BBC Legends 3: Shostakovich at his Darkest

The fourteenth CD in the latest BBC Legends release is, without any doubt, the darkest. The featured artist is the Russian conductor Evgeny Svetlanov leading the London Symphony Orchestra. The program took place on October 30, 1979, making its proximity of Halloween all the more chilling. The CD consists of only one composition, Dmitri Shostakovich’s Opus 65 (eighth) symphony in C minor.

Shostakovich’s friend Isaac Glikman call this symphony “his most tragic work;" and, in spite of the superlative modifier, this may be regarded as an understatement. The seventh symphony, Opus 60 in C major, was nicknamed “Leningrad” in recognition of the siege of Leningrad by a union of German and Finnish forces. He had originally given the final movement the title “Victory;” but he withdrew any titles that might suggest that the ongoing war had been won.

However, to say that Opus 60 emerged as a dark reflection on World War II would amount to shallow understatement. That symphony was completed in December of 1941. By the time Shostakovich composed Opus 65 during the summer of 1943, it was clear that the War had thoroughly worn down his spirits. Opus 65 thus served as an expression of how deep his despair was over the likelihood that he might never see peaceful times. That was the context behind Glikman’s assertion.

I think that one of the most perceptive accounts of just how dark Opus 65 was arose during a pre-concert talk that Scott Foglesong gave for a San Francisco Symphony performance of this symphony in October of 2014. After he had completed his dark journey through the five movements of the symphony, he confessed that it did not seem appropriate for him to conclude by telling his audience to “Enjoy the concert!” As a substitute parting remark, he offered, “The Force be with you.”

This is not as silly as it may sound. One has to be properly braced when one is expecting a journey into extreme darkness. Conductor Vladimir Jurowski led that journey, and I was more than a little impressed that those that had attended to Foglesong’s background were willing to follow Jurowski on that journey. In that context I have to say that Svetlanov also knew how to lead his listeners through such a journey into darkness. Mind you, there is always some sense of detachment that separates recordings from the immediate present of performance; but Svetlanov clearly knew how dark things would get. His interpretation emerged almost as powerfully through recording as it probably did for those that attended his performance in the Royal Festival Hall.