Sibelius commented on his revision of the 5th Symphony: "I wished to give my symphony another -- more human -- form. More down-to-earth, more vivid.".
Background:
In January 1899, Sibelius embarked on his First Symphony at a time when his patriotic feelings were being enhanced by the Russian emperor Nicholas II's attempt to restrict the powers of the Grand Duchy of Finland. The symphony was well received by all when it was premiered in Helsinki on 26 April 1899. But the program also premiered the even more compelling, blatantly patriotic Song of the Athenians for boys' and male choirs. The song immediately brought Sibelius the status of a national hero. Another patriotic work followed on 4 November in the form of eight tableaux depicting episodes from Finnish history known as the Press Celebration Music. It had been written in support of the staff of the Pà ¤ivà ¤lehti newspaper which had been suspended for a period after editorially criticizing Russian rule. The last tableau, Finland Awakens, was particularly popular; after minor revisions, it became the well-known Finlandia.
From the beginning of 1917, Sibelius started drinking again, triggering arguments with Aino. Their relationship improved with the excitement resulting from the start of the Russian Revolution. By the end of the year, Sibelius had composed his JÃ ¤ger March. The piece proved particularly popular after the Finnish parliament accepted the Senate's declaration of independence from Russia in December 1917. The JÃ ¤ger March, first played on 19 January 1918, coinciding with the beginning of the Finnish Civil War, delighted the Helsinki elite for a short time until the Finnish Red Guard, supporting the Russians, seized power in Helsinki on 28 January. When the Red Guards had been defeated by Gustaf Mannerheim, Sibelius conducted the march in Helsinki, reinforcing his image as a national hero.
For the next piece, the Shostakovich Symphony #5, we go back to Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FF4HyB77hQ
Shostakovich said this about his own creation many years later:
"I think it is clear to everyone what happens in the Fifth. The rejoicing is forced, created under threat. It's as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, 'Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing "/blockquote>
The composer had fallen out of favor with the Party, and more ominously, with Stalin himself. Something seemed objectionable to them about his Music for Lady Macbeth, and about his Fourth Symphony, so Shostakovich's life literally depended on his creating something that would appeal to them, to all Russian people, and particularly to his critics.
An article reportedly written by the composer appeared in the Moscow newspaper Vechernyaya Moskva a few days before the premiere of the Fifth Symphony. There, he reportedly states that the work "is a Soviet artist's creative response to justified criticism." Whether Shostakovich or someone more closely connected with the Party actually wrote the article is open to question, but the phrase "justified criticism"--a reference to the denunciation of the composer in 1936--is especially telling. Official critics treated the work as a turnaround in its composer's career, a personal perestroyka or "restructuring" by the composer, with the Party engineering Shostakovich's rehabilitation as carefully as it had his fall a couple of years earlier. Like the Pravda attack at that time on the opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, the political basis for extolling the Fifth Symphony was to show how the Party could make artists bow to its demands. It had to show that it could reward as easily and fully as it could punish.
The official tone toward the Fifth Symphony was further set by a review by Alexei Tolstoy, who likened the symphony to the literary model of the Soviet Bildungsroman describing "the formation of a personality"--in other words, of a Soviet personality. In the first movement, the composer-hero suffers a psychological crisis giving rise to a burst of energy. The second movement provides respite. In the third movement, the personality begins to form: "Here the personality submerges itself in the great epoch that surrounds it, and begins to resonate with the epoch." With the finale, Tolstoy wrote, came victory, "an enormous optimistic lift." As for the ecstatic reaction of the audience to the work, Tolstoy claimed it showed Shostakovich's perestroyka to be sincere. "Our audience is organically incapable of accepting decadent, gloomy, pessimistic art. Our audience responds enthusiastically to all that is bright, clear, joyous, optimistic, life-affirming."
Be sure to watch also on YouTube the great movie on Shostakovich's life: Testimony: From the Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich
www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-Mj-zkUrqA
In this article, because of constraints of both time and space, I will regrettably leave out my favorite composer of the Western Hemisphere, Brazil's Heitor Villalobos, with the intention that I will devote an entire article to him in the very near future.
We will therefore then close with a fine performance of Samuel Barber's Agnus Dei, which includes his Adagio for Strings:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiuC_CaObbI&spfreload=10
I find this fascinating because Barber originally composed this piece as an adagio movement in a string quartet, but changed it to a piece for a full string orchestra at the insistence of Arturo Toscanini, who said it was just too great to be performed by anything ensemble less than a full orchestra for strings.
The recording of the world premiere in 1938, with Arturo Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra, was selected in 2005 for permanent preservation in the National Recording Registry at the United States Library of Congress.Since the 1938 recording, the Adagio for Strings has frequently been heard throughout the world, and was one of the few American pieces to be played in the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
The Adagio for Strings has been performed on many public occasions, especially during times of mourning. It was:
Broadcast over the radio at the announcement of Franklin D. Roosevelt's death;
Broadcast over the television at the announcement of John F. Kennedy's death
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