Today will be devoted entirely Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony. Toscanini's performance of this symphony in July of 1942 must be considered one of the most important concerts given in the United States during World War II.
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 7 - July 19th, 1942
Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony is far from his strongest music, but it deserves a special place in history for the powerful symbolism it exerted during the darkest days of World War II, a time when the very survival of liberty was frighteningly precarious. As Hitler's army waged its odious siege over the city of Leningrad, Dmitri Shostakovich worked on the seventh of his generally remarkable fifteen symphonies. These works express in music what the composer could never have put into words. He longed for freedom from the dreadful repression of his home country, yet as far as I am aware he never really seriously considered leaving the Soviet Union. He was a Russian, and he remained committed to his homeland for his entire life. Shostakovich was never a happy man (the only photo I have yet found of him smiling was taken after his death, when he was in his coffin), but he had a profound belief in the beauty of Russian art and culture. This rich heritage had in Dmitri Shostakovich an ideal custodian through decades of tyranny from within, and three years of catastrophic warfare imposed from without.
The story of how this symphony ended up being performed by Arturo Toscanini inside a radio studio in New York City less than five months after its premiere in the Russian city of Kuibyshev during the worst day of the war reads like an espionage novel. The 252-page score and more than 2500 pages of orchestral parts were painstakingly microfilmed and flown in a military plane to Tehran. From there they were driven to Cairo for the flight to the United States. The score arrived in Toscanini's hands on June 14th of 1942, and a fight immediately ensued with Leopold Stokowski over who was to conduct the American premiere.
As you may remember, Stokowski had been hired by NBC to replace Toscanini after his resignation from the network, and Stokowski had been the one to persuade NBC to buy the rights to the American premiere. When Toscanini was given the score to the symphony he wrote to Stokowski to persuade him to relinquish the premiere: "At once I was deeply taken by its beauty and its anti-Fascist meanings, and I have to confess to you, by the greatest desire to perform it." Stokowski evidently did not understand that this meant Toscanini was asking to conduct the very first American performance, and Toscanini had to write further that he "felt the strongest sympathy and emotion for this special work, so I urged the NBC to have it performed by me. Try to understand me, my dear Stokowski, only because of the special meaning of this Symphony. Happily, you are much younger than me, and Shostakovich will not stop writing new symphonies. You will certainly have all the opportunities you like to perform them."
In the end Toscanini won the fight and performed the North American premiere of Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony on July 19th, 1942. What may be most remarkable about this is Toscanini's super-human feat of conducting the complete massive score from memory after only a few weeks of study. The performance itself was a bit like the symphony: deeply flawed but extremely compelling in spite of itself. From the very first bars this is obviously a Toscanini performance, with all the benefits and drawbacks that come with it. With all the razor-sharp attacks and edgy tempos of his most volatile Beethoven performances, Toscanini gave this symphony all the nerve it could handle. This approach works (for the most part) quite well in the outer movements, but the inner movements are greatly weakened by Toscanini's over-wrought intensity.
Shostakovich himself was not impressed by this performance, claiming that "hearing it made me angry. Everything is wrong. The spirit and the character and the tempos. It's a lousy, sloppy hack job." The enmity was mutual: years later Toscanini found the score in one of his files and had to ask what it was. His son, Walter, reported that Toscanini became agitated and said "Did I learn that? I must have been crazy."
Both the creator and the interpreter were being overly harsh. The greater meaning of the Leningrad Symphony is much more important than the sum of its imperfect parts. Shostakovich wrote this music as a statement against evil, and the world accepted it as such with open arms. Toscanini was the most famous performing musician in the world, and the part he played in bringing this statement of humanity before the world had an incalculable effect towards the victory of basic human decency over the evil of Hitler's hordes. Art and culture may be the most effective weapon the human race has over tyrants, and in this respect Shostakovich and Toscanini are two of the greatest warriors the world has ever known.
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That's it for Day 21! Check back tomorrow for some little-known Brahms, some mildly well-known Verdi, and some all-too-well-known Tchaikovsky. See you tomorrow!
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