Shostakovich Symphony No. 6

Welcome and concert preview

0:00Hello, and welcome to Sticky Notes, the classical music podcast. My name is Joshua Weilerstein, I'm a conductor, and I'm the music director of the Orchestre National de Lille, and the chief conductor of the Alborg Symphony. This podcast is for anyone who loves classical music, works in the field, or is just getting ready to dive in to this amazing world of incredible music. Before we get started, I want to thank my new Patreon sponsors, Marilyn, Ross, Amber, Nzinga, Kathleen, Christian, Sarah Christen, Tomas, and Sean, and all of my other Patreon sponsors for

0:37making Season 10 possible. If you'd like to support the show, please head over to patreon.com slash stickynotespodcast. And if you are a fan of the show, please take a moment to give us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It is greatly appreciated. I am in Norsköping, Sweden this week doing a really exciting program that I've wanted to do for a long time. The first half is Prokofiev's Symphonia Concertante with Andreas Branteli, the fantastic cellist. And then the second half is a program that I've come up with that is a bit tied to my obsession with history. And it is a program that

1:12basically goes from before World War I to after. We start with Strauss's Emperor Waltzes, and then we play a piece by the English composer Frederick Septimus Kelly, who was killed during World War I. It's a piece for strings called In Memoriam Rupert Brooke, In Memoriam of the Poet Rupert Brooke, who also was killed during the war. And it's a really incredibly touching, beautiful piece. And then we finish the program with La Vals. So it's a very kind of dark program, but one that I've

1:44been wanting to do for a really long time, I love to kind of tell these stories a little bit like we do on the show during my concerts. So I really am looking forward to that concert, which is on Saturday. For this week's episode, I want to thank Sheldon for sponsoring it on Patreon, on Shostakovich's Sixth Symphony, a piece probably you're not that familiar with. Here we go.

The background of the sixth symphony

2:06Dmitry Shostakovich, quote, I have set myself a task fraught with tremendous responsibility, to express in sound the immortal image of Lenin, as a great son of the Russian people and as a leader of the masses. I have received numerous letters from all over the Soviet Union with regard to my future symphony. The most important advice contained therein was to make considerable use of musical folklore.

2:37In the massively consequential year of 1939, Shostakovich used these words to launch his Sixth Symphony. The piece was meant to have soloists and a chorus along with the orchestra, perhaps a nod to his Second and Third symphonies, which were essentially propaganda pieces. Shostakovich even promised to use the poem Vladimir Ilyich Lenin by Vladimir Mayakovsky as a basis for his choral text. The Soviet public eagerly awaited this new symphony, which was inevitably going to be

3:09compared with his Fifth Symphony, the piece that had brought Shostakovich back into good graces with the Soviet government, and which remains one of Shostakovich's most popular works, but is also one of his most complex and nuanced pieces underneath its relatively conservative surface. But whether Shostakovich ever actually planned to write this gigantic Lenin symphony during this period is highly doubtful, as no sketches have ever turned up of that symphony. Instead, Shostakovich pivoted publicly

3:42to describing his new symphony this way, quote, As you can see there, Shostakovich wasn't actually saying much there about the content of the symphony, if anything at all. He was leaving things deliberately ambiguous, and actually,

4:15ambiguous is a pretty good description of this highly enigmatic symphony. Everything about this symphony is slightly off. It is in three movements, not the typical four, and it starts with a massive slow movement. The two remaining movements are fast and significantly shorter, lasting combined not even as long as the first movement. It was written in 1939, supposedly a year of military triumph for the Soviet Union, considering the Stalin Pact with Hitler, which allowed Hitler to invade Poland and to launch

4:47World War II. And yet there is not a hint of military triumphalism in it. In short, this symphony confused a lot of people and has always received mixed reviews, whether from musicologists trying to fit the symphony into the traditional, everything in Shostakovich is about Stalin narrative, or from Soviet critics of the time trying to fit the symphony into socialist realist aesthetics. In short, descriptions about Shostakovich always attempt to put him into a box. Silent dissident or Soviet stooge, hero or coward, etc. The truth is,

5:23of course, complicated, and this symphony is a great example of the eternal enigma that is Shostakovich. Today on this Patreon-sponsored episode, I'll take you through this wonderful symphony from a musical perspective, trying to parse its unusual form, its lyrical first movement, and the wild madcap dash of the final two movements. All this and more is coming right up on Sticky Notes.

