Dmitry Shostakovich

Symphony No.9in E flat maj., Op. 70
Allegro - Moderato - Presto - Largo - Allegretto
In 1947 Shostakovich was denounced by the Russian Communist Party, along with several other Russian composers, for being formalist, and showing anti-democratic tendencies alien to the Soviet people and its artistic tastes. His Symphony No.9 in E flat major, Op. 70, in particular, came in for serious censure. Written in the aftermath of the Second World War, the Soviet leadership clearly expected a celebratory symphony, hymning its achievements; but the work's modest size and orchestration and its curious mixture of wry humour and dour melancholy were the very antithesis of the triumphalism required.

The first movement, Allegro, opens with strings alone, the first violin offering a cheerful first subject. The second subject, raucously announced by trombone, continues with a perky little melody for piccolo. After a repeated exposition and the development of both themes, the recapitulation almost mockingly gives its second subject to a solo violin. The second movement, Moderato, begins with a winding melancholy theme for clarinet solo, which is taken up in turn by different combinations of woodwind. Its bleak orchestration is made eerie by a pulsating muted string figure, which appears first as a new theme and then insinuates itself sporadically into the texture. A scuttling clarinet melody introduces the relentless third movement, Presto, and it is soon passed, first to the piccolo and flutes, then to strings, to clarinets and so forth. A burlesque trumpet tune joins the melee, imitated by the trombone, before eventually winding down, closing with a quasi recitativo rhetorical gesture. In the fourth movement, Largo, a tragic bassoon soliloquy belies a strangely portentous introduction by trombones and tuba. It confounds expectations even further when, in its dying moments, it is bizarrely resurrected as a lively new theme for the final Allegretto. Even in this movement, joy is tempered with an uneasy sense of restraint, and the final bars seemed tinged with a sense of mockery as Shostakovich almost reluctantly accedes to the required mood of exuberance with the introduction of trumpets.