36:11 | |
I think it has sarcastic... | 0:36:23 | 0:36:26 | |
It has a powerful touch. | 0:36:26 | 0:36:29 | |
It has enormous energy, but it also has this skeleton-like, you know, this pizzicato... | 0:36:29 | 0:36:37 | |
doo-doo-doo-doo. | 0:36:37 | 0:36:40 | |
It has always this phantasmagorical element, for me at least. | 0:36:46 | 0:36:51 | |
But, you know, it would be very boring if we all agreed once and for ever that this is it. | 0:36:51 | 0:36:59 | |
We didn't. And even I will maybe disagree with Maxim. | 0:36:59 | 0:37:03 | |
I see Shostakovich smiling, even throughout this symphony. I hear it. | 0:37:03 | 0:37:10 | |
Nothing is accented. | 0:43:34 | 0:43:36 | |
Nothing at all is accented. | 0:43:36 | 0:43:39 | |
There are two things a conductor can think of here. | 0:43:48 | 0:43:53 | |
A, timing. | 0:43:53 | 0:43:55 | |
When? ..When? | 0:43:55 | 0:43:57 | |
B, how? "How?" is much more difficult than "when?" | 0:43:57 | 0:44:01 | |
Like in the best way of singing, you can touch the sound like... | 0:44:01 | 0:44:07 | |
# Ah-h. # | 0:44:07 | 0:44:09 | |
I do nothing of... This is your breath control. | 0:44:09 | 0:44:14 | |
So, I wanted to reach mezzo-forte, but I maybe don't want it to do anything vertical. | 0:44:14 | 0:44:21 | |
Never... | 0:44:21 | 0:44:23 | |
# Dee. # | 0:44:23 | 0:44:25 | |
..anything of this. | 0:44:25 | 0:44:27 | |
So it, from nothing, goes... | 0:44:27 | 0:44:29 | |
# Ah-h-h-h... # | 0:44:29 | 0:44:33 | |
It's a high pilotage. It's the most difficult thing in a stringed instrument. | 0:44:33 | 0:44:39 | |
In the slow movement, Shostakovich allows the listener to, like, open the door | 0:44:39 | 0:44:48 | |
and see... | 0:44:48 | 0:44:50 | |
the very place... | 0:44:50 | 0:44:53 | |
where the most essentially important spiritual items of Shostakovich himself... | 0:44:53 | 0:45:01 | |
..are normally closed to other people. | 0:45:02 | 0:45:05 | |
There's so much beauty there and there's so much tension, | 0:45:18 | 0:45:23 | |
but I really hear Shostakovich, a child sometimes. | 0:45:23 | 0:45:28 | |
This hope, this course, this orchestration with these high strings | 0:45:28 | 0:45:34 | |
very much reminds me what he could experience in the first 15 years of his life. | 0:45:34 | 0:45:41 | |
Beauty... | 0:45:41 | 0:45:44 | |
hope... | 0:45:44 | 0:45:46 | |
love. | 0:45:46 | 0:45:48 | |
I strongly believe that he travels back, | 0:45:54 | 0:45:58 | |
then he... | 0:45:58 | 0:46:01 | |
comes to reality and to danger and deadly risks... | 0:46:01 | 0:46:07 | |
of today. | 0:46:07 | 0:46:09 | |
Maybe it was in a way a self-portrait - I don't know Shostakovich well - | 0:46:29 | 0:46:35 | |
but it's his entire life, you know. | 0:46:35 | 0:46:38 | |
It's this childish and beautiful, very rosy, you know, very hopeful perception of the world | 0:46:38 | 0:46:45 | |
and then... | 0:46:45 | 0:46:48 | |
you know, physical inability to move, to speak, and they're just unbearably strong. | 0:46:48 | 0:46:54 | |
And I think it is hugely underestimated how much he was able to do as a, in a way, a poet, | 0:46:54 | 0:47:03 | |
a man with a very lyrical and very shy personality. | 0:47:03 | 0:47:08 | |
Several weeks after the premiere, | 1:04:10 | 1:04:13 | |
Shostakovich wrote that through the tragic conflicts and turmoil of the symphony, | 1:04:13 | 1:04:20 | |
he wanted optimism to assert itself as a world view. | 1:04:20 | 1:04:24 | |
This man conducted the premiere of the Fifth Symphony in 1937 | 1:05:07 | 1:05:12 | |
and became the dominant force in its interpretation for the next half-century. | 1:05:12 | 1:05:18 | |
The chief conductor of the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, Yevgeni Mravinsky. | 1:05:18 | 1:05:25 | |
In the very first historical performance, | 1:05:28 | 1:05:32 | |
Mravinsky was somehow focused on the power and organisation and this grandness of this finale. | 1:05:32 | 1:05:39 | |
The power was always his strength, Mravinsky, concentration. | 1:05:39 | 1:05:46 | |
His face...was like... | 1:05:46 | 1:05:49 | |
was... | 1:05:49 | 1:05:51 | |
stone, in which you have this... | 1:05:51 | 1:05:53 | |
and his eyes, incredibly strong. | 1:05:53 | 1:05:56 | |
He was able to nearly paralyse orchestras. | 1:05:56 | 1:06:00 | |
Some people long ago called it the march of NKVD... | 1:06:18 | 1:06:23 | |
the finale of this symphony. | 1:06:23 | 1:06:26 | |
