SHOSTAKOVICH'S NINTH SYMPHONY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 411, 9 May 1947, Page 5

SHOSTAKOVICH'S NINTH SYMPHONY

eir,-ine article On Shostakovich in a recent issue of The Listener puzzled me. According to Dr. Lang, whom you quoted, the Russian composer has been in trouble with the Communist Party because in his "Ninth Symphony" he imitates the classical models. Just after your article appeared, I read in the Moscow News that a cycle of Beethoven concerts given in Moscow had ' been booked out almost as soon as the booking opened and that one of the most popular of the young Soviet pianists had promised to play the Bach "48 Preludes and Fugues" at his forthcoming concerts. The music of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven is very popular in the U.S.S.R. Why then should the

Communist Party object to Shostakos vich’s writing a symphony in the classical style? An article by /David Rabinovich, a Soviet music critic, in the magazine Soviet Literature, answers the question. The Ninth Symphony has been condemned by some critics in’ Russia because it is too like musical comedy; not because it follows the classical model. The article is too long to quote in full, but among other things Rabinovich says: "There have been attempts to interpret the entire Ninth Symphony as a kind of musical comedy." Further on he writes, "The pamphlet style is perhaps the most suitable definition we can find for the genre of the Ninth Symphony." As to Shastakovich’s article on trends in Soviet music-he has said the same thing many times before, both in the press and from the nuhlic nilatfarm.

E.

RYAN

(Kilbirnie).