Shostakovich Symphony No. 11 “ The Year
1905 ”
Friday 26 May, 7.30PM
Conservatorium Theatre
queenslandconservatorium.com.au
Conservatorium Symphony Orchestra
Johannes Fritzsch, Conductor
Dear guests
and friends of the Conservatorium, welcome to tonight’s concert.
For Shostakovich, art was political. To him, music was first and foremost not entertainment, but a message, a confession, a humanistic statement. Growing up and “trapped” in a country where democracy was a foreign word, where freedom of expression was a criminal act and any criticism of the leading party was relentlessly punished, his existence as an artist could be nothing more than a balancing act between self-respect and the Gulag. Dmitri Shostakovich became a master of hidden truth, an artist of disguise and ambiguity. What is perceived in his work is only the surface of his intention, under which the true meaning is hidden. It is often difficult to identify what is hidden in his music, to get to the heart of the ambiguity.
In his 11th Symphony, written in 1956/57, this seems to be easier. The title, “The Year 1905”, and the use of well-known folk and revolutionary songs speak a clear language, the headings to the individual movements give us a narrative that the music follows like in a film. And yet this symphony is more than just a reminder of the “Bloody Sunday” of 1905, and a commemoration of the massacred, innocent women, children and men. Rather, it is a requiem for all innocent victims of war and violence, injustice and arbitrariness, be it in St. Petersburg in 1905, in Hungary in 1956 or in 2023 in the Ukraine, Sudan, Somalia, Myanmar, Chad, Sudan, Somalia, Afghanistan, Yemen, Burkina Faso, Iraq, Iran, Niger and many other places in our world.
–Johannes Fritzsch, Conductor
PROGRAM
Avner Dorman
Spices, Perfumes, Toxins!
Concerto for Percussion Duo and Orchestra
Soloists:
Quinn Ramsey
Matthew Conway
I. Spices
II. Perfumes
III. Toxins!
Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphony no.11 in g minor, op.103 (The Year 1905)
I. Adagio (The Palace Square)
II. Allegro (The 9th of January)
III. Adagio (Memory Eternal)
IV. Allegro no troppo (Toscin)
PROGRAM NOTES
Spices, Perfumes, Toxins!
Concerto for Percussion Duo and Orchestra (2006)
Avner Dorman (1975-)
I. Spices (Allegro)
II. Perfumes (Adagio)
III. Toxins! (Presto energico)
In writing Spices, Perfumes, Toxins!, Dorman aims to connect the audience to the music through their relationships with the titular three substances. Although spices and perfumes are self-explanatory, “toxins” does not refer to purely lethal poisons, but to things such as alcohol. Dorman clarifies that these were chosen as they “are attractive to us humans, but are quite dangerous as well.” According to the composer, these three substances are connected to seduction and—in some way—give us the meaning of life, by using them to
Spices delight the palate, but can cause illness. The first movement opens with an eruption of rhythmic figures in both marimba parts, based on the Indian system of Talas. Its minimalistic approach and use of Middle-Eastern and Indian scales is intentionally evocative of Eastern musical styles.
Perfumes seduce, but can also betray. Dorman conjures scenes of Baroque arias in the opening of the second movement, evolving the harmonic language through the late Romantic period and into the world of Jazz. As these musical styles are all in play, the decorations in the melody present characters of Middle-Eastern folk music in a collective effort to create a “multicultural polyphony.” Further, one of the soloists moves to the vibraphone for this movement, developing the sound world as the concerto progresses.
Toxins bring ecstasy, but are deadly. The final movement continues the progression of the sound world as the percussionists employ all of the various instruments at their disposal. Dorman describes the dominant motion as a pendulum that swings between the aggressive rhythmic patterns on the drumsets and the various outbursts of passion in the orchestra. This, Dorman writes, illustrates the extremes of joyous ecstasy and obsessive anxiety, pain, and delusions. The work culminates in increasingly fanatical outbursts leading to a final outburst of catharsis and death.
