My passion is to help others in the community, young, old, and everyone in between, find relevance and joy in learning, performing or listening to classical music.

Monday, July 29, 2013

Looking through a Russian musical window - Shostakovich's E minor Prelude & Fugue

The other day I happened upon this video of Shostakovich performing his own Prelude and Fugue in E Minor:  



It's a piece I have been wanting to pull out of the closet again because it's one that, through the years, has given me an incredible glimpse of another culture through the window of music. When I hear or play it I am instantly transported back about 20 years, when I was fortunate enough to accompany a boy's choir to St. Petersburg, Russia, not long after the fall of communism in their country.  It was quite a trip - one that opened my eyes, not only through what I myself saw and experienced, but also from watching a group of young American boys take in and process this completely different culture.  When we were there we were housed in what seemed to be an abandoned, run-down estate on the gulf of Finland; boys were having a difficult time finding anything they were willing to eat and lived for the moments when we discovered a Coca-Cola vendor on the street; fruit was scarce and purchased from the black market for us by security agents assigned to our choir who realized the boys weren't eating; meals for the entire choir in good restaurants could be paid for using what amounted to only a few American dollars.

Yet in spite of what seemed like hard times to us, the people, landscape, architecture, churches - all had hope and beauty in addition to a sense of history that I don't think we Americans understand in the same way.  It was tangible everywhere we went.  There was a pride in culture and in who they were as a people.  From the security agents, to the babushka docents in the museums who were unabashedly protecting their country's treasures from a flock of young boys, to the singers in the Russian Orthodox churches, they all made it clear to us that they wanted us there, wanted to hear our music, and wanted to share whatever they had to offer with us, including their love of music.

Their incredible love of music.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons
Most of the festival was held in the St. Petersburg Philharmonia, pictured here.  It is a hall whose walls have absorbed the magic of Liszt, Berlioz, Mahler, Wagner, Rubinstein, and Shostakovich just to name a few.  It is a stunning a hall that was completely filled every performance.  And afterward we would leave in a post-concert daze to be greeted at the stage entrance by a mob of enthusiastic fans wanting autographs and handshakes from us all.  There was one woman in particular that made a point of always finding us and greeting us.  She was a choir director herself in St. Petersburg and was always wanting to know more about the pieces we had sung, and in particular, Mozart's "Ave Verum."  She told us through our translator  one evening that it was very difficult to obtain sheet music so she had little exposure to pieces like that and regretted that she couldn't share them with her choir.  The next day she appeared at the stage door yet again, full of tears, handshakes and compliments.  Our choir director quickly gathered up the boys, retrieved their folders from them, and pulled out each copy of "Ave Verum," handing them all over to her.  The look on her face is permanently embedded in my memory.  It was a look of shock, disbelief, and gratitude.  The scenario threw me, and a I think the boys in our choir, for a bit of a loop.  It was difficult for me to fully comprehend the situation in Russia at that time which made it virtually, if not completely impossible for the people to obtain scores for some of the most loved pieces - scores that in the United States could be found in practically every choral library and that could be purchased fairly easily.  Needless to say it made me appreciate our local music store.  (And yes, those used to exist.)

© Popova Olga - Fotolia.com
So what does this story have to do with Shostakovich's Prelude and Fugue?  What I hear in this music is something that might have been incomprehensible in the same way had I not had those experiences in Russia.  At first listening this set might seem dark, desolate, and hopeless but what I sense is the light, warmth, and hope I sensed inlaid in everyday life, creating a complex beauty that I see in the beautiful inlaid woodwork that we saw everywhere in St. Petersburg.  I sensed this throughout the tour and since then, through reading Russian literature and taking in their history and culture.  And in this most incredible fugue, a double fugue, in which two themes and their countersubjects intertwine to create a complex, musical design, the Russian sentiment is poured on top of me in an undeniable way.  It never fails to make me want to weep and cheer, all at the same time.

And one final note about this particular performance.  I simply love listening to composers playing their own compositions and this example is no exception.  Is it note perfect?  Far from it.  Is it still effective?  In my mind, definitely, if not more so!  

Something for me to keep in mind.

9 comments:

  1. That sounds like an incredible trip. I'm sure those boys still remember it. I sometimes think of how wonderful it would be to go to the white nights concerts there ...

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    1. It was, Janis...and obviously unforgettable. That was about 20 years ago, I think, but I remember it like it was yesterday. I feel incredibly fortunate that I was able to be there during such a pivotal time in their history. And to perform in that hall. We also got to perform in the home where Rasputin was poisoned. Eerie. But cool.

      -Erica

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  2. It was very interesting to hear about your experiences in Russia. It is a very complex culture with beautiful and ugly co-existing side by side. Many people felt very lost right after the break up of Soviet Union, with no paying jobs and no one telling them how to live. One thing for sure, there was never sheet music. I personally only owned two pieces, both by Beethoven, and only because my mom traveled for work. All my sheet music was given to me by my teacher and she got it from the music school library where I attended. Students were not allowed to check sheet music out, only teachers. When she finally asked me what I wanted to play for my graduation recital, I didn't know what to tell her, because I didn't know what was out there. I tend to hoard sheet music now, printing it out just because I like the piece and might want to work on it in the future.

