In 1925, at the age of 19, Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his first symphony, and in 1971, at age 65, he completed his last, No. 15. In between were years of triumph and tribulation as Soviet oppression waxed and waned. Under Stalin, Shostakovich traded the hero's mantle for the pall of suspicion; surviving the dictator, he regained the approval of the regime. Outside the Soviet Union, Shostakovich earned and never lost the respect of musicians and audiences. More so than many of his Western contemporaries, he became a staple in concert halls the world over.
A new CD by St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Orchestra, Russia's most venerable classical ensemble, pairs Shostakovich's Symphony No. 1 with Symphony No. 15. It's an apt and instructive coupling by conductor Valery Gergiev of the composer's youthful enthusiasm and hard-earned wisdom. Shostakovich's symphonic debut is much indebted to distinguished predecessors such as Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, and although much has been made of No. 1's avant-garde flirtation with cacophonous crescendos, its dramatic themes suggest a dark Russian forest of melody. The years would charge a heavy toll. The muffled anxiety and heavy reticence of No. 15 is unrelieved by the seemingly playful, recurrent interjection of the William Tell Overture in the Allegretto. As the jacket notes suggest, Shostakovich may have reiterated the snippet of familiar melody to signify the triumph of banality in a society that made promises it would never keep.
