CCLIX. SHOSTAKOVICH, Dmitri: Symphony #3 in E-Flat Major, Op. 20

CCLIX. SHOSTAKOVICH, Dmitri (1906-1975)

Symphony #3 in E-Flat Major, Op. 20 (1930)
The Mariinsky Orchestra and Chorus
Valery Gergiev, cond.
(32:53)

Everything was modern and new in the years after the Revolution when the shooting finally stopped and people had enough food to eat.

In cinema, the previous year had produced one of the most striking films of all time, Dziga Vertov's Man With a Movie Camera, which makes a fine visual companion to this work.

Surrealism was in the air -- and in the Soviet version anything might fly -- so long as there was a programme glorifying the socialist ideal within.

And so it was with the two Shostakovich symphonies that form the unsual duo,  sandwiched between the novel First and the mammoth and naughty Fourth (see Post VIII). Both the Second (1927) and Third are one-movement works, which feature a chorus singing the praises of Lenin and the worker.

The Third opens quietly:

A second clarinet enters, accompanied by the soft marching of feet (pizzicato celli/bass) ...

and then a march started with a solo trumpet evolves into the sweeping kind of writing that sounds like the future Shostakovich:

After a long stretch of these running 16ths, punctuated by wind and brass interjections, Shostakovich drops everything for a French Horn and Snare Drum duet:

This frenetic tempo goes on for quite a while, until it softens and slows into this Andante:

and the intensity increases as he builds up to the chorus:

an even stranger section follows, featuring a solo tuba and trombone, accompanied by eerie glissandi in the low strings:

A unison string riff introduces the chorus:

The text is from a poem by Semyon Kirsanov.

On the very first May Day ("the first first of May," in Russian)
a torch was thrown into the past,
a spark, growing into a fire,
and a flame enveloped the forest.

With the drooping fir trees' ears
the forest listened
to the voices and noises
of the new May Day parade.

Our May Day.
In the whistling of grief's bullets
grasping bayonet and gun,
the tsar's palace was taken.

The fallen tsar's palace:
this was the dawn of May,
marching ahead,
in the light of grief's banners.

Our May Day:
in the future there will be sails,
unfurled over the sea of corn,
and the resounding steps of the corps.

New corps, the new ranks of May
their eyes like fires looking to the future.
Factories and workers
march in the May Day parade.

We will reap the land,
our time has come.
Listen, workers, to the voice of our factories:
in burning down the old, you must kindle a new reality.

Banners rising like the sun,
march, let your steps resound.
Every May Day
is a step towards Socialism.

May Day is the march
of armed miners.
Into the squares, revolutin,
march with a million feet.

**

The symphony ends -- triumphant -- with a solo trumpet wailing high above the E-Flat Major tonic in march-mode!