Score Salon:
Gavin Borchert on Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony

June 10, 2002 at Bad Animals

Shostakovich's politically- and poetically-charged Fifth Symphony was written between April 18 and July 20, 1937, in Leningrad. During this time, the Soviet Union was in the midst of Stalin's "Great Terror". Millions were being arrested and tortured, then summarily executed or exiled to Siberia and Central Asia. Shostakovich's sister Mariya was exiled to Central Asia in 1937 and several other relatives and friends eventually disappeared.

On January 28, 1936, his widely performed opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, had been attacked in the Russian newspaper Pravda in an article that included an understood threat against his life ("This is playing with nonsensical things, which could end very badly."). Marshal Tukhachevsky, an important friend and early patron of Shostakovich, was arrested and executed at the time that Shostakovich was composing the Fifth Symphony. In May 1936, Shostakovich had finished his Fourth Symphony which he had begun composing in 1935. He withdrew it from rehearsal in December under official pressure and it was not given its first performance until 1961. The rich layers of parody and scorn that infuse the Fifth Symphony were seen as Shostakovich's public response to the attack on his music and character that began with the Pravda article.

Composer and Seattle Weekly columnist Gavin Borchert moderated a Score Salon evening on this fascinating piece of Russian orchestral literature. Born and raised in Grand Forks, North Dakota, Gavin studied composition at Michigan State University and at the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati with Darrell Handel and Allen Sapp. A not-entirely-unexpected failure to secure an academic post upon graduation (DMA, 1993) led him to Seattle, where he composes, plays cello in the OK Quartet, and covers classical music for the Seattle Weekly.

Works of his that have received particularly lovely performances include the overture She Stoops to Conquer (Indianapolis Symphony); Canon for an August Afternoon (CCM Philharmonia); Five Memos (after Calvino) (Cincinnati Symphony, Tacoma Symphony); Gjallarhorn (Seattle Youth Symphony); Shepherd's Life, with Variations (guitarist Mark Wilson); Sweet Wines and Wines that Foam (Philharmonia Northwest); and Aubade-canons (The Esoterics). He is currently at work on a concerto for former Metropolitan Opera clarinetist Sean Osborn.

Gavin reccommends the 1992 re-release of the 1961 Czech Philharmonic recording on the Supraphon label, under the baton of Karel Ancerl.

Capitol Music Center is the official sponsor of the SCA Monthly Score Salon.

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