Shostakovich before the sixth symphony

5:59I want to quickly recap where Shostakovich was in his musical life before we get into the Sixth Symphony, but I also highly recommend listening to my episodes about Shostakovich's Fourth and Fifth Symphonies as well

6:33if you want the full picture, since the historical context and political context of Shostakovich's music is always so important to understand. But the short version of it is this. Shostakovich had regained his favor with the Soviet authorities in 1937 with his Fifth Symphony, a piece that was drastically different in style than the music he had been writing just prior, a style that had gotten him into very hot water with the Soviet government. In 1936, his opera Lady Macbeth of Mityansk had been condemned as bourgeois

7:05formalism, and his life was very much in danger for the period in between this denunciation and the premiere of the Fifth Symphony. He withdrew his already completed Fourth Symphony from publication, due to its dense, innovative, and sometimes radical style, and quickly wrote a Fifth Symphony that was much more harmonically conservative, and which also featured the mandated happy ending that would end the symphony in a blaze of triumphant glory. Now whether that ending is actually triumphant or not

7:38has been the subject of questions and fierce debate since the premiere, and the answer, like everything with Shostakovich, is ambiguous and highly complex. Again, check out my show on the Fifth Symphony for a lot more about that ending. But whatever the ending was in reality, it passed muster with the Stalin government, and Shostakovich was enjoying renewed success and adulation from the public, though he would never recover fully, personally, from this period of cultural exile and physical danger. As he began the

8:10Sixth Symphony, Shostakovich was enjoying some calm in his personal life, and as I said, had some breathing room from the government, which perhaps accounts for the unusual form of the Sixth Symphony. Shostakovich clearly had gone back at least somewhat to the experimental ideas he was throwing around with such glee in his Fourth Symphony, which would not actually be performed for decades.

The massive first movement

8:32Let's go into this Sixth Symphony now, which begins with this huge first movement, lasting around 20 minutes in most performances.

9:02Leonard Bernstein calls this movement a hypnotizing meditation, and also talks about how it is not a movement that follows any sort of typical form. Instead, we are launched into something that feels more like a fantasy than anything else. The symphony begins, as you just heard, with a long theme played by the violas, cellos, English horn, clarinets, and bassoons. This low and middle register color is a Shostakovich

9:36favorite, and is highly expressive, featuring huge leaps of register, like octaves, that are actually fairly unusual for Shostakovich, who usually prefers smaller intervals in his themes. But those leaps are serving a purpose. They make the occurrences where Shostakovich does use smaller intervals even more painfully expressive. Listen to the entrance now of the elaboration of this melody. At first, harmonically and orchestrationally, it sounds almost like Sibelius. But soon those half-steps start creeping in, and we hear

10:11that unmistakable Shostakovich intensity coming to the fore. This is followed by a highly important motive. A falling seventh that is punctuated with a screeching trill. ORCHESTRAL MUSIC PLAYS ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES

10:42ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES Bernstein compares this to Bach in the sense of using that dissonant interval for such

11:17expressive means, and I can definitely hear it. These two elements, that expressive octave and the diminished seventh trill, form the core of the opening theme. And the intensity at the opening of the symphony continues to grow, as Shostakovich brings in nearly the entire orchestra minus the percussion for another version of this lament. Clearly, the proportions of this movement are going to be massive.

11:47ORCHESTRA PLAYS

12:17The models in this movement seem to be a bit of Bach and a lot of Tchaikovsky and Mahler. Why those two masters? Well, as Bernstein again points out, there's another sixth symphony in B minor that's pretty well known, and that's Tchaikovsky's Pathétique Symphony, which was the first symphony to end with a slow movement. Well, Bernstein posits that Shostakovich picks up where Tchaikovsky left

12:49off, with a sixth symphony in B minor that begins with a long slow movement, which is the central emotional component of the piece. And why Mahler? Well, with Shostakovich, Mahler is always lurking around, and there are many Mahler references in this movement. But the first is here, the sense of collapse. We've reached an emotional fever pitch less than two minutes into this symphony, but Shostakovich turns away and allows the music to collapse into itself. A typical Mahler

13:22trait. And it leads to an exploration of the seventh-slash-trill theme, played expressively again, and in a naked and plain way that really emphasizes the Bach connection.

