Sergei Rakhmaninov entered 20th century music history as a custodian and guardian of "traditional values" in music. "If, before entering a new world, one makes the greatest possible effort to come close to the old world, then it may be the case that one comes to a certain conclusion: there are still many possibilities in the past… Old language contains inexhaustibly rich possibilities." These words of the composer in an interview from 1941 are particularly true with regard to later works written in exile. One of them – Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (Op. 43, 1934) – was often viewed in this light: as a blend of the "old" (the style Rakhmaninov inherited from the 19th century and enriched in his art) and the "new" (elements of contemporary music, jazz and variety genres). Critics have noted the virtuoso nature of the work, its allusions to Liszt and Moszkowski. Today, when arguments and even reproofs concerning Rakhmaninov´s "traditionalism" are in the past, the contemporary nature of the Rhapsody can be seen in an entirely different light.
For the work, written in the form of variations, the composer selected the theme of Niccolò Paganini´s famous twenty-fourth Violin Capriccio. This theme is a vivid symbol of the era of Romanticism, at one and the same time it can be considered a unique musical Doppelgänger of Paganini himself, a composer, a virtuoso violinist, whose musical genius remained an enigma to contemporaries. But already in the first variations another famous theme appears, also borrowed by Rakhmaninov – from the medieval Catholic psalm Dies Irae. The Dies Irae melody, echoes of which can be heard in many of the composer´s works, had a deeply symbolic meaning, a personal significance that comes to light only in the sum total of his works as a whole. Both themes, carrying the train of "old" ideas and meanings (including from works by other composers where they were used) can be discovered in Rakhmaninov´s Rhapsody and they begin their mysterious journey in time and space – genres, styles and eras. Twenty-four variations (a symbolic reference to Paganini´s Capriccio) as twenty-four episodes of this journey, with vivid events and an ambiguous ending, the meaning of which, probably, will be unique to each of us who listens to the Rhapsody.
Vladimir Goryachikh
The Eleventh Symphony is a programme historical canvas born from Khrushchev´s Thaw of the mid 1950s-60s. It was a true time of hopes – naïve as history has shown – for the gradual transformation of the Soviet monster into so-called "Socialism with a human face". Shostakovich wrote a programme symphony, based on the first Russian Revolution of 1905, allowing it to project onto later history – the events in Hungary in 1956, the Prague Spring of 1968, right up to the present day. The composer explained to an exhaustive degree: "I identify the nature of the programme and content… And the musical content is not just the detailed layout of the subject but its general idea or sum of ideas as well…"
The four movements of the symphony, performed without interruption, are imbued with a system of leitmotifs – the composer´s own themes and of Russian revolutionary songs. Within the composer´s music, the Eleventh Symphony clearly identifies with what is typical of his great works: the symphony absorbs and sucks up everything that is happening with us, and we – contemporary audiences – imbue it with new meaning, we interpret it in a new light.
In vain did short-sighted critics dismiss the symphony as a concession to the dogmas of "Socialist Realism", a tribute to Communist officiousness. The Eleventh is just as terrifying a truth about the 20th century, about the age of totalitarianism, as its more famous "sisters" – Shostakovich´s Fourth, Fifth, Seventh and Eighth Symphonies. Not by chance have film directors made montages of documentary scenes of the Gulag to the music of gunshots over Palace Square (9th January). Or the reverse – they take the music as supremely evil counterpoint, using it as a backdrop to the massive crowds of the May Day demonstration, also on Palace Square but in the Soviet age!
Iosif Raiskin
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