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    1. Olya,
      Wow, I always love to hear stories like this - it helps to put a face on history for me. I've never been great at just memorizing dates and facts so hearing comments like yours really helps me to soak it in more. That is just so mind-boggling to me. That you could grow up studying music without actually owning any sheet music. We had piles and piles of music at home that I could just pull out and sightread at any time.

      Which makes me wonder...how did you sightread if you didn't have access to music? Or maybe you didn't?

      So curious!

      Erica

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  3. Erica,
    I couldn't sightread. Still can't. I was taught to memorize. Which is really hard now, b/s flute players don't memorize, and it takes me playing through something about twice and it's there. That's how I was trained. It makes me really inconsistent in my playing. One day I am feeling good and my fingers fly, guieded by the aural memory, but come performance day nurves kick in, it all goes downhill very fast. I am very different from you in that I HAVE to play through my pieces an hour before preforming them jut to reassure myself that the music is still there.My flute teacher finds it really annoying. I have heard 'Quit memorzing and just READ THE NOTES ONE AT A TIME!' more then I care to admit. Not sure how to break this habit. It must have been great to be able to just sit dow, pick a piece and go at it just for fun.

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    1. That's right, Olya. I remember we had a discussion earlier on, I think, about sightreading. You mention what your flute teacher says, to read the notes one at a time...I work so hard at helping folks NOT read one note at a time in order to sightread - to look for patterns in the music and to allow those to free up our eyes and minds so our brains don't get overloaded with individual notes. But who knows! I'd be so curious to meet with you and to work with you. Someday, perhaps!!

      -Erica

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  4. I have a question for you. Another thing we never had that I found give amazing results is method books. They did wonders for me when I started learning the flute. Working on techniques in progressive order does the trick. We used to learn all our skills by learning pieces, and it slooooow and difficult work and it seems like the piece will never shape up by jury time. I think that's one of the reasons why I never really learned to play piano well. Do you use method books with your students? Or do you think we should learn skills from pieces?

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    1. Hello again, Olya.
      I'm not surprised that method books work well for you. Breaking things down keep things less overwhelming which is crucial for us to be able to succeed. When you think about it, playing a piece of music on any instrument requires the working out of so many different things - rhythm, pitch, fingerings, breathing, musicality...oh my...

      I think we can learn a lot from method books. If we could approach learning our pieces they way a method book might break it all down we might find the process much less overwhelming. I had never thought about that before.

      To answer your question, I actually haven't taught private piano very much at all so I'm pretty unfamiliar with method books. The students I have had have been more advanced by the time I've gotten to work with them so we've just worked on literature. Sorry I don't have a better answer for you!

      Erica

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  5. Erica, this essay is particularly poignant for me as a composer, and as someone who has had family emigrate from Russia (my paternal grandmother and maternal great grandfather's family), as well as my step-father's father, who escaped from Soviet-occupied territory. As well, Shostakovich has always been one of my musical heroes, particularly for the manner in which he both stood up to the bullying of the "official" policies dictating the ideals of "Socialist Realism" in music and art and for how he slapped Joseph Stalin in the face by composing a "Grand" Ninth Symphony (Piccolo Concertino) when Stalin had COMMANDED him to compose an heroic symphony, celebrating the "great leader" of the Soviet People. This could well have earned Shostakovich a one-way ticket to Siberia ... or worse, and Dmitri lived in fear - do not be fooled - but he was true to his craft. Yes, he DID compose works that are considered to fall within the ideals of "Socialist Realism" but, when working in university, a paper I wrote on his 5th Symphony - composed after his 4th had been withdrawn from performance after weeks of rehearsal - was really an example of "Musical Relativism" rather than "Socialist Realism". Shostakovich affixed the phrase, "A Soviet artists response to 'just' criticism" (paraphrased) atop the score, thus - in the minds of the critics - making the piece a "masterpiece of Socialist Realism" - ONLY because he called it that ... however, when you listen to the 4th and 5th symphonies they are as organically related as any developing composer; they are both recognizably Shostakovich. I love the 5th, but also the 4th ... and the 7th, as you mentioned on Facebook is - well, it is a spiritual undertaking of the highest order - difficult to imagine that one could have composed such a thing during those dark days. What is even more difficult to imagine is that it was actually performed DURING the siege, while the city was being bombed by the Nazis.

    For these reasons, among others, Shostakovich reigns as one of my musical mentors - and one of the reasons that I had his motto (DSCH) tattooed as part of my first tattoo (along with one of my other mentors, BACH). Just the other day, on January 1st my latest composition was completed - a piece for solo piccolo - "Soliloquy" ... and in it the DSCH motto theme is cited and played with in the middle section, as a tribute to Shostakovich and his musical memory.

    The most disturbing thing, perhaps, is the idea that music was so difficult to attain in a land where culture was so richly celebrated. This is one of those strange dichotomies that never cease to amaze me (of course, it probably has to do with the shunning of "private ownership" and the hoarding of personal belongings ... but still - supplies of books for musicians? Really?).

    Thank you for sharing your experiences.

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