Early Shostakovich: A Rebellious Spirit

“Things,” Esa-Pekka Salonen told the Los Angeles Philharmonic audience Friday night, “are exactly what they seem.” He was speaking about a highly unusual situation in Shostakovich’s music--which is more often noted for its onion-like layers of irony--as he introduced the Russian composer’s Second and Third symphonies.

Shostakovich was in his early 20s when he wrote these symphonies in 1927 and 1929.

The Russian Revolution only a decade old, there was still raucous optimism in the air for the communist experiment. Artists, not yet suppressed, were urged to experiment, to be bold and unpredictable.

Shostakovich’s Second and Third symphonies were expressions of those times and the ideals of a glorious workers’ state, not the anguished, sarcastic, bitter squirming of the composer later tormented by Stalin. They are, as Salonen put it, “pretty wild stuff.”

Each symphony is a single-movement tone poem honoring the Soviet state, and each ends with a choral paean.

Symphony No. 2 (“To October”), which commemorates the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution, begins with the chaos of oppressed workers. An “anti-fugue” of 13 unrelated individual parts shows the dissonance that results when each man acts for himself. But the workers of the world unite, an invigorating factory whistle blows away exploitation, and the chorus glorifies “October, the Commune and Lenin.”

The Third Symphony (“The First of May”) reflects the Soviets’ May Day celebrations--the blossoming of a new season, the reawakening of a new vision for the people. It is a rush of images reminiscent of the experimental Soviet films, with their visual collages. Pastoral scenes, marching bands and dreamy lyricism paint the ideal state. Singing pat, patriotic texts, the chorus resounds to the dawn of a new day, to the banners rising in the sun and a million May Day marching feet.

No irony? Maybe not in the music. But to sit in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in 2002 and listen to these two rarely played symphonies proved an experience absolutely drenched in postmodern irony.

The crowd, Friday night, was extraordinary. The Philharmonic has made an effort to reach out into the community, and it seems to be succeeding. No longer are the orchestra seats in the Pavilion the exclusive realm of older, well-to-do whites. I was surrounded by groups of Asian listeners, by African American couples, by Latino families. Here one saw young couples on dates, there well-behaved children. It was an all-Russian program, and the sound of spoken Russian could be heard all over the lobby from emigres.

Moreover, this was an audience that enjoyed itself. Attentive listeners applauded enthusiastically, standing in happy ovation after each symphony. Yet cheers for music that extols Lenin, Stalin and the Russian Revolution inevitably feel unsettling--as if the Enron collapse could suddenly sour the entire Philharmonic audience on capitalism.

Most likely, those cheers were simply the reaction of listeners to exciting performances of uplifting and bold music, but that revealed another irony--the universal sentiments of these Stalinist scores would soon enough be crushed by the villainous dictator himself.

Such irony was certainly not lost on Shostakovich. From the beginning, he hated the crass nationalistic poetry he was forced to set, and in his later years, he pretty much disowned these two symphonies.

Still, Friday night there was no discounting the sheer freshness of invention, the sense that here was a young composer of boundless talent beginning to stretch his compositional muscles. And that is exactly what Salonen, for the second installment of his five-year Shostakovich cycle of the 15 Shostakovich symphonies, emphasized. This is music of quick wit, of brilliant color, rhythmic animation, dramatic surprise--all also qualities of Salonen’s musical personality.

The Philharmonic playing was electric, its responses lightning-fast. The Los Angeles Master Chorale sang with joyful fervor.

As an odd contrast, each symphony was preceded by more conventional Russian music. But in both the Polovtsian Dances from Borodin’s “Prince Igor” and Anatoly Liadov’s short, luminous tone poem, “The Enchanted Lake,” Salonen brought out the color and sparkle in these scores, demonstrating not only what Shostakovich was rebelling against but how much he was also indebted to Russian tradition.

Revolution in Russian music, as in Russian life, was never a complete rebellion, which was but one more irony to add to this engagingly perplexing evening.