As his recording of Shostakovich’s symphonies with the LSO is released, conductor Gianandrea Noseda reflects on what this music means to him
Tackling the complete cycle of Dmitri Shostakovich’s symphonies requires a total immersion – not only into the music itself, but also into the historic tapestry of Tsarist, Soviet, and contemporary Russia.
The exclusively historical context in which this monumental symphonic corpus is rooted is Soviet, but its origins reach back into the world of Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, as well as Glinka, Mussorgsky, and Borodin.
From these premises, a highly personal language develops, recognizable from Shostakovich’s Symphony No 1 to his Symphony No 15, encompassing a long stretch of the ‘short century’, from the years immediately following the October Revolution to the Vietnam War.
Noseda performs Symphony No 1 at the Barbican in London (photo: Mark Allan)
Shostakovich’s epoch overlapped with the lives and works of Prokofiev, Stravinsky, and writers like Bulgakov, Pasternak, Akhmatova, and Blok, as well as with dissidents like Solzhenitsyn. This intersection inspires, provokes, and invigorates a varied compositional style, manifesting in strong contrasts: density and rarity, matter and air, depth and lightness, all with dazzling formal precision and clarity of expression.
The presence of symphonies with a celebratory character (but is this entirely true?!) like Symphonies Nos 2 and 3, and commemorations of historical events like Symphonies Nos 11, 12, and 13, along with those written during World War II – Symphonies Nos 6, 7, 8, and 9 – can only draw more attention to Symphonies Nos 1, 4, 5, 10, and 15, which are closely tied to the composer’s personal life and unequivocally mark its crucial stages:
Symphony No 1 is the presentation of a young talent asserting itself with surprising maturity.
Symphony No 4 represents the attainment of a conscious and authoritative compositional force, even amid the complexity of form that is not entirely mastered.
Symphony No 5 marks Shostakovich’s rehabilitation after a violent attack from the Soviet apparatus overseeing music and the arts.
Symphony No 10 is the liberation from the oppression of Stalin’s figure, following his death.
Symphony No 15 is a reflection on a life lived, with the weariness from years of physical suffering and bitter disillusionment.
There is still one more symphony to mention, the emblematic and cryptic Symphony No 14: a deep, dark, and detached meditation on death. The texts by García Lorca, Apollinaire, Küchelbecker, and Rilke provide the words to express this unfathomable mystery, confronted with neither light nor hope, but with a composed dignity that stirs compassion and respect.
Performing Symphony No 14 with the LSO (photo: Mark Allan)
At the end of this fascinating and demanding journey, I have come to see Shostakovich as a world unto himself, a world he lived fully through his art. His message projects itself into our world, crossing it, illuminating it, and questioning it.
I send a huge thanks to my wonderful traveling companions who accompanied and sometimes guided me along this thrilling journey. I hope listeners enjoy exploring these works, and that Shostakovich’s extraordinary symphonies resonate as deeply with them as they have with me.
Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos 1-15 is out now on LSO Live: https://lnk.to/ShostakovichSymphonies10