On April 4, 6, and 7, the Houston Symphony presents a stirring all-Russian program featuring Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 4 and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 3. Opening the concert is Shostakovich’s delightful Ballet Suite No. 1. In this post, discover the turbulent history behind this seemingly carefree music. Get tickets and more information here.
Zhdanov’s infamous decree of 1946 muzzled cultural life in the post-war Soviet Union and began a difficult period for Shostakovich. To make ends meet and to avoid persecution, Shostakovich wrote many propagandistic film scores, choral pieces and songs during this period—more serious compositions (the First Violin Concerto, String Quartets Nos. 3–5, and the 24 Preludes and Fugues) were often written “for the desk drawer.” Shostakovich also recycled light music he had written earlier, republishing it in suites to make additional much-needed income. His Ballet Suite No. 1 was cobbled together in 1949 by Lev Atovmian, an arranger who frequently assisted Shostakovich with the creation of suites from his film scores:
The individual numbers originate in various sources, but all of the main tunes from this suite can be found in his 1935 ballet The Bright Stream, a propagandistic comedy in which ballet dancers from the big city befriend workers on a collective farm (it must be mentioned that in reality the then recent collectivization of farming under Stalin resulted in the deaths of millions of people through famine and violence). Despite a nonsensical plot divorced from reality, the ballet’s escapist antics proved to be a hit with Leningrad audiences. It was recently revived with success by choreographer Alexei Ratmansky for both the Bolshoi (2003) and American Ballet Theater (2011):
Unlike Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, and Prokofiev, Shostakovich did not take his ballet music very seriously. He composed his ballets as quickly as possible, employing a radically simplified version of his musical style to write conventional waltzes, polkas, and variations which were sometimes recycled from one ballet to another. His genius still shines through even when phoning it in, however; Shostakovich had a Mozart-like mind endowed with a prodigious musical memory and ability to compose in his head (like Mozart’s, many of his scores are correction free). There is some evidence to suggest that he occasionally enjoyed composing light music, and his best ballet numbers crackle with his characteristic irreverent wit. The movements of this suite all display a tunefulness, harmonic interest and brilliant orchestration that show Shostakovich could write light music of the highest caliber.
Shostakovich’s subsequent denunciation in 1936 famously began with “Muddle Instead of Music,” a damning review of his modern, expressionistic opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District on page 3 of the January 28 issue of Pravda, but less often mentioned is “Balletic Falsity,” a condemnation of The Bright Stream that appeared a week later. Despite its musical conservativism and propagandistic plot, the ballet was attacked just as vigorously as the more artistically adventurous opera. Critics vilified its supposed bourgeois frivolousness—what they demanded was bombastic, heroic music that would glorify the state. Adrian Piotrovsky, who wrote the ballet’s story, would be executed in 1938. Apparently there was no place in Stalin’s Russia for what Shostakovich himself described as “good entertaining music which might give pleasure even to a qualified listener, or even make him laugh.”
Don’t miss Shostakovich’s Ballet Suite No. 1, part of our Tchaikovsky & Rachmaninoff program April 4, 6, and 7, 2019! Visit houstonsymphony.org for tickets and more information.
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