Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)

Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47 (1937)

 "Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing...."

Dmitri Shostakovich, from Testimony - The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich (Faber and Faber, 1979):

"I discovered to my astonishment that the man who considers himself its greatest interpreter does not understand my music. [Yevgeny Mravinsky] He says that I wanted to write exultant finales for my Fifth and Seventh Symphonies but I couldn't manage it. It never occurred to this man that I never thought about any exultant finales, for what exultation could there be? I think that it is clear to everyone what happens in the Fifth. The rejoicing is forced, created under a threat, as in Boris Godunov. It's as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, 'Your business is rejoicing' and you rise, shakily, and go marching off muttering 'Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing.'

What kind of apotheosis is that? You have to be a complete oaf not to hear that. Fadayev heard it, and he wrote in his diary, for his personal use, that the finale of the Fifth is irreparable tragedy. He must have felt it with his Russian alcoholic soul." 

[Alexander Alexandrovich Fadayev (1901-1956), an author set up by Stalin as head of the Writer's Union. He signed many sanctions for the arrest of writers (as did the heads of the other 'creative' unions for their members). After a shift in internal Soviet politics, he committed suicide.]

I. Moderato

II. Allegretto

III. Largo  

IV. Allegro non troppo 

New York Philharmonic / Dimitri Mitropoulos

(LP transfer; Columbia, recorded 1952)