13:58This theme seems to have a lot of profound emotion lying beneath its surface. But that surface is a little bit more opaque than we are used to with Shostakovich. There is less defined tonal harmony, less obvious emotionality. And I think this has a lot to do with this piece's lack of popularity. Even though the music is clearly expressive, it's also enigmatic, like a wall

14:29is being put up around it. But Shostakovich inexorably builds its intensity, almost willing it into being. Encouraged along by rolling triplets, the winds take the theme over from the strings, and Shostakovich begins to widen the emotional palette, having the high winds play the theme while the low strings play the triplet accompaniment. It's like that wall is being built higher and higher while the theme tries to break through wherever it can. .

15:03. . . . . . . . . . What's really interesting about this first section is that it doesn't really correspond

15:40to any form that one would normally recognize. It's definitely not sonata form, as these two ideas, the octave theme and the trill theme, just keep alternating back and forth. It's not a rondo, it's really a fantasy where these two themes appear in different guises, taking us wherever Shostakovich wants to go. The violins enter with a powerfully expressive version of the trill theme until a lonely piccolo, accompanied by the harp as well as by the lowest instrument in the wind

16:12section, the contrabassoon. There's the high-low thing again, another very Mahler-like idea, and that piccolo takes up the octave theme. Yet another Mahlerian trait here is the use of extremely small groupings of instruments, despite the large orchestra being available on stage. At this moment, we hear only the piccolo, the harp, and the second violins, maybe 14 of the 90 people on stage. Thank you very much.

17:07One of the most stunning appearances of the theme now appears. The cellos play the octave theme over an ostinato, repeated accompaniment in the second violins and violas, and a counter-melody in the first violins. But the key here is the harmony. After quite a while of dissonance and a lack of harmonic clarity, suddenly we hear B-flat major quickly followed by B-flat minor. Tragic, but tonal. It gives this theme a new level of expressive intensity.

18:05Something astonishing nearly six minutes into this 20-minute movement is that we have had almost no development of these two themes. Just simple repetitions. With instrumentation changes galore, but no changes to the themes themselves. This will finally begin to change here as the violins take the beginning of the trill theme

18:35and start to cycle it again and again until a huge outburst of trills marks the first major climax of the movement. car unicotted and

19:10Now, if you're a Shostakovich fan, you know that climactic moments are part and parcel of a Shostakovich symphony.

19:42But this one doesn't quite reach the pinnacle of those famous Shostakovich moments, and it's intentional. Once again, we have that Mahler idea of collapse. If we're talking structurally, this marks the end of the first section of the piece. And if you think things have been spare and chamber music like before, you haven't heard anything yet. As over an eerie trill in the violas, the English horn begins what seems like it should be a funeral march. But something is off about it. The End

20:15Burnstein claims that this is another homage to Mahler and his love of funeral marches.

20:45And that dotted rhythm idea is going to be pervasive in this following section. The march idea fades away quite quickly, and it turns into a lamenting, winding line. Again, with just the English horn and the violas and cellos. The loneliness, the stillness, it's all palpable here.

21:15The flute and clarinet now play enigmatic, wandering solos. These solos remind me a bit of the slow movement of the Fifth Symphony. But the key is that the music is much less harmonically stable than in the Fifth.

21:47It's a brave choice for Shostakovich, who knew that harmonic complexity was something that the authorities were not a fan of. But he embraces it anyway. ORCHESTRAL MUSIC PLAYS The strings begin something that feels like it's building,

22:36to a trademark Shostakovich developmental climax, where everything plus the kitchen sink is thrown at an emotional outpouring of epic proportions. Think the developments of the first movements of the Fifth and the Eighth symphonies, for example. In some ways, this is one of those moments, but it is very much an expressive one, rather than one based on volume alone. It is based on the dotted rhythm melody that the English horn introduced, and it builds to an expressive climax, but yet not one that feels at all like we've reached the true emotional peak of the movement.

