Symphony No. 10 in E Minor

Some of Shostakovich’s greatest works were the products of intense crises, and so it is with the Tenth Symphony. He began it in 1953, five years after a harrowing official denunciation in the notorious “Zhdanov Decree” had been followed by dismissal from his official posts. In public, Shostakovich was forced to toe the line, but privately he continued to write music which he hoped might see the light of day in better times. The experience concentrated his mind as never before. The 10th is one of the most focused and tightly controlled of his symphonies, and that focus only magnifies its emotional impact. A magnificently tragic first movement, constructed like a great arch, is followed by a brief but overwhelming whitewater ride of a scherzo. Shostakovich’s dark sense of humour resurfaces in the enigmatic, nocturnal third movement, then the finale executes a stunning twist from elegiac sadness to wild, possibly manic rejoicing. According to Testimony, the book which claims, controversially, to be the composer’s memoirs, the symphony sums up Shostakovich’s feelings about Stalin, who died while it was being composed. But a cryptically coded motif in the third movement apparently relates to a thwarted love affair. In any case, this music evidently speaks directly and powerfully to people who have had no experience whatsoever of Soviet dictatorship. Suffering is confronted, expressed cathartically and a kind of ambiguous release is achieved. In that sense, its message is universal.