It must have been coincidence; but the students at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music who prepared Dmitri Shostakovich’s eighth string quartet in C minor, Opus 110, for performance at last night’s String and Piano Chamber Music recital were assigned the same day on which his Opus 67 E minor piano trio was the principal offering of the Noontime Concerts™ recital at Old St. Mary's Cathedral. Since I had just written about the unrestrained anguish of the trio, this quartet was a reminder that darkness does not always precede dawn. Sometime it just precedes further darkness.
To set some context, Shostakovich composed Opus 67 in 1944 and dedicated it to the memory of his close friend and colleague Ivan Sollertinsky, described in his Wikipedia entry as “reportedly Jewish.” This would explain the focus of the final movement on the massacre of Russian Jews by the invading Nazi forces. As one may guess from the number, Opus 110 was written much later in 1960 but again reflects on the Second World War, now a painful memory rather than an agonizing present. The circumstances under which this quartet was composed are summarized in single sentence in its Wikipedia entry:
The work was written in Dresden, where Shostakovich was to write music for the film Five Days, Five Nights, a joint project by Soviet and East German filmmakers about Bombing of Dresden in World War II.
In this case the dedication is “to the victims of fascism and war,” implying that suffering had been meted out to the Allied and Axis powers in equal measure. (It is interesting to note that Benjamin Britten began work on his War Requiem shortly after Opus 110 was completed and may reflect the friendship with Shostakovich that he formed.)
Opus 110 may be Shostakovich’s most overtly autobiographical composition. When the New Century Chamber Orchestra performed Rudolf Barshai’s transcription for string orchestra in September, I cited a letter in which Shostakovich summarized all the cross-references, which included not only and abundance of fragments from his own work but also themes from Richard Wagner and Pyotr Tchaikovsky, along with at least one song from the Russian Revolution. Having run through his laundry list, Shostakovich summarized the score as a “nice mish-mash,” a perfect example of his sardonic perspective.
This is a demanding piece of work, particularly for students; but Conservatory life (at least here in San Francisco) seems to be all about meeting greater and greater challenges. Last night’s performance was, at the very least, technically capable. If the students were not necessarily old enough to absorb the full impact of its historical connotations, this was music that could speak very well for itself as long as the score was honored. In his biography of George Balanchine, Bernard Taper described the New York City Ballet dancers as “angels,” whose job it was to deliver the Divine Word without understanding any of it. Shostakovich’s Word was delivered most effectively at the Conservatory last night; and, if understanding will only come later, than that it just part of the process of maturing.
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