23:11And yet it collapses right away, and is answered by more dotted rhythms. ORCHESTRAL MUSIC PLAYS

23:45We hear more lonely wind solos, soon taken over by the first violins, playing that Mahler march rhythm again. ORCHESTRAL MUSIC PLAYS ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES

24:15ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES ORCHESTRAL MUSIC CONTINUES Thank you.

25:01This leads to a slow rise in register, all in B-flat minor, and then to one of the scariest surprises in all of Shostakovich's music. But it is not a whip-crack percussion note or a sudden fortissimo. This is a quiet surprise. The B-flat minor is suddenly turned into an E, a tritone.

25:31The B-flat minor is suddenly turned into an E, a tritone. This shift of harmony should create a feeling of dread in you.

26:07And the only response from the orchestra is a true fantasy, a dream from the flute. The B-flat minor is suddenly turned into an E, a tritone. The B-flat minor is suddenly turned into an E, a tritone. The B-flat minor is suddenly turned into an E, a tritone. The two flutes play in tandem for this minutes-long solo where nothing happens.

26:55It's as if we're watching a lonely bird alone on stage. We're 13 minutes into this 20-minute movement, and I think it's now clear that we are never really going anywhere at all. This stasis has defined this movement, and it continues here in its most profound way. None of this feels symphonic. As Bernstein says, it feels almost like a personal confession. There is one thread that has continued throughout the movement, and that is the trills.

27:51The trills are heavily present throughout this static section, and as the violins take over the lonely flute theme, it seems once again that we might be at the beginning of a buildup. This impression is heightened by two things. The return of the actual trill theme in the violins, and the reappearance of the timpani playing the grip for each other, and that was part of the top. The original trill theme, the grip of the timpani playing, is the perfection of the timpani playing,

28:24and the wavelength of the timpani playing. But that lonely flute will not go away. Its lament, its fantasy, its dream continues.

28:54Until one of those Shostakovich orchestration moments that really makes you realize just how good of a technician Shostakovich was. One of the things that I always find frustrating about Shostakovich commentary is that in the obsession with finding a connection to Stalin in every note he ever wrote, we sometimes lose the time to talk about just what a wonderful composer Shostakovich was. Think about where we are in this movement. 15 minutes have gone by, so little has happened, and yet we are hooked by this enigmatic music.

29:27That's compositional skill. And then here, as the flute finally does fade away, Shostakovich goes back to his trill motive, but in a way that you can barely perceive until it happens. Shostakovich has the trill come in on three different octaves, offset by a couple of beats. The effect is chilling.

29:49You come in on three different ways. And here, if you can have a really different point of view. You put Bhi on The Said gaan, which makes you separate from each other. And it varies. But you could do that besides that работ. That felt like the spirit still can always stay because of this alone. But the Pipi is so deep. The purpose of trust is not able to hide useful. Even though, in mind, it is being porque there's an epic pit suspidy and the critical part of a

30:09anilloncision and a UCF would come in on four October 1st. Of course, because of which you can just be a miduchen starts since February 2nd in five months. And then the biggest surprise of all.

30:42Yes, E major. It's a moment where one quietly gasps. And it's all because of the harmonic instability Shostakovich has been playing with for practically the entire movement. What the first horn ends up playing is a version of the trill theme. But it's transformed to the point where you don't really realize it's happening. It leads us back to a kind of recapitulation of the opening octave theme. Though as I've been saying, form is not really the way to follow this movement. The way to follow it is to look out for the three themes.

31:15The octave theme, the trill theme, and the march rhythm. But honestly, the best way to follow it is to not consciously follow it at all. Just let it lead you on its winding road. . . . . . .

31:50This is not a clear recapitulation, because remember, this isn't sonata form. And Shostakovich is now transforming the octave theme in two distinct ways. One, it is more harmonically stable, and two, it has more dotted rhythms, a callback to the march rhythm. It also seamlessly transitions into the trill theme, though interestingly, this is one time where the actual trill doesn't appear.

32:47We're coming to the end of this movement, and Shostakovich does not stray from his course. The trills return, and the first violins play a hopeless and tragic version of the march theme in B minor. As it slowly fades away, Shostakovich marks the strings to play Morendo, literally, dying away.

33:40Moreons in B minor ה�Javelin Somewhere in B川 Me Somewhere in Bərk What is one to make of this movement?