Symphony No. 11 in G Minor, Op.103 (The Year 1905) (1957)
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)
I. Adagio (The Palace Square)
II. Allegro (The 9th of January)
III. Adagio (Memory Eternal)
IV. Allegro non troppo (Tocsin)
The Year 1905 refers to the First Russian Revolution, in which the Russian people rose up against Tsar Nicholas II. Poverty, hardship, demands for labour reform and strikes across the country culminated in a devastating uprising now named Bloody Sunday. Thousands of unarmed demonstrators gathered in front of the Winter Palace, calling out for aid and demanding that the Tsar listen to their petition for workers’ rights. The Tsar’s absence, combined with inconsistent orders and the peoples’ desperation, led to soldiers taking action against the crowd, with protesters shot without warning or trampled by cavalry. The events of Bloody Sunday inevitably contributed to widespread dissatisfaction in the Tsar’s leadership, and set the stage for his dethroning, imprisonment and eventual execution in 1918.
Much of this symphony is based on or benefits from quotations of Russian folk songs—music that Shostakovich and his contemporaries would have been intimately familiar with, and the cultural context of which sets the scene for the narratives within this work. The young Shostakovich grew up listening to tales of the massacre and was deeply affected by it. He recalled:
“The Russian people are always like that—they believe and believe and then suddenly it comes to an end. And the ones the people no longer believe in come to a bad end.”
Shostakovich opens the Eleventh with his depiction of the Winter Palace. Icy strings give way to ominous timpani rolls and faraway brass salutes, evocative of soldiers calling reveille. Two traditional folk songs often identified with political prisoners feature in this movement; Hearken in the flute and The Prisoner in the double basses.
The second movement depicts the massacre. Uneasy octatonic lines depict the surging crowd, desperate to be heard. Shostakovich quotes two themes from his choral work, also titled 1905, in this movement. The first is created from the pleas of the people as they beg to “our Tsar, our father”; the second from the imperative “Bare your heads!” as protesters insist that they be heard. The soldiers are heard in the Palace Square once more, ready and waiting with bayonets and rifles. Horrifyingly, the quiet gives way to an explosion of machine-gun fire, intermittent at first but growing. The movement’s climax is unbearable and agonising, a unified scream that ends in silence. Night has come. The square is stained with the blood of the fallen.
The Adagio is a prayer for the dead. The melody is a dirge that begins “You fell victims in the deadly struggle/ Of unselfish love towards your people/You gave whatever you had for it/For life, for honour, for freedom.” After the folk song, a funeral march begins.
The fourth movement, Tocsin, is an alarm bell. It calls to the revolutionaries to fight on after the departed— to defy those in power rather than retreat. The themes of two final folk songs are heard; “Rage, Tyrants” and “Whirlwinds of Danger”.
Rage, ye tyrants! Mock at us!
Hostile whirlwinds swirl around us. Although our bodies are trampled, We have entered into the fateful battle
We are stronger in spirit. with our enemies.
Shame, shame, shame on you, tyrants! Our destinies are still unknown.
The fundamental desire of Shostakovich was to write a work that conveyed the struggle of the masses against those in power, and to urge them to continue to do so. Some historians have brought up the idea that this work may have in part been connected in his mind to the Hungarian insurrection against the Soviet Union that had occurred just a few months before; his son Maxim was in so little doubt that he asked after the work’s premiere “Papa, what if they hang you for this?” It would not have been out of the question.
Shostakovich’s life and music was always inexorably entwined with his country and government. His music was praised by the Soviet Union early in his career before later condemnation and official denunciation for not conforming to party principles. Through much of his life, he lived both in fear of further condemnation and of further praise—Stalin doled out both in turn, with Shostakovich reading Party-approved pronouncements and thanking the government for awards at mandatory functions while fearing that he could be arrested any moment for subversion. When asked about the symphony, he stated:
“I think that many themes repeat themselves in Russian history [and]... I wanted to show this recurrence in the Eleventh Symphony. [...] It deals with contemporary themes even though it’s called 1905. It’s about the people, who have stopped believing because the cup of evil has run over.”
Programnotes by Dr Samuel Dickenson
