SHOSTAKOVICH – CANTATAS – PAAVO JÄRVI – 2015
The first thing to regret about this recording
is that the lyrics, or libretto, are not provided and the internet can provide
an English version of “The execution of Stepan Razin” and a bilingual version
of “The song of the Forests.” But I was just plainly unable to find the lyrics
of “The sun shines over our motherland.” And since they are not provided by
Paavo Järvi himself how can we know they are the original words, lyrics,
libretto since it is well known that since they were ideologically very close
to Stalin they have been very often maybe systematically, rewritten in the west.
And that is a crime against humanity, against human culture. We have the right
to have the works in the exact form they were created and first performed
except if the composer himself changed the work, which gives us a choice. But
that is not the case. I guess the next move will be to expurgate the
anti-Indian films by and with John Wayne, not to say racist towards the Indians,
that should be corrected and made politically correct.
We are speaking of human rights, aren’t we? And
any one politically minded bureaucrat, even musical bureaucrat has the right to
impose a rewriting of a musical work because he or she considers it is not politically
correct. So many words have to be banned forever from the unconscious criminal
mind of these bureaucrats, in fact from our passive minds under the
ever-remembering surveillance of these bureaucrats.
“The execution of Stepan Razin” is a marvelous
musical work. The bass is a miracle of depth and somberness and it rightly and
righteously is the voice of the revolutionary or anarchistic young man who
kills supporters of the Czar. This bass wants to be the revolutionary hero par
excellence the way the 19th century tenor of Wagner and Verdi was
supposed to be the revolutionary voice of the modern western world. Who would dream
of Siegfried as a deep Russian bass, or any hero of Verdi’s operas? No one of
course. The heroic tenor was best, just as in Handel’s times the hero was a
castrato or countertenor to use a modern “name.” What Stepan Razin says is not
that surprising. When you want to make a revolution you have to break many
eggs. At least that was the vision of the time, and still is in some Islamist camps
or some guerrilla warfare underground struggle in Colombia or some, less and
less, countries in the underdeveloped world.
The bass though is slightly grandiloquent and
the contrast with the choruses of the people watching the execution is striking
and the music then is there to amplify the pedagogical sacrifice of the revolutionary
in order to make the people realize where the truth is. Including the soft,
refrained music and singing that are supposed to emphasize the thinking, the pondering,
the mind raking search of this audience who came to enjoy a good show and are
confronted to a good pre-mortem sermon that requires them to climb up to some
historical responsibility in supporting and embracing the victim, the martyr.
And that has to lead to a miracle, like Jesus
resuscitating three days after his crucifixion. It is called by the bells
ringing three times and then a fourth time some instant later. And again later
on and on. The Bass then sings the head standing up all by itself and preaching,
predicating, prognosticating the end of the Czar and the victory of the revolution.
The head is resurrected into a political and fore- and farseeing prediction. The
future is there at the door, except that in reality the future is the present
and the new world is Stalin himself. The prediction becomes political allegiance.
“The Sun shines over the Motherland” starts as
some rustic scene, soft, sweet, gentle. A boys’ choir is enough to give purity
and an easy going tone that is then amplified by adult choirs that literally
engulf the boys into a tide of power, optimism and faith. There cannot be any
doubt in this in a way deliriously optimistic and servile work dedicated to the
19th congress of the Communist Party of the USSR in 1952 with an
ailing if not dying Stalin and with a 20th congress in the near
future that will turn the page but unluckily will not turn the chapter and
certainly not turn from the whole book to another volume. So Shostakovich can
only make some martial music that sings the future which looks very much like the
present forever when it is on the point of falling. I am afraid so many
political movements have their official musicians and they at times commit
great works, brilliant songs that look for some unheard chords and enthusiastic
harmony. It is not really the case here. Let’s sing together, raise our glasses
and drink to the eternal truth and life of Stalin. You should listen to some of
the French revolutionary works and you might find the same inspiration. The
Marseillaise for example and its rivers of blood. In other words it is a relief
when it comes to its own end, because all the great saviors always come to
their end one day, and that is a good thing indeed. There is little difference
between a Te Deum and such an Ave Tovarich!