34:2220 minutes long, no real actual climax, music that never really reaches a fortissimo dynamic, harmonically unstable, formally unclear, it's unique in every sense. And yet I find it intoxicating. It's Shostakovich's greatest talent that he writes music that you find yourself unable to stop listening to. He grabs you and holds on, whether it's the lyricism of the octave melody, the strange Bachian quality of the trill theme, or the lamenting march, as forbidding and tragic as anything in Mahler.

34:55It's a remarkable movement, but one that I can completely understand being taken aback by when you first listen to it. And if you're ready to continue to be surprised, check out the second and third movements to come. ORCHESTRA PLAYS ORCHESTRA PLAYS ORCHESTRA PLAYS ORCHESTRA PLAYS ORCHESTRA PLAYS ORCHESTRA PLAYS ORCHESTRA PLAYS ORCHESTRA PLAYS ORCHESTRA PLAYS ORCHESTRA PLAYS ORCHESTRA PLAYS ORCHESTRA PLAYS ORCHESTRA PLAYS ORCHESTRA PLAYS ORCHESTRA PLAYS ORCHESTRA PLAYS ORCHESTRA PLAYS ORCHESTRA PLAYS ORCHESTRA PLAYS

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The strange second movement scherzo

35:36The second movement, as you've just heard, couldn't be more of a contrast to any of the music we have heard so far. We hear an E-flat clarinet solo. Shostakovich loves these auxiliary instruments, and we'll get a huge example of this in this movement. There's something very weird about this movement, like a waltz, but off. There's tons of strange harmonic ideas as well,

36:10as if Shostakovich is throwing the kitchen sink at us in a different way than we expect.

36:34The strings take over, but again, this whole movement emphasizes the chamber textures, chamber music textures in the music. There's lots of nervous energy as well. We know of Shostakovich's character

37:09as very nervous. He apparently was always shaking a little bit. He talked very fast. He had a very ironic and brittle sense of humor. His daughter talked about how nervous Shostakovich was all the time, and I think one can hear a little bit of that character in this music. There are also outbursts of borderline violence in the strings, but still, everything is under wraps. Now we have the first entrance of the percussion, xylophone with violins. This is a color that Saint-Saëns

38:00is inaugurated with his dance macabre, so immediately one thinks of skeletons bouncing around. Then the piccolo and E-flat clarinet dominate the wind instrument themes, those auxiliary instruments again, instruments with a sound that is a little bit more unique. There's a rollicking energy here, but there's nothing really positive or joyful about it. In fact, it's kind of hard to pin down the character of this music. Is it satire? Is it ironic? Is it genuine? Is it just a little strange?

38:32Curious what you think. Then there is a huge contrast of using the lowest instruments in the orchestra, like the bassoons, to begin a new buildup with a rumbling bass clarinet and the basses. This is then picked up

39:04by the highest instruments, like the E-flat clarinet. Shostakovich is using register and orchestration again to continue our interest in this very unstable music. We just don't know where we're going. Finally, we get a real Shostakovich climax with some of his characteristic melodic work, a huge fanfare that feels like film music. We know, of course, also that Shostakovich loved writing film music and was a fantastic film composer. At some point, I'll take you through Shostakovich's

39:36music for the film Hamlet. This is a little bit of that kind of music here.

39:53But as soon as it arrives, it leaves. This movement is in that way similar to the first movement. Collapse is everything. And now the harmonies are even stranger. They are borderline atonal, which is very unusual for Shostakovich of this period.

40:38Now we have more orchestration games. The piccolo and flute playing together over the harp playing an ostinato waltz rhythm. Things are a little bit more tonal now, and they seem like they're winding down.

41:12Only for a new idea to begin in the clarinets, bass clarinet, and bassoons, over a driving rhythm in the cellos and basses. This feels more threatening, more bitter, more violent. music plays by the way. . . . . . .

41:43. . . . . . And he starts to add more instruments as this violin theme is passed from the cellos to the violins, and the brass start to take over the driving rhythm. This is an immensely powerful and thrilling build-up. Again, a little bit like his film music.

42:20Chostakovich writes an epic climax here, in triple fortissimo. You know that a climactic moment is coming when Chostakovich writes fortissimo, espressivo. He gives this to the horns, which means he wants a sound

42:52that is very intense but not exactly aggressive. Yet, he's finding new lenses to prolong the arrival.

