Shostakovich: The Execution of Stepan Razin; October; Five Fragments

Shostakovich: The Execution of Stepan Razin; October; Five Fragments

Shostakovich: The Execution of Stepan Razin; October; Five Fragments

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CD Details

Performer: Charles Austin
Composer: Dmitry Shostakovich
Conductor: Gerard Schwarz
Orchestra: Seattle Symphony Orchestra
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2006-03-21
Music Label: Naxos
Soundtracks:

The Execution Of Stepan Razin, Symphonic Poem For Baritone Soloist, Mixed Chorus And Orchestra Op.119
October, Op.131
Moderato
Andante
Largo
Moderato
Allegretto

Music reviews of Shostakovich: The Execution of Stepan Razin; October; Five Fragments

Music Review: Down with the ethnocentrism
Rating: 5 Stars

The Execution of Stepan Razin is a great example of Shostakovich's symphonic, choral and solo voice compositional genius. And a genius he was.

This is the problem of Shostakovich. He would have had a hard time of it no matter what form of 20th c. political or social system he happened to live and create within. (And in a Third or Second World nation, his chances of developing into a composer would have been nil.)

Who knows what might have happened to him in the U.S... a nation famous for ignoring and crushing any form of genius (unless it can make money for the corporations). Conformity is a national trait that many wise foreign social analysts have noted ever since De Toqueville wandered about.

U.S. citizens are "individuals" in so far as they go after the same mass-produced rewards offered by their capitalist masters. And, as Erich Fromm noted, in the U.S. -which is under the dictatorship of commercialism- people measure themselves by what they have and not by intrinsic evaluations. That is why most Americans, until recently, attemptex to buy as much mass-produced "stuff" as they can. Buying stuff is how they give themselves some sort of identity or value. They even fill billions of feet of storage space with stuff.

However, since the stuff they buy is mass-produced (mostly in China), Americans only gain a mass-produced self. This is a society a genius such as Shostakovich would have found horrifying, needless to say.

Anyway, the U.S. now houses the largest command economy in the world: the Pentagon.
When the SU was the largest command economy, they at least had a rich cultural heritage and extremely well-trained artistic craftspeople who could still create masterpieces such as Stepan Razin. The garrison society of plutocratic America would be hard put to do the same...even 50 or 60 years earlier.

Last, to observe the differences and similarities between Shostakovich and Prokofiev when they composed full blown political or nationallist cantatas, compare Stepan Razin to Prokofiev's "Alexander Nevsky" or his fantastic "Cantata for the Twentieth Anniversary of the October Revolution." After making this comparison, compare both Shostakovich's and Prokofiev's cantatas to Myaskowsky's last movement to his 6th Symphony (with double chorus).

(That symphony was supposed to be the gold standard of Socialist Realism.)

Though these compositions were created and constructed during different periods of Soviet history, you can hear and (mentally) observe the cultural heritage all three composers shared when it came to symphonic and choral composition. And it was a rich heritage and one that many music lovers still love and enjoy.

Possibly, it was the SU bureaucracy that allowed the space for this to occur. I don't know what would have happened had the so-called revolution not establish itself. During the 20s, many SU composers (Shostakovich included) were already experimenting with non-Russian avant garde compositional procedures. If this trend was allowed to continue, would we have Shostakovich's symphonies, or his cantata Stepan Razin?

Stepan Razin was composed in the '60s when it was practically forbidden in the West to compose tonal music that the average classical music lover actually enjoyed. It wasn't 'modern" to do so. Not only was tonality abandoned at this time, but so were any references to a national culture, folk music or tradition.

Is it any wonder that most average music lovers abandoned contemporary Western classical music in favor of the Soviet composers of the time?

Because of a few brave recording companies, we are now digging up the ignored and forgotten composers that didn't follow the dictates of "modern" forms of composition. And even second tier 20th c. non-modern composers are finding a ready audience under this new period of musical glastnos.

We are finally freeing ourselves from the dictates of musical "modernity." Maybe we can also free ourselves from the dictates of US ethnocentrism?

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