Program Notes: Shostakovich Symphony No. 5

CLASSICS 2023/24

SHOSTAKOVICH SYMPHONY NO. 5

PERFORMED BY YOUR COLORADO SYMPHONY

JAIME MARTÍN, conductor NEMANJA RADULOVIĆ, violin

Friday, October 13, 2023 at 7:30pm

Saturday, October 14, 2023 at 7:30pm

Sunday, October 15, 2023 at 1:00pm

Boettcher Concert Hall

SAINT-SAËNS Bacchanale from Samson et Dalila

KHACHATURIAN Violin Concerto

I. Allegro con fermezza

II. Andante sostenuto

III. Allegro vivace — INTERMISSION —

SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47

I. Moderato

II. Allegretto

III. Largo

IV. Allegro non troppo

CONCERT RUN TIME IS APPROXIMATELY 1 HOUR AND 55 MINUTES INCLUDING A 20 MINUTE INTERMISSION

FIRST TIME TO THE SYMPHONY? SEE PAGE 7 OF THIS PROGRAM FOR FAQ’S TO MAKE YOUR EXPERIENCE GREAT!

PROUDLY SUPPORTED BY

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JAIME MARTÍN, conductor

Chief Conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra since 2022, Jaime Martín is also Chief Conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra (Ireland) and Music Director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. He is the Principal Guest Conductor of the Orquesta y Coro Nacionales de España (Spanish National Orchestra) for the 22/23 season and was Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of Gävle Symphony Orchestra from 2013 to 2022.

Having spent many years as a highly regarded flautist, working with the most inspiring conductors of our time, Jaime turned to conducting full-time in 2013 and has become very quickly sought after at the highest level. Recent and future engagements include his debuts with the Dresden, Netherlands Philharmonic and Dallas Symphony Orchestras, and return visits to the London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Colorado Symphony, Antwerp Symphony, Orquesta Sinfónica y Coro de RTVE (ORTVE) and Galicia Symphony orchestras, as well as a nine-city European tour with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

In recent years Martín has conducted an impressive list of orchestras that includes the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Royal Scottish National, Swedish Radio Symphony, Barcelona Symphony, New Zealand Symphony, Queensland Symphony, Sydney Symphony, Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saabruecken, Essen Philharmonic and Philharmonia Orchestras, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. He has forged strong relationships with renowned soloists such as Anne Sophie von Otter, Joshua Bell, Pinchas Zukerman, Christian Tetzlaff and Viktoria Mullova, among many others. Martín has also commissioned multiple world and regional premieres of works by composers Ellen Reid, Andrew Norman, Missy Mazzoli, Derrick Spiva, Albert Schnelzer and Juan Pablo Contreras.

Martín is recording a series for Ondine Records with the Gävle Symphony Orchestra; this includes the Brahms Serenades, Songs of Destiny, Brahms choral works with the Eric Ericson Chamber Choir, and a recording of the Brahms Piano Quartet arranged by Schoenberg, which was released in February 2019. He has also recorded Schubert Symphony No. 9 and Beethoven Symphony No. 3 Eroica with Orquestra de Cadaqués and various discs with the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra for Tritó Records. In 2015 he recorded James Horner’s last symphonic work Collages for four horns and orchestra with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

As a flautist, Martín was principal flute of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, English National Opera, Academy of St Martin the Fields and London Philharmonic Orchestra. Also sought-after as a soloist, he made a recording of Mozart flute concertos with Sir Neville Marriner, the premiere recording of Sinfonietta Concerto for Flute and Orchestra written for him by Xavier Montsalvatge and conducted by Gianandrea Noseda, and Bach works for flute, violin, and piano with Murray Perahia and Academy of St. Martin in the Fields for Sony.

Martín is the Artistic Advisor and previous Artistic Director of the Santander Festival. Over the last five years he has brought financial stability and created a platform for some of the most exciting artists in their fields, ranging from symphony orchestras and baroque ensembles to education workshops and ballet companies. He was also a founding member of the Orquestra

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de Cadaqués, with whom he was associated for thirty years, and where he was Chief Conductor from 2012 to 2019.

Jaime Martín is a Fellow of the Royal College of Music, London, where he was a flute professor. He now enjoys working with many of his former students in orchestras around the world.

NEMANJA RADULOVIĆ, violin

Serbian-French violinist Nemanja Radulović champions the power of music to bring people together with his unique energy and candour, thrilling virtuosity, depth of expression, and adventurous programming. His hotly-anticipated BBC Proms debut in 2019 with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and Kirill Karabits featured a Barber Violin Concerto played with ‘lyric delicacy and last-movement super-virtuosity’ (The Times).