43:11And finally, we get there. The snare drum and timpani take over the driving rhythm, and the entire orchestra plays a terrifying dance of death in unison. The timpani seems to be blasting away until it just collapses.

43:46And we begin again, like nothing has happened. Another climax, another collapse. Now we hear a flute and bass clarinet duo, another unusual combination. The driving rhythm returns, but it's much less threatening now,

44:21as a huge piccolo solo appears. Everything is off in this movement. It's like looking at a scherzo through a looking glass. We hear wind and bass clarinet duo.

44:59Outbursts over peonissimo strings. We hear beautiful wind solos that end always with huge accents, like they can't even take themselves fully seriously. And just like the first movement,

45:31this enigmatic, strange, winding down music never gets wound back up again. It just dances away in its strange way until it arrives in D major, the parallel major of B minor, and with a chromatic scale, the music just evaporates. The movement is barely seven minutes long, and throughout there is a feeling of eerie discomfort, like something is wrong with this music, and we can't figure out what it is. That's what we make. That's the same. That's what we do.

46:02That's beautiful. That's what I'm saying. Let's try and meditate. That's the same. Let's try and meditate. Let's try and să pat Five Joc them士風 me play. denn m interrupted actually andreating and letting you meet who really touch on the night. That's the same situation. That's why weめvário約 dreams coming at another minute. The other one very unfortunate thing is as if we get into life. Have. Listen to me now. Take four of the before on the night. The star of Tind bearing rich, and he'll call it all along.

The ironic third movement finale

46:24As the third movement begins, we have been truly thrown off balance by this point. A long, confessional, enigmatic slow movement, followed by a short, fast, and emotionally ambiguous scherzo. Where are we headed now?

46:54This movement is the only movement of the three to have a somewhat clear form. Though again, I wouldn't necessarily listen to it that way. The form is a kind of rondo, with one theme coming back again and again. You can see that theme as a kind of grounding device. But I don't think Shostakovich meant for this movement to be really taken that seriously.

47:28The beginning of the theme is clearly a reference to Rossini's William Tell Overture.

47:39This is a reference Shostakovich would come back to extensively in his 15th symphony. And it's not the last time Shostakovich will, quote, preempt one of his symphonies in this movement. This music is full of surprises, whip-crack interruptions, interruptions, and a kind of explosive character. But all underneath the surface. This music is full of surprises, the moment of the surface. Thank you.

48:32The B theme is very funny, full of huge intervallic leaps and offbeat accents that make it sound genuinely silly, and full of Shostakovich irony.

49:02There's also a reference here, I think, to Mozart's 40th symphony. Listen to the beginning of the last movement of that symphony. And now to Shostakovich. I'm pretty sure that's a little homage to Mozart right there, but maybe I'm crazy.

49:51Whatever it is, it's full of that ironic humor that Shostakovich was famous for in his personal life, and also in his music. We now hear a return to that William Tell music, and Shostakovich now starts to develop it. He even references a theme that would become much more famous than this symphony. Shostakovich connoisseurs listening to this will recognize it right away. To me, this is a reference to the festive overture, a piece Shostakovich famously wrote in about 45 minutes, and is full of some of his most bombastic and cliched music.

50:40This kind of forced cheer is present in this music, whether or not Shostakovich was once again preemptively using a motive that he would later exploit. But these ironic references to other pieces, or to motives that he would later use, is a hallmark of later Shostakovich.

51:16And it brings me to the next reference as well. This is a reference to Shostakovich's soon-to-come Ninth Symphony. These are kind of Shostakovich leitmotifs, and this strange symphony's position between the legendary 5th and 7th symphonies leads me to a theory about this symphony, which I'll get to at the end of the show today.

52:13The next interlude is pure Shostakovich dark humor. A lumbering bassoon, contrabassoon and a bass, hop around in a waltz rhythm like a thundering herd of elephants. It's awkward, funny, and a little unsettling. In other words, it's Shostakovich. The waltz music becomes progressively more violent and out of control.