It's a very famous image. | 1:06:26 | 1:06:29 | |
Yeah. But then... | 1:06:29 | 1:06:32 | |
40 years ago, the great American musician Leonard Bernstein | 1:06:32 | 1:06:37 | |
played it unbelievably fast. | 1:06:37 | 1:06:40 | |
People were excited. | 1:06:51 | 1:06:53 | |
So, in no way it was played like a march, in no way it could look like a scherzo, | 1:06:53 | 1:07:00 | |
but it was just an unbelievable display of drive, madness and development and growth. | 1:07:00 | 1:07:08 | |
ENTHUSIASTIC APPLAUSE | 1:07:23 | 1:07:25 | |
It's a new time today, so talking about such a central... | 1:07:25 | 1:07:30 | |
..mainstream symphony like the Fifth, | 1:07:31 | 1:07:35 | |
you know, one has to find a new... way of presenting it. | 1:07:35 | 1:07:42 | |
# Da-a! De-de-de-da-a De-de-de-dee... # | 1:07:42 | 1:07:45 | |
And the moment when triplet appears should shine all the time. | 1:07:45 | 1:07:50 | |
It's not power I'm looking for. It's incredible precision how it speaks. | 1:07:50 | 1:07:57 | |
The solo itself is very, very good. | 1:07:57 | 1:07:59 | |
The sound comes very, very clear, but then before the climax, please watch the triplets are in good shape. | 1:07:59 | 1:08:07 | |
One...two...and...one... | 1:08:07 | 1:08:09 | |
Gergiev actually got us to play Shostakovich Five as it was written. | 1:08:29 | 1:08:34 | |
Normally we have to alter | 1:08:34 | 1:08:37 | |
quite a lot of what would appear to be written. | 1:08:37 | 1:08:41 | |
We have to do interpretations. | 1:08:41 | 1:08:44 | |
It's wonderful to be requested to play just what's written on the score. | 1:08:44 | 1:08:50 | |
That takes enormous confidence from a conductor. | 1:08:50 | 1:08:54 | |
Working with Gergiev was a unique experience and terribly exciting | 1:08:54 | 1:08:59 | |
because he involves the whole orchestra the whole time. | 1:08:59 | 1:09:04 | |
Even when you're not playing, you're part of what's going on | 1:09:04 | 1:09:08 | |
and he makes it so exciting by the intensity in which he provides some of the work for you to do | 1:09:08 | 1:09:15 | |
and by the sounds he creates. | 1:09:15 | 1:09:17 | |
I think in the Fifth Symphony, | 1:09:17 | 1:09:20 | |
excitement today in playing this symphony | 1:09:20 | 1:09:25 | |
is maybe more important than to try to put yourself in 1937 | 1:09:25 | 1:09:30 | |
and imagine all these faces of NKVD men | 1:09:30 | 1:09:34 | |
and imagine all this grim reality. | 1:09:34 | 1:09:37 | |
I think, as an artist, that what we take out of it we remember, | 1:09:37 | 1:09:42 | |
so we have to over all, let's say, impress the public that there was a tragedy, there was a tension, | 1:09:42 | 1:09:49 | |
but we shouldn't really try to restore. | 1:09:49 | 1:09:53 | |
You understand there is a drama and you remember that. | 1:09:53 | 1:09:58 | |
You don't become trivial. Do not overdose with this, let's say, tragic clothes, you know. | 1:09:58 | 1:10:05 | |
-Sacrifices... -One has to find a musical voice which yet brings you to the same height of expression | 1:10:05 | 1:10:13 | |
and to the same colour altogether, altogether. | 1:10:13 | 1:10:18 | |
One, two, three... | 1:10:18 | 1:10:20 | |
Trumpets, it will sound maybe again not exactly what Shostakovich... | 1:10:36 | 1:10:41 | |
He didn't put it in a diary or in a book, so he never in fact had himself do these things, | 1:10:42 | 1:10:49 | |
but can you play this like a rocket practically going to reach the sun? | 1:10:49 | 1:10:55 | |
I don't want marching on it. It has to go...shshshsh... | 1:10:55 | 1:11:00 | |
and it starts to burn your ear. This is the character I want. | 1:11:00 | 1:11:05 | |
The Fifth for me is the most Soviet of all Shostakovich's symphonies | 1:11:06 | 1:11:12 | |
because it was describing, it was in a way reporting to the system. | 1:11:12 | 1:11:18 | |
It was hiding from the system. | 1:11:18 | 1:11:21 | |
It was challenging the system, but it was a hidden power of Shostakovich. | 1:11:21 | 1:11:26 | |
He says, "I am ready to fight and I am ready to talk. You don't break me. You tried. | 1:11:26 | 1:11:33 | |
"I know how to deal with you. I will be a great Soviet living composer now." | 1:11:33 | 1:11:40 | |
And he won. He was a winner. | 1:11:40 | 1:11:43 | |
Subtitles on 888 by Dorothy Moore BBC Scotland 2002 | 1:23:43 | 1:23:46 | |
E-mail us at [email protected] | 1:23:46 | 1:23:49 |