Signed exclusively to Warner Classics in 2021, Mr. Radulović’s debut album on the label - ROOTS - represents a beguiling sonic journey evoked by his many influences and inspirations to date. His previous album, Baïka, one of a string of nine successful recordings made with Deutsche Grammophon and the Universal Music Group labels, was declared ‘a fiery whirlwind of an album...’ by BBC Music Magazine, which awarded it 5 stars and the coveted Critics’ Choice Award. Gramophone Magazine praised Baïka’s ‘imaginative pairings’, saying that ‘...Radulović dispatches [the Khachaturian Violin Concerto] with energy and firepower...’ and that ‘...with Radulović as narrator, this is an album with entrancing tales to tell.’

Winner of the 2015 Echo Klassik Award for Newcomer of the Year, Mr. Radulović is an artist who seeks to broaden the boundaries of classical music. He has amassed a legion of loyal fans around the world who have enjoyed his performances with many of the world’s leading orchestras, including the Philharmonia, Munich Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Staatskapelle Dresden, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Tokyo Symphony, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony in Tokyo, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Orquesta Nacional de España, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, NDR Radiophilharmonie in Hanover, WDR Sinfonieorchester in Cologne, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Belgian National Orchestra, Orchestre National de Lille, Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI in Turin, Orchestra della Toscana, Tampere Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Copenhagen Phil, Geneva Camerata, Queensland Symphony, Macao Orchestra, and the Bilbao Orkestra Sinfonikoa.

Mr. Radulović’s recent and forthcoming highlights include engagements with the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony, Sydney Symphony, Dusseldorf Symphony, RTÉ National Symphony in Dublin, and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg; an extensive UK tour with the Gavle Symphony Orchestra and Jaime Martín; sold-out performances with his ensemble Double Sens at such celebrated festivals as the Folle Journée de Nantes and the Chorégies d’Orange and in venues such as the Paris Théâtre des Champs-Elysées and Berlin Philharmonie; and the opening concert on the Jeunesse Musicale series at the Vienna Konzerthaus.

Mr. Radulović has an equal passion for the intimacy of chamber music, and is an increasingly active recitalist on the international circuit. He has performed at such notable venues as New

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York’s Carnegie Hall, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Berlin Philharmonie, both the Salle Pleyel and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, the Athens Megaron, Tokyo’s Suntory Hall, Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, and the Melbourne Recital Centre in Australia. His many recital partners include Marielle Nordmann, Laure Favre-Kahn, and Susan Manoff.

Mr. Radulović also regularly undertakes a play/direct role with his chamber orchestra, Double Sens, which was recently celebrated for their unprecedented musical film entitled Unique – an artist, a place, a concert, which featured selections by Bach and from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, as well as a new arrangement by frequent collaborator Aleksandar Sedlar of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, all shot and recorded live at the famed Neolithic site in Carnac, France. Their other recent recordings include Paganini Fantasy (2013), Journey East (2014), BACH (2016), Tchaikovsky (2017), and Baïka (2018).

Mr Radulović’s recognition for his work in classical music includes International Revelation of the Year by the Victoires de la musique classique in 2005, an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Arts in Niš, Serbia, and an ELLE Style Award for Musician of the Year in 2015. He was the winner of several international violin competitions, such as Joseph Joachim in Hanover, George Enescu in Bucharest, and Stradivarius in Cremona.

Born in Serbia in 1985, Nemanja Radulović studied at the Faculty of Arts and Music in Belgrade, the Saarlandes Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Saarbrücken, the Stauffer Academy in Cremona with Salvatore Accardo, and the Conservatoire de Paris with Patrice Fontanarosa.

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CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS (1835-1921)

“Bacchanale” from Samson et Dalila Camille Saint-Saëns was born on October 9, 1835 in Paris, and died on December 16, 1921 in Algiers. His opera Samson et Dalila was composed between 1867 and 1874, and premiered on December 2, 1877 in Weimar, conducted by Eduard Lassen. The score calls for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, two cornets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp and strings. Duration is about 8 minutes. The orchestra last performed this piece January 18-20, 2013, with Scott O'Neil conducting.

