DMITRY SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphony No. 14 Op. 135 for soprano, bass and chamber orchestra – Beethoven Orchester Bonn/Iano Tamar (sop.)/Taras Shtonda (bass)/Roman Kofman (conductor) – MDG multichannel SACD (with optional 2+2+2 playback) MDG-937-1211-6, 51:13; Performance ***** Sound ***** [Distr. by Koch]:
Dmitry Shostakovich (1906-1975) was a Russian composer who at times became obsessed by death – his own. In 1936 and then in 1948 again he came very close to that permanent state after being denounced both times by the “big brother” (read Joseph Stalin) regime for writing unpatriotic music. Later in life, somewhere after 1960, his own health became his real problem after having been amply vindicated politically and ideologically following Stalin’s death. At about the time of his 7th Symphony (Leningrad – 1941), which was a resounding success, he was back in favor with all the big-brothers and he publicly stated (I read this somewhere a long time ago) that “…life is beautiful. All that is dark and ignominious will disappear. All that is beautiful will triumph.” However, if things are bound to happen, they will (the Peter principle). More indications for this omnipresent obsession with death became evident around the time of his 8th Symphony written in 1943 and then again around 1960. His masterly String Quartet No. 8 state of mind never left him and this 14th symphony (1969) was another nail in the coffin of his own life.
The 14th Symphony is dedicated to four admired writers who suffered much and basically died for their ideological sins of freedom and we could probably speculate that this is, or was, his “death-song” pretty much like Das Lied von der Erde was Mahler’s. It could easily be argued that the 14th is not a symphony at all – not in the classical sense – but more an oratorio, given that it is a sequence of eleven songs based on these writers’ poems of death. However, in the classical sense it’s not an oratorio because it lacks the obligatory choir. Shostakovich’s best solution was to call it a symphony because of its fundamental unity around the death theme. The writers were: Federico Garcia Lorca (Spain 1896-1936), Guillaume Apollinaire (France 1880-1918), Rainer Maria Rilke (Germany 1875-1926) and Wilhelm Küchelbecker (Russia 1797-1846).
This is a bitterly dark and sorrowful piece of music completely unhinged about death and no one should expect here music much like that of his 1st and 5th symphonies or even another 7th. Here he freely unhinges his own feelings about dying a bad death and not one of those glorious deaths that happen to some other people – his is the worst of all deaths. This is music from a tired human being who lived much too long under not so auspicious circumstances, but – a big but here – music that is not devoid of genius. A human being with enough genius to recreate himself with his music one more time even before his own death. He expected death but he was not going away without saying something musically important and this, his penultimate symphony, is a very important work. It deserves to be heard much like the Andante of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto as well as the Requiem…music without compromises, period.
— John Nemaric