52:49The brass start to intrude and then come in with an almost comically major key fanfare, which Shostakovich immediately runs away from as fast as possible to more dissonant music. The brass start to intrude and then come in with an ebb and a bass, hop around in a waltz rhythm. The brass start to intrude and then come in with an ebb and a bass, hop around in a waltz rhythm. Finally, we arrive at the big Shostakovich climax we've been waiting for during the entire piece.

53:38A raucous and ironic celebration featuring pounding timpani, percussion, and brass fanfares. The relentless energy, though, makes it not feel celebratory, only breathless and even forced.

54:14And then again, collapse, into a strange bassoon solo which is the first moment of lyricism in a while. Soon taken over by the piccolo and flute, who play a bit in the enigmatic character of the second movement.

54:44This music is always threatening to be a theme of its own, but it feels like a transition rather than something new.

55:14And in fact, it was a transition, because a solo violin finally takes over from the winds and winds its way to the recapitulation of the William Tell theme. The William Teller The second theme comes back

55:55even more ironic than before. Listen for those offbeat accents. Again, its placement after the violence of the middle section changes its character. It's like we heard the William Tell music distorted through the pain and weight of history. And now we're hearing this second theme in the same way.

56:33The festive overture music returns now accompanied by a cheerful triangle. Is this cheerful music? It's certainly enthusiastic, but just like in the second movement it feels like something is a bit off about it. Like it's happy but almost too happy. And at the same time slightly too dissonant. It's a very,

57:28strange combination but it's palpable here. Hypertonality followed by dissonance sometimes milliseconds apart. The horns and then the trombones

58:00then come in with music that is truly clownish. The irony and the satire is deepening with every passing measure. The romp begins to get going ever more raucously

58:31as we start the coda. And in this way this music reminds me of Tchaikovsky's fourth symphony. In that symphony Tchaikovsky famously wrote this about the last movement. Quote If within yourself you find no reasons for joy then look at others. Go among the people. See how they can enjoy themselves. Surrendering themselves wholeheartedly to joyful feelings. I think there's an element of that here. This is folkish music almost like the socialist realist music that was demanded of Shostakovich

59:01but with his own acidic touch. Now he begins to bring everything together. Clownish brass William-tailed violins wild wind interjections and irony on top of irony. All until the timpani hammers us into B major for an absurd rambunctious and wild ending. This is a production of B major of B major

Concluding thoughts on Shostakovich

59:50The second part of Tchaikovsky's text describing the last movement of his fourth symphony is this, quote, No sooner have you managed to forget yourself and to be carried away by the spectacle of the joys of others than irrepressible fate again appears and reminds you of yourself. This is a powerful image for me with this symphony. As I said, the sixth's position between the famous fifth and seventh makes this symphony even more of an outlier. It almost doesn't feel like a symphony at all.

1:00:22And yet, in many ways, its character is much more similar to music that Shostakovich would write both earlier in his life, during his radical avant-garde phase, and his much later music, which was much more spare, empty, and bleak. Shostakovich is most famous for the works he wrote in a slightly more populist style, the fifth and seventh symphonies for sure, but also the tenth and the cello concerto, among many others. But these pieces might have been farther away from Shostakovich's character than we might

1:00:53think. Perhaps this sixth symphony is closer to Shostakovich, with all of its ironic references, its humor, and its enigmatic emptiness, especially in the first movement. This is a symphony I didn't know that well before I was asked to do this show, and I'm really glad I got to know it. Because I think to know it is to know an essential thing about Shostakovich. Not all of his music is about Stalin, and not all of his music is like the fifth and seventh symphonies. The irony and subtle sarcasm here, along with the genuine pathos of some of this music,

1:01:27is perhaps the real Shostakovich. Enigmatic, complex, resisting any interpretation. Essentially, the way Shostakovich liked it. Thanks so much to Sheldon for sponsoring today's show on Shostakovich 6, and thank you to Charlie Kozela who mixed today's episode, and thank you for listening to Sticky Notes today.

1:01:58We'll have some more exciting stuff for you in a couple of weeks, so don't miss our next episode. If you like what you heard today, please feel free to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, it really helps the show gain more visibility. Please send any questions to stickynotespodcast at gmail.com, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. And if you'd like to support the podcast monetarily, just head over to patreon.com slash stickynotespodcast. Thanks, and I'll talk to you again after a while.

1:02:31Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.