An Evening at the Symphony (Movement II)

The second half of the evening was Dmitri Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony. Larry Rachleff, the conductor for the evening, prefaced it by asking the audience what they would feel if they were to "compose a piece to save your life." He explained Shostakovich found himself in a time where the atmosphere was stale as exhuberant joy was forced into Soviet shackles. Rather than composing a piece that conformed to Soviet rubrics, or write a piece of dreamy escapism, this piece embraced and illustrated Shostakovich's creative struggles against the Soviet censors.


The first movement was defined by the weaving of a creative spirit between the anthemic heralds, in the voices of the trumpets, as they blared behind the red lumbering giants of Communism. With the weaving of lyrical melodies and brooding undertones one can detect the mixture of Beauty and Brutality, which will wrestle with eachother throughout the work.
Movement I (I)
Movement I (II)With the advent of the second movement it felt as though the audience was sitting in on a Russian ballet with a most bizarre pair. There is a whimsical and almost unnerving character to this and one can imagine the Muse of Shostakovich as a Russian ballerina who finds herself paired with one of those lumbering Red Brutes from the first movement. The stubbornness of the Brute with ernest grace of the Dancer make for a tension that is undeniably moving.
Movement II

In the third movement, it is as though the audience finds the Dancer alone in her room with a break from the performance with the Brute. She rummages through her things and her memories and is moved to dance in her solitude. She dances as though no Reds will knock on her door and and cherishes a memory or maybe a hope of freedom. This poignant piece is not a perfect escape though, because one can see the great face of The Terror haunting her dream and breaking through her serenity and she finds the tension has taken root within herself. Her lonely reflection ends with the tinkering of a music box, where she finds a ballerina much like herself closed up, spinning around, in a glass cage; seeing out but not escaping.
Movement III (I)
Movement III (II)

Leaving the previous movement, the audience can see how Shostakovich could not shake this Devil from his thought and so resolved to grapple with it. The final movement gives the audience the impression that the Dancer will not be free and she must strive to be creative even within her pressing constrainsts. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsen say, "The line between good and evil runs through the heart of every human being" and so I see Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony as introducing man to the Struggle that happens within us all. It's especially inspiring how Shostakovich did not flee from this adversity, but rather faced it and incorporated it in his dramatic work. One leaves this piece seeing that every human soul has the ability to be like Shostakovich; to like a bird who is resolved to sing from a branch, a cage, and even from within a clenched fist.
Movement IV (I)
Movement IV (II)