“The song of the Forests” is another story and
it starts with chords we remember from Stravinsky. But that might be a
coincidence. We have to understand this is not pure propaganda. It starts
deeply rooted in the Second World War and the several tens of millions of
people who were killed on the Russian side. If we understand what it means to
see something like 10 or 15% of the population of a country killed in five
years by a crazy war, a barbaric war we can understand that we are here in a
ritual that makes people, all survivors, commune in the sadness and the pain of
the recollection of this period. We think of Walt Whitman and his “When Lilacs Last in the
Dooryard Bloom'd” and his
dirge about Lincoln’s
assassination. And we could find other cases.
The second movement wants to be enthusiastic
and to lead the people into reconstructing, developing the nation. Women are
necessary because they are the life givers and they bring life to the country. Singing
the trees, the birches, and their growth from the war-wasted land into some
forest, some life-endowed and life-oriented work because we seem to forget in
our western complacency that nothing can be achieved without work. Maybe a
composer should not be a teacher of ethics and a foreman of work parties. Yet
the third movement is more dramatic because it tries to remember the past, the suffering
of the nation, and here the bass is the voice of that abyss, of that maelstrom,
of that hell of a past that can never be forgotten. I must say in 1949 it was
impossible to imagine the Russians forgetting that WW2 and all the other wars
before like WW1 and the invasion by western powers and Japan after
WW1. No one would say that Victor Hugo was a bigot when he wrote his novel “Ninety-Three”
dedicated to the revolutionary wars of 1793, and the Terror and the blood bath,
and so many other dark episodes of the French Revolution. Shostakovich is
justified in his recollection of this horrible period and I cannot see how some
could require Shostakovich to reject Stalin, the Victorious leader, in 1949. In France after
all de Gaulle was even called back to power in 1958. Military glory survives
everything, alas.
The fourth movement singing the action of
young people, pioneers, planting the forests, reconstructing the country is
nearly innocent and pure, clear for sure. The trumpet is brilliantly used as an
entertaining sound that is nearly naïve and it leads to some fast and practically
diabolical sarabande as if the young were the flames of the fire that was
burning in the heart of all Russians. If there was a mistake it was on the side
of politicians who wanted to force history instead of encouraging the energy or
energies coming from people themselves. But Shostakovich was right. There was
no future, no reconstruction without enthusiastic commitment.
The fifth movement is bizarre. On this CD it
is dedicated to the memory of Stalingrad and
in the libretto I got from the Grant Park Music Festival it is dedicated to
Young Communists. So I hardly can believe the two versions can be wider apart. The
tone of the music though in this recording is a dirge, some kind of optimistic
and sound dirge singing the glory of some people from the past. There is some
sadness and contained pain and the tenor at this moment seems to be singing
that inward meditation of the Russian people. The words I have sing the force
of the river Volga and that was the old name of Stalingrad.
So the version of the libretto I have must have been rewritten to erase the
name of Stalin. The CD seems to go back to the original version.
The sixth movement takes us to the future in
some at first rustic and then more urban or suburban march, some cavalcade
towards tomorrows that are necessarily singing. No surprise that the nation is
depicted as a new garden of Eden, but not created as such by some supernatural
being but grown and taken care of by the people themselves. Let’s have the
Garden of Eden but let’s get rid of any mention of the religious myth behind.
Then we can close this peace with a simple
song of Glory to the nation, to Lenin and to Lenin’s party. Once again in the
libretto I have the name of Stalin seems to be erased. At this moment the work
becomes slightly grandiloquent and the return of the bass singing history and
the future of the world in communism is nothing but some predicative conviction
(oh! The ugly word that has two meanings!) that human beings are consciously
making history. Many are thinking that and yet it is totally wrong. Human
beings are one element in that historical trajectory and not necessarily the
good one or the better one. Human beings have such a taste for blood and
domination!
Such music has alas aged and has probably been
swallowed up by some good intentions cast in realistic if not opportunistic
considerations about the world the way it is and things the way they are.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 1:29 PM