Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphony No 5

The premiere of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony took place on a bitter November night in 1937 – but to tell the story properly, we must rewind nearly two years.

January, 1936. Josef Stalin attends a performance of Shostakovich’s hugely successful opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. The fact that Stalin leaves before the final act is reason enough for Shostakovitch to start panicking, but when a review headlined “Chaos Instead of Art” appears in the state newspaper a couple of days later, the composer’s favour with the authorities goes from hero to zero almost literally overnight.

The implications are deadly. Stalin rules Soviet Russia by fear, creating an asphyxiating atmosphere of mistrust and secrets in which a person can be executed for as nonsensical a crime as buying a pair of shoes from abroad. Shostakovich cannot afford to ignore that review. It changes everything - not just the way he writes, but the way in which he will shape himself as an artist for the rest of his life. He steers clear of opera, for one thing: the risk of telling the wrong story is too great. Instead, he focuses on string quartets and symphonies - but even these more abstract forms are subject to intense political scrutiny.

And so it was that the premiere of Shostakovitch's Fifth Symphony – his next major work after the disaster of Lady Macbeth – was a matter of life and death. Everyone in the Leningrad concert hall that night in 1937 knew exactly what was at stake. Shostakovich’s whole life depended on the reception of his new symphony. And somehow, he got away with it: winning back the favour of the authorities with music of brazen double-speak. Many in the audience wept during the anguished slow movement, and after the blazing finale with a repeated note that hammers home a defiant 252 times, there was a standing ovation that went on for more than half an hour. The symphony was declared a triumph: a “Soviet artist’s creative response to justified criticism”.

This is one of 100 significant musical moments explored by BBC Radio 3’s Essential Classics as part of Our Classical Century, a BBC season celebrating a momentous 100 years in music from 1918 to 2018. Visit bbc.co.uk/ourclassicalcentury to watch and listen to all programmes in the season.

This archive recording features the BBC Philharmonic with conductor Vassily Sinaisky.

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