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A Conductor's Unique Perspective on Shostakovich By PAUL KWAK
Despite the better efforts of musicologists, culture and politics tend to be those things discussed in program notes and read optionally by audiences during intermissions (or, if performers are lucky, before the concert begins). In hearing the music of Dmitri Shostakovich, however, it would be not only unwise, but detrimental to the performance experience, to relegate such historical contextualization to the periphery, as politics became so central to his very process of composition. The Fifth Symphony of Shostakovich, in particular, arose out of a complex and tumultuous moment in Russian history. It is a unique personal connection to this history that conductor Stefan Sanderling brings to the podium as he conducts the Juilliard Symphony in a performance of this work on April 6 in Avery Fisher Hall as part of an all-Russian program.
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| Stefan Sanderling conducting the Florida Orchestra, where he is music director. (Photo by J. M. Lennon) |
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Stefan Sanderling, the current music director of the Florida Orchestra, has established himself as an eminent exponent of the symphonic repertoire of Shostakovich, due in large part to his family's long friendship with the composer himself. Sanderling's father, renowned conductor Kurt Sanderling, was a personal friend of Shostakovich; their relationship influenced the younger Sanderling, as he recounted in a recent interview with The Juilliard Journal. "My father influenced me perhaps not in any specific way about this [fifth] symphony, but it helped me a lot that Shostakovich was a regular guest at our house until his death. It helped me to have a personal vision of what the person Shostakovich was about." Sanderling emphasized that he finds such vision requisite to an informed interpretation of the symphonies. "He had a nervous, hyper, high voice; he was nervous that anyone would monitor him while he was talking. He would take the telephone off the hook so no one could intercept the conversation." It was these sorts of memories that form the basis of Sanderling's emotional affinity with Shostakovich's music. "I have a very personal relationship, if I may say so, with him. I doubt that he had a personal relationship with me—he died when I was 11—but I still remember things."While this sort of personal connection would be valuable to a conductor's interpretation of any work, it attains a special importance in the music of Shostakovich and especially in the Fifth Symphony, which was composed in direct response to political oppression and turmoil. Completed in 1937, the Fifth Symphony became Shostakovich's response to Joseph Stalin's blistering critique of Shostakovich's widely performed opera, Lady Macbeth at Mtensk. Stalin denounced the opera and its composer in a 1936 edition of the Russian newspaper Pravda; it was this personal attack, along with knowledge of the brutality of the Stalin regime, that prompted Shostakovich to find outlets for his anger and disillusionment in his music.Sanderling explains, "This is a very political composer. The music he wrote is always about his stand within the politics, where he stands within this regime, where he stands in relation to the people." Sanderling views these politics as central to the interpretation of the music: "His music is therefore very emotional, because if somebody loved the idea of Communism so much and then felt so much betrayed, then the hatred comes out and is so much more obvious, in the Fifth Symphony and even more in the later symphonies." The Fifth Symphony, Sanderling reiterates, is a product of Shostakovich's disillusionment with the Communist regime of Stalin. "This symphony is so much about Shostakovich saying, 'I cannot believe this happened to me. I cannot believe that people who had this wonderful idea from the French revolution of liberté, égalité, fraternité—that they would betray their own people."In the midst of such an oppressive regime, then, Shostakovich found voice and expression in the texture and content of his music. "For the people in the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc, this music was always a program," Sanderling continues. "If you wanted to communicate with somebody, you couldn't do that by words, because it was too dangerous. We don't have that problem anymore." This transcendence is, for Sanderling, the timeless reach of the music. "There is a huge human part to it, a universal part to it. It expresses how lonely and how desperate a person can be if the surroundings are not right, whether the political atmosphere or the social atmosphere."
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Juilliard Symphony, conducted by Stefan Sanderling
Avery Fisher Hall
Wednesday, April 6, 8 p.m.
For time and ticket information, please see
the calendar.
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Furthermore, Sanderling values this music not simply because it reflects an intense nexus of politics and culture, but because it asks in newly direct ways about the relevance of music and art in the midst of political turmoil and, more generally, within a politicized society. In an essay penned recently by Sanderling for the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, he elucidated these ideas, writing: "Art is always political. However, in every social order, the question remains: Does culture control politics, or do politics, rather, control art? For every artist, the answer to that question is an existential one, signifying the meaning and form of creative activity."Sanderling continues: "In the experience of artworks—whether painting, music, or literature—it is essential to examine their natural relationship to history in order to determine the degree to which what they say is still valid today. But it also entails an assessment of why the intellectual achievements that have become commonplace for us were, in another time, unprecedented, courageous, and even life-threatening to the author. Nothing, therefore, leads to greater misunderstanding than judging from the safe haven of intellectual freedom works of art that were created under the conditions of a dictatorship. If, in the former case, one must make certain to express oneself in a clearly, perhaps even shockingly bold manner, in the latter case, one will go to great lengths to do the opposite. Anything may be said if it is not backed up—if it is, perhaps, not even recognizable for those in control."Fundamentally, then, the music of Shostakovich becomes music in its most basic function: a means of communication without words. "There was no need to make me aware of what this music is all about," Sanderling noted, reflecting again on his childhood exposure to the person of Shostakovich. "We all knew—everybody understood this music as a means of communication."In a time when the world is focused on the evangelical overtones of American democracy and the demonization of oppressive regimes, the Juilliard Symphony has created a meaningful opportunity—under a uniquely empowered conductor—for insisting upon the role of art amid global turmoil, and for advocating for the possibilities for beauty that persist even in the face of terror and war. As Sanderling concludes in his own essay, "The fact that this music can never be hearty or open, never really happy or optimistic, is simply a fact. [Shostakovich] did not have the opportunity to impart his message unencumbered by his daily struggles. We, however, have the opportunity, from the relative security of our society today, to reconstruct the terror of his life within his society. We should avail ourselves of it!"Paul Kwak is a master's student in collaborative piano.
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