7th Symphony Concert: Vienna, City of My Dreams

“Chaos instead of music” was the fateful headline under which Dmitri Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk was savaged in 1936 in the Soviet “Prawda.” In the Soviet Union, such a state-sanctioned critique was never just an artistic confrontation but posed an existential threat to the composer.

The fact that the premiere of Shostakovich's 5th Symphony was unanimously celebrated by both the public and state representatives the following year was equivalent to a rehabilitation after the preceding scandal. For Shostakovich, the solemn praise from the Soviet party leadership was presumably just another dose of the same poison.

It raises the question of what exactly the party leadership meant to hear in the grim and desperate marches and the grotesquely distorted “Per aspera ad astra” dramaturgy. Mstislav Rostropovich referred to the exuberant finale, overflowing with jubilation, as a “triumph for idiots.” Shostakovich himself commented on the speculation about possible interpretations of his music with his characteristic laconicism: “Just listen to my music, everything is said in it.”