The story of Saint-Saëns’ Samson et Dalila is set in Gaza, Palestine about 1,150 B.C.E. The mighty Samson, leader of the Hebrews during their bondage to the Philistines, kills Abimelech, Satrap of Gaza, in a scuffle. The Philistine High Priest urges vengeance upon the Hebrews, but the Philistines are themselves dispersed by the Hebrews. Dalila emerges from the Philistine temple bearing garlands for the victorious Hebrews, and approaches Samson. Bewitched by her beauty, Samson prays to heaven to be able to resist her temptations. He cannot, and is lured to Dalila’s house, where she uses her wiles to discover that his hair is the source of his strength. She shears his locks, leaving him powerless, and he is seized by the Philistine soldiers with whom she has been plotting his capture. The next scene shows Samson, his eyes plucked out, chained to the wheel in a Philistine mill. The opera’s final tableau is set in the Temple of Dagon, where the Philistines are celebrating their suppression of the rebellious Hebrews. Samson, mocked

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by the Philistines and particularly Dalila, is led in by a child. Realizing that he is chained to the main pillars supporting the temple roof, he prays for a brief return of his former strength. His prayer is answered, and he topples the pillars, burying himself and his enemies. The Bacchanale accompanies the ballet depicting the revels in the temple of Dagon at the beginning of Act III. With its hints of exotic Hebrew chants and the sensual rhythms and harmonies of Middle Eastern music, it is both seductive and frenzied, one of the most brilliant and exciting instrumental scenes in all French opera.

ARAM KHACHATURIAN (1903-1978)

Violin Concerto

Aram Khachaturian was born on June 6, 1903 in Tiflis, Armenia, and died on May 1, 1978 in Moscow. His Violin Concerto was written in 1940, and premiered by David Oistrakh in Moscow on November 16, 1940 at a festival of Soviet music. French virtuoso Jean-Pierre Rampal later transcribed the solo part for flute with the composer’s permission. The score calls for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp and strings. Duration is about 35 minutes. The orchestra last performed this piece January 29-30, 2016, with Jayce Ogren conducting and Claude Sim on violin.

Aram Khachaturian was one of the leading composers of the Soviet Union and the most celebrated musician of his native state of Armenia. When he arrived in Moscow in 1921 from his home town of Tbilisi, he had virtually no formal training in music but his talent was soon recognized, and he was admitted to the academy of Mikhail Gnessin, a student of RimskyKorsakov. Khachaturian’s first published works date from 1926; three years later he entered the Moscow Conservatory. His international reputation was established with the success of the Piano Concerto in 1936, composed at the same time that he became active in the newly founded Union of Soviet Composers, of which he was elected Deputy Chairman of the Moscow branch in 1937 and Deputy President of the National Organizing Committee two years later. In 1939, he returned to live for six months in Armenia, where he immersed himself in the folk music of his boyhood home in preparation for composing the ballet Happiness. Boris Schwarz noted that the composer’s synthesis of vernacular and cultivated musical styles in that work “represents the fulfillment of a basic Soviet arts policy: the interpenetration of regional folklorism and the great Russian tradition.” Khachaturian remained a proud and supportive Armenian throughout his life, serving in 1958 as the state’s delegate to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. “My whole life, everything that I have created, belongs to the Armenian people,” he once said. The Violin Concerto of 1940 is imbued with the music of Khachaturian’s Armenian homeland.

One of the achievements of the Union of Soviet Composers was the founding in 1939 of an enclave on the Moscow River near the town of Staraya Ruza set aside for creative work and rest. Khachaturian spent the summer of 1940 there, in one of the cottages in the dense pine forest, composing a violin concerto for David Oistrakh. Khachaturian had largely prepared the formal plan for the piece in his head in advance, and recalled, “I worked without effort. Sometimes my thoughts and imagination outraced the hand that was covering the staff with notes. The themes came to me in such abundance that I had a hard time putting them in some order.... I wanted to create a virtuoso piece employing the symphonic principle of development and yet understandable to the general public.” He succeeded, and the Concerto was a great success when

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it was premiered on November 16, 1940 in Moscow by Oistrakh. The new Concerto solidified Khachaturian’s popularity at home and abroad, and he was awarded the Stalin Prize for it in 1941. The Violin Concerto’s opening movement is disposed in the traditional sonata form, with two contrasting themes and a full development section. After a brief introductory outburst by the orchestra, the soloist presents an animated motif that soon evolves into a bounding, close-interval folk dance. This theme, punctuated once by the strong orchestral chords from the introduction, continues for some time before it gives way to a lyrical complementary strain of nostalgic emotional character. As the movement unfolds, the soloist is required to display one dazzling technical feat after another, culminating in a huge cadenza that serves as the bridge to the recapitulation. Both of the earlier themes are returned in elaborated settings to round out the movement. The second movement is in a broad three-part design prefaced by a bassoon solo that Grigory Shneerson, in his study of Khachaturian, said imitated the improvisations of the Armenian ashugs, or bards. A melancholy tune occupies the movement’s outer sections, while the central portion is more animated and rhapsodic in nature. The finale is an infectious rondo, filled with festive brilliance, blazing orchestral color and sparkling virtuosity.

