John Crooks

Dmitri Shostakovich’s 103 birthday was September 25. A great composer, his works are beautiful, majestic, ironic, clever, and sometimes all these things at once. A devout Russian, Shostakovich was by turns Soviet poster boy and target of Communist party ideologues. This birthday reminds me of Leonard Bernstein’s televised Young Peoples Concert from  January 1966. Titled A Birthday Tribute to Shostakovich, the concert celebrated Shostakovich’s 60th birthday and featured performance and analysis of the composer’s 9th Symphony in Eb major. (Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts are amazing. Pricey, but worth it and published by Kultur)

At the time of this televised concert the US and USSR were deep into Cold War politics. These politics were apparent at every level of social discourse, and tension between the two nations was expressed in the arts in many ways. While the US and USSR would engage in cultural exchanges, these events were highly politicized and prone to diplomatic intervention. (For example, a few months before Bernstein’s Birthday Tribute to Shostakovich was televised, a Moscow production of Hello Dolly was canceled as a result of Communist party pressures.) Shostakovich was famously reprimanded by Stalin on two occasions even as his works were critically acclaimed internationally. The composer feared for his life and family, lost professorships and professional opportunity as a result of party opinions, and generally had to adjust his music and speech to conform to fickle party standards. As a result, when Shostakovich visited NYC in 1949 and 1958, ostensibly as a Communist Party spokesman, his messages were effectively overpowered by the (often CIA funded via The Congress for Cultural Freedom) anti-Soviet arts community in New York, led by composer Nicholas Nabokov and others, who used stories of his persecution as an example of Soviet injustice and asked him to defect.

For Bernstein, an astoundingly successful and roundly acclaimed artist, the politics of the Cold War were somewhat different. With family roots in Poland and the Ukraine, Bernstein felt an urgent desire to bring the US and USSR into better relations. He took the New York Philharmonic to the USSR in 1959, and in his writing frequently called for improved communications between the two countries. His ties to Russia are deep, as not only his family but his mentor Sergei Koussevitzky were identified with Russian culture. While Bernstein was in a position to speak his ideas freely and even serve as a catalyst for change, the realities of his role and the experiences of his collaborators did limit his speech. Charles Dubin, an original director and producer of the televised Young People’s Concerts, was blacklisted shortly after the series premiered in 1958. In Bernstein’s preparatory notes for the Birthday Tribute to Shostakovich (available at The Library of Congress’ website) the conductor, given the bully pulpit of live national broadcast, prepares an opening statement that directly confronts Shostakovich’s struggles as a Russian and a Soviet:

And what is the first and main quality of this Russian man? His Russian-ness. Shostakovich’s devotion has not only been to his art, but also to his country…He is a very patriotic man, but he is also an artist, and that combination has sometimes gotten him into hot water with the people who guide the very revolution in which he grew up. (see document linked at left, quoted section is near center)

But this kind of direct engagement with Shostakovich’s personal story was not appropriate for The Young People’s Concerts, or, really, for a birthday tribute. Even as the pointless cloak and dagger of the Cold War played out for all to see (or infer, or fear), Bernstein was not in a position to outline Shostakovich’s uncomfortable lot in life. While Bernstein clearly was ready to speak about the topic on national television (thus the initial notes reproduced here), something made him change direction. Whether it was a personal choice, network naysayers, or (more likely in my opinion) the overarching vision of “pure music” presented by The Young People’s Concerts, the broadcast television program presents a  jolly tour through some of the humorous references and musical tricks in Shostakovich’s 9th Symphony. As Bernstein writes in a later draft “birthdays should be gay. Hence avoid the serious, heavy, patriotic aspects and emphasize the merry.” (see document linked right, scribbled at top) Bernstein was able to quell his famously outspoken manner in order to give the composer due honor in television style. What better happy birthday could there be given the circumstances?

So I also say happy birthday Dmitri Shostakovich! Let his ability to express great ideas through music (sometimes under duress; often with skillful subterfuge and subversive wit) inspire and remind us that compromise is a part of the creative process.

This post is based on a longer article,

Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts:
A Birthday Tribute to Shostakovich in Context

click above for full text and references.