THE MEM OIRS OF
DMITRI
HOSTAKOVICH
"The tragic horror of a trapped genius."-Yehudi Menuhin as related to and edited by
SOIDMON VOLKOV
Translated from the Russian by Antonina W. Bouis
At Shostakovichs Moscow apartment: (from the left) the composers wife Irina, his favorite student, Boris Tishchenko, Dmitri Shostakovich, Solomon Volkov. On the wall, a portrait of Shostakovich as a boy by Boris K ustodiev. The inscription on the photograph reads: "To dearSolomonMoiseyevich Volkov in fond remembrance. D. Shostakovich.13XI1974. A reminder of our conversations about Glazunov, Zoshchenko, Meyerhold. D.S."
LIMELIGHT EDITIONS
NEW YORK
TESTIMONY
The Memoirs of
Dmitri Shostakovich
as related to and edited by
Solomon Volkov
Translated from the Russian by Antonina W. Bouis
All photographs except where otherwise credited are from the personal collection of Solomon Vollr.ov.
First Limelight Edition, October 1984
Copyright© 1979 by Solomon Volkov. English-language translation copyright© 1979 by Harper&: Row, Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Proscenium Publishers Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Fitzhenry &: Whiteside Limited, Toronto.
Originally published by Harper&: Row, Publishers, Inc.
ISBN 0-87910-021-4
Manufactured in the United States of America
Designer: Gloria Ade/sun
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Shostakovich, Dmitrii Dmitrievich, 1906-1975.
Testimony: the memoirs o.f Dmitri Shostakovich.
Includes index.
I. Shostakovich, Dmitrii Dmitrievich, 1906-1975. 2. Composers-Russia-Biography. L Volkov, Solomon. II. Title.
ML410.S5!1A!I 1984
780'.92'4 [BJ
84-4399
Contents
Preface x1
Introduction xix
TESTIMONY 3
Major Compositions, Titles, and Awards 277
Index 283
Illustrations
Frontispiece: Irina Shostakovich, Boris Tishchenko, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Solomon Volkov
Following page 86:
Shostakovich and fellow students at Leningrad Conservatory
The young Shostakovich
Leningrad Conservatory
Alexander Glazunov, composer and longtime director of the Conservatory
Shostakovich with the great director Meyerhold
With Meyerhold, Mayakovsky, and Rodchenko, 1 929
Shostakovich's patron, Marshal Tukhachevsky, and his wife, Nina
Nikolai Akimov, director of a scandalous production of Hamlet
Mikhail Zoshchenko, the influential satirical writer Nina Varzar, Shostakovich's first wife
With musicologist Ivan Sollertinsky, his closest friend Boris Asafiev, the great Soviet musicologist
Stali� and Zhdanov at the bier of Sergei Kirov
Time cover portraying Shostakovich in a fire fighter's ix
helmet during World War II
With his favorite student, Veniamin Fleishman
Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Khachaturian
Playing for bomber pilots during World War II
Khrennikov assailing Shostakovich at the first Composers' Congress, 1 948
The Congress in the session that condemned many leading composers Following page 182:
In New York, 1 949, to attend the Cultural and Scientific Congress for World Peace Shostakovich with his wife, Nina, in a box at Leningrad Philharmonic
With his mother, Sofiya Vasilyevna, 1951
In the dressing room of his son, conductor Maxim Shostakovich Paul Robeson and actor Solomon Mikhoels in Moscow Title page of Yiddish song collection edited by Shostakovich, 1 970
Accompanying a performance of his cycle, From Jewish Folk Poetry
The composer at work
With his third wife, Irina
With the composer Muradeli, listening to folk musicians in the Kirghiz Republic, 1 963
The New York Philharmonic, under Leonard Bernstein, on its first visit to Moscow, 1 959
Receiving a certificate from Aaron Copland in Moscow, 1 960
With Solomon Volkov, 1 965
Score of the Thirteenth Symphony inscribed to Volkov, 1 972
With conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky and Volkov, 1 975
At a performance of his last quartet, 1 974
With his young grandson
Reading one of his many official speeches
The funeral of Shostakovich, August 1 4, 1 97 5
x
Preface
MY personal atquaintance with Shostakovich began in 1960, when I was the first to review the premiere of his Eighth Quartet in a Leningrad newspaper. Shostakovich was then fifty-four. I was sixteen.
I was his fanatic admirer.
It is impossible to study music in Russia and not come across the name Shostakovich in childhood. I remember when, in 1955, my parents returned in great excitement from a chamber concert: Shostakovich and several singers had performed his "Jewish Cycle" for the first time. In a country that had just been lashed by a vicious wave of anti
Semitism, a prominent composer had dared publicly to present a work that spoke of the Jews with pity and compassion. This was both a musical and a public event.
That was how I came to know the name. My acquaintance with the music came several years later. In September 1958,. Y evgeny Mravinsky conducted Shostakovich's Eleventh Symphony at the Leningrad Philharmonic. The symphony (written after the 1956 Hungarian uprising) is about the people, and rulers, and their juxtaposition; the sec-xi
ond movement harshly depicts the execution of defenseless people with naturalistic authenticity. The poetics of shock. For the first time in my life, I left a concert thinking about others instead of myself. To this day, this is the main strength of Shostakovich's music for me.
I threw myself into studying all scores of Shostakovich that I could get. In the library, furtively, the piano reduction of the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District was taken out from under stacks of books.
Special permission was required before I could get the mu.sic of the First Piano Sonata. The early, "left" Shostakovich was still officially banned. He was still defamed in music history classes and in textbooks. Young musicians met secretly, in small groups, to study his music.
Every premiere precipitated a struggle-hidden or overt-in the press, in musical circles, in the corridors of power. Shostakovich would rise and make his awkward way to the stage to respond to the loud calls from the audience. My idol would walk past me, his small head with its cowlick held carefully in balance. He looked very helpless, a misleading impression, as I later learned. I burned to help him in any way I could.
The opportunity to speak out came after the first performance of the Eighth Quartet, an extraordinary work and in a sense his musical autobiography. In October 1960, the newspaper printed my ecstatic review. Shostakovich read it-he always read the articles about his premieres closely. I was introduced to him. He said a few polite phrases and I was in heaven. Over the next few years I wrote several other articles about his music. They were all published and they all played their part, great or small, in the contemporary musical process.