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-1975)

Symphony No. 5, Op. 47

Dmitri Shostakovich was born on September 25, 1906 in St. Petersburg, and died on August 9, 1975 in Moscow. He composed his Fifth Symphony during the winter and early spring of 1937, while he was teaching at the Leningrad Conservatory. Yevgeny Mravinsky conducted the Leningrad Philharmonic in the work’s premiere, on November 21, 1937 as part of a festival celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. The score calls for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, E-flat and two B-flat clarinets, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, two harps, celesta, piano and strings. Duration is about 44 minutes. This piece was last performed by the orchestra September 18-20, 2015, conducted by Andrew Litton.

“COMPOSER REGAINS HIS PLACE IN SOVIET,” read a headline of The New York Times on November 22, 1937. “Dmitri Shostakovich, who fell from grace two years ago, on the way to rehabilitation. His new symphony hailed. Audience cheers as Leningrad Philharmonic presents work.”

The background of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony was well known. His career began before he was twenty with the cheeky First Symphony; he was immediately acclaimed the brightest star in the Soviet musical firmament. In the years that followed, he produced music with amazing celerity, and even managed to catch Stalin’s attention, especially with his film scores. (Stalin was convinced that film was one of the most powerful weapons in his propaganda arsenal.) The mid-1930s, however, the years during which Stalin tightened his iron grasp on Russia, saw a repression of the artistic freedom of Shostakovich’s early years, and some of his newer works were assailed with the damning criticism of “formalism.” The storm broke in an article in Pravda on January 28, 1936 entitled “Muddle Instead of Music.” The “muddle” was the opera Lady Macbeth of the Mzensk District, a lurid tale of adultery and murder in the provinces that is one of Shostakovich’s most powerful creations. The denunciation, though it urged Shostakovich to reform his compositional ways, also encouraged him to continue his work,

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but in a manner consistent with Soviet goals. As “A Soviet composer’s reply to just criticism” — a phrase attributed to Shostakovich by the press, though it does not appear in the score — the Fifth Symphony was created, and presented to an enthusiastic public. Shostakovich had apparently returned to the Soviet fold, and in such manner that in 1940 he was awarded the Stalin Prize, the highest achievement then possible for a Russian composer.

Since the appearance in 1979 of the purported memoirs of Shostakovich (Testimony), however, the above tale needs some reconsideration. The prevailing interpretation of the Fifth Symphony had been that generally it represented triumph through struggle, à la Beethoven’s Fifth and Ninth Symphonies, and specifically the composer’s renunciation of his backslidden ideological ways. But in Testimony, Shostakovich, bitter, ill, disillusioned, said, “I think it is clear to everyone what happens in the [finale of the] Fifth Symphony. The rejoicing is forced, created under threat, as in Boris Godunov. It’s as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, ‘Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing,’ and you rise, shaky, and go marching off muttering, ‘Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing.’ What kind of apotheosis is that? You have to be a complete oaf not to hear that. People who came to the premiere in the best of moods wept.”

Shostakovich’s thoughts about the Fifth Symphony bear directly on the listener’s perception of the work. The key to the work’s meaning, its finale, can no longer be seen as a transcendence or negation of the tragic forces invoked in the earlier movements, especially the third, but rather as an affirmation of them. The boisterous trumpets and drums are not those of a festival or a peasant dance, but of a forced death march — Stalin’s “exterminations” outnumbered those of Hitler. The Fifth Symphony arose not from Shostakovich’s glorification of his nation. It arose from his pity.

The sonata form of the Symphony’s first movement begins with a stabbing theme in close imitation. A group of complementary ideas is presented before the tempo freshens for the second theme, an expansive melody of large intervals. The sinister sound of unison horns in their lowest register marks the start of the development. The intensity of this section builds quickly to a powerful, almost demonic march. The recapitulation rockets forth from a series of fierce brass chords leading to a huge, sustained climax after which the music’s energy subsides to allow the second theme to be heard in a gentle setting for flute and horn. Quiet intensity pervades until the movement ends with ethereal scales in the celesta. The scherzo has much of the sardonic humor that Shostakovich displayed in such movements throughout his life. The Symphony’s greatest pathos is reserved for the Largo. This movement is best heard not in a specific formal context but as an extended soliloquy embracing the most deeply felt emotions. For much of its length, the expression is subdued, but twice the music gathers enough strength to hurl forth a mighty, despairing cry. The finale is in three large sections, determined as much by moods as by themes. The outer sections are boisterous and extroverted, the central one, dark-hued and premonitory. Whether the mood of rough vigor of this framing music or the tragedy of the central section stays longer in the mind is a matter listeners must determine for themselves. The delicate formal balance that Shostakovich achieved here could be tipped in either direction depending on the experience the individual brings to it. Only great masterworks can simultaneously be both so personal and so universal.

©2023 Dr. Richard E. Rodda