Symphony No. 10 (Shostakovich)

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The Symphony No. 10 in E minor (Op. 93) by Dmitri Shostakovich was premiered by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under Yevgeny Mravinsky on 17 December 1953, following the death of Stalin in March that year. It is not clear when it was written: according to the composer's letters composition was between July and October 1953, but Tatiana Nikolayeva has stated it was completed in 1951. Sketches for some of the material date from 1946.^[1]

The symphony has four movements:

It was Shostakovich's first symphonic work since his denunciation in 1948. It thus has a significance somewhat comparable to that of the Fifth Symphony in relation to the 1936 denunciation. As in that work, he quotes from one of his settings of Pushkin: in the first movement, from the second of his Four Pushkin Monologues, entitled "What is in My Name?". This theme of personal identity is picked up again in the third and fourth movements. The second movement is a short and violent scherzo, described in Testimony as "a musical portrait of Stalin, roughly speaking". The third movement is a nocturne built around two musical codes: the DSCH theme representing Shostakovich, and the Elmira theme (listen (help·info)):

At concert pitch one fifth lower, the notes spell out "E La Mi Re A" in a combination of French and German notation. This motif, called out twelve times on the horn, represents Elmira Nazirova, a student of the composer's with whom he fell in love. The motif is of ambiguous tonality, giving it an air of uncertainty or hollowness.^[2]

In a letter to Nazirova, Shostakovich himself noted the similarity of the motif to the ape call in the first movement of Das Lied von der Erde, a work which he had been listening to around that time:^[3] (listen (help·info))

The same notes are used in both motifs, and both are repeatedly played by the horn. In the Chinese poem set by Mahler, the ape is a representation of death, while the Elmira motif itself occurs together with the "funeral knell" of a tam tam.^[4] Over the course of the movement, the DSCH and Elmira themes alternate and gradually draw closer. In the final movement, a naively happy tune is displaced by a Georgian gopak, which recalls the second movement theme. It is in turn defeated by the triumphant DSCH theme, which is repeated with increasing agitation through the frantic conclusion.

[edit] References

^ Wilson, Elizabeth (1994) p. 262. Shostakovich: A Life Remembered. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-04465-1.
^ Nelly Kravetz, New Insight into the Tenth Symphony, p. 162. In Bartlett (ed) Shostakovich in Context.
^ Kravetz p. 163.
^ Kravetz p. 162.