Shostakovich - Symphony No. 5 | Constantinos Carydis | WDR Symphony Orchestra

Shostakovich - Symphony No. 5 | Constantinos Carydis | WDR Symphony Orchestra
蕭斯塔科維奇 - 第五號交響曲 | 康斯坦丁諾斯‧卡里迪斯 | 西德廣播交響樂團

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Sometimes applause can be life-threatening. And sometimes it’s the only salvation. When Dmitri Shostakovich composed his Fifth Symphony in 1937, he was under immense pressure. A year earlier, the infamous Pravda article “Chaos Instead of Music” had attacked his opera “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” and practically declared him an enemy of the state. In Stalin’s Soviet Union, this was not an aesthetic judgment, but a life-threatening one. It was in this situation that Shostakovich composed his Fifth Symphony. Officially, it was soon labeled “a practical creative response by a Soviet artist to justified criticism”—a formulation that sounds as if it were forced out under duress. For what is this music really? An act of submission? A cloak of disguise? An encrypted cry of anguish? A forced confession? Perhaps its impact lies precisely in the fact that it defies a single, unambiguous interpretation. On the surface, it seems to accommodate demands for clarity, pathos, and comprehensibility—almost as if out of guilt. Beneath that, however, something trembles that cannot be pacified. The first movement unfolds a world of harshness, lament, and nervous escalation. The scherzo grins with a contorted face, as if cheerfulness were merely a mandated mask. In the Largo, Shostakovich finds an honesty of expression that can move one to tears. And then the finale: a triumphal march, certainly—but one that is dragged into the light with such force that the jubilation almost hurts. Shostakovich is said to have remarked later, in essence, that here joy is forced under threat.

The premiere on November 21, 1937, in Leningrad was an overwhelming success. For the moment—for a good ten years—Shostakovich had saved himself. Yet the Fifth remains more than a historic act of self-preservation. It is music about survival itself: about the art of speaking the truth between the lines.
Text: Otto Hagedorn

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