Shostakovich: Symphony No. 8

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 8 is a dark, epic work standing at the very center of Shostakovich’s output. Composed in a mere ten weeks between July and September 1943, it was first performed in Moscow on 4 November under Evgeny Mravinsky. Expectations were high, for Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, associated with the siege of Leningrad, had been adopted both in Russia and the West as a symbol of resistance to the Nazis. It was hoped that the Eighth would follow in its patriotic footsteps, but with the difference that the tide of war had now turned. Earlier that year the German Sixth army had been annihilated at Stalingrad, the siege of Leningrad had been lifted, and the Nazis were in retreat.

What should have been a symphony of heroism and victory turned out to be nothing of the sort. At a time when optimism and glorification of the Motherland under Stalin’s inspired leadership were the order of the day, anything more complex – let alone the questioning ambiguities of Shostakovich’s new symphony – was bound to be received with suspicion. One representative comment after the first performance was that ‘It sees only the dark side of life. Its composer must be a poor-spirited sort not to share the joy of his people.’ After the Leningrad premiere in 1944 the work virtually disappeared from the repertory, and at the notorious 1948 conference that condemned the finest composers in Russia it was singled out for its ‘unhealthy individualism’ and pessimism.

The Eighth Symphony is a dark, epic work standing at the very center of Shostakovich’s output. Composed in a mere ten weeks between July and September 1943, it was first performed in Moscow on 4 November under Evgeny Mravinsky. Expectations were high, for Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, associated with the siege of Leningrad, had been adopted both in Russia and the West as a symbol of resistance to the Nazis. It was hoped that the Eighth would follow in its patriotic footsteps, but with the difference that the tide of war had now turned. Earlier that year the German Sixth army had been annihilated at Stalingrad, the siege of Leningrad had been lifted, and the Nazis were in retreat.

What should have been a symphony of heroism and victory turned out to be nothing of the sort. At a time when optimism and glorification of the Motherland under Stalin’s inspired leadership were the order of the day, anything more complex – let alone the questioning ambiguities of Shostakovich’s new symphony – was bound to be received with suspicion. One representative comment after the first performance was that ‘It sees only the dark side of life. Its composer must be a poor-spirited sort not to share the joy of his people.’ After the Leningrad premiere in 1944 the work virtually disappeared from the repertory, and at the notorious 1948 conference that condemned the finest composers in Russia it was singled out for its ‘unhealthy individualism’ and pessimism.