SYMPHONY FROM THE SOVIET

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 108, 18 July 1941, Page 9

SYMPHONY FROM THE SOVIET

\ : 7 HEN a young man composes his first symphony at the age of 19, the critics are usually out to find faults, but in the case of the Soviet composer, Dmitri Szostakowicz, John o’ London’s gramophone record critic had something a little kinder to say-or perhaps it wasn't. Discussing the First Movement of Szostakowicz’s First Symphony, "Dorian" said it reminded him of the late Augustine Birrell’s remark about a certain highly respected Labour politician: " He will let his bleeding heart get in the way of his bloody head." In Szostakowicz, it seems, there is the same tug-of-war. And all music critics hope that the heart will have its way. We know very little about Soviet music and Soviet composers, but we can suspect that Szostakowicz is a "bit of a lad’’-at any rate, he is a modern young highbrow who is human enough to transcribe the famous tune " Tea for Two" and dub the result " Tahiti Trot." And we know further that Szostakowicz, like composers everywhere else, has had his ups and downs. He had a bad setback four or five years ago when he was attacked by Pravda, the official newspaper of the Communist party in the U.S.S.R.

The rumpus arose over his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, which satirised the old régime of Russia, showing the stupidity, callousness, and _ corruption which it bred among all classes of society. The librettists improved on the music at every possible opportunity, and the composer was told by Pravda the day after the first performance that he had produced "a leftist mess instead of human music." So the local boy was under a cloud for a while, and did what composers everywhere would like to do: he turned out another winner. It was his Fifth Symphony that saved the day, written when he was a little over thirty years of age, and written also by a man who is half-blind. The success of the Fifth Symphony was dramatic. Professional critics, fellow composers, and leading Soviet intellectuals such as the writer Alexei Tolstoy and the aviator Gromoff, hero of the trans-polar flight to America, all wrote glowing reviews extolling the power of the new symphony. Szostakowicz was vindicated. The Fitth Symphony has been recorded by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and will be heard from 4YA on Thursday, July 24, at 7.48 p.m