Czech Philharmonic • Behzod Abduraimov

Sergei Rachmaninoff was one of the last musicians who was both a composer and a performer in the tradition of the great 19th century virtuosos. He wrote piano compositions primarily for his own use. His Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43, is preceded by another set of variations also intended for piano and orchestra, Variations on a Theme of Corelli, Op. 42. In both cases Rachmaninoff chose a theme from the musical past, from pieces originally composed for violin. His Variations on Corelli are based on the theme of Corelli’s Sonata for Violin, Op. 5, No. 12 (which is, in fact, the traditional folk melody La Folia), while his Rhapsody elaborates the theme of Niccolò Paganini’s Caprice No. 24 for solo violin. Rachmaninoff wrote the Rhapsody in the summer of 1934 at his home near Lucerne. Its free form provided the composer with an open field for experimentation: 24 variations are structured roughly as a sonata, whose sections are defined by harmonic relationships and tempo contrasts. The introduction up to variation 10 can be understood as an allegro movement; variations 11 to 18 represent a slow movement (while variations 13–15 can be seen as an integrated scherzo within this slow movement), and the remaining variations 19–24 make a finale of the sonata. The centerpiece of this composition is variation 7, which features in place of Paganini’s theme the medieval plainchant Dies Irae, which Rachmaninoff quoted in his other pieces as well. The transformation of Paganini’s original theme into a melody that has endured for centuries and whose power still fascinates us today is a supreme example of Rachmaninoff’s compositional mastery.

The Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini was first performed on 7 November 1934 in Baltimore with the Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Leopold Stokowski, while the soloist was of course Sergei Rachmaninoff. The composition soon gained popularity with audiences and pianists alike, and it also inspired the Russian choreographer Mikhail Fokine to turn it into a ballet. Fokine wrote to Rachmaninoff from Auckland, New Zealand, where he was touring, asking for his permission to create a choreography based on the legend of the “diabolical” roots of Paganini’s virtuosity. In the ballet, Paganini’s caprice theme and its variations represent the violinist himself, while the Dies Irae melody is the devil who controls his art. The ballet Paganini was successfully premiered by the Royal Ballet on 30 June 1939 at Covent Garden, London; other ballet performances followed later, adding to the work’s popularity.

In September 1956 Dmitri Shostakovich celebrated his 50th birthday. He was considered the greatest symphonist of his time and was beginning to take stock. “I think that many things repeat themselves in Russian history. Of course the same event can’t repeat itself exactly, there must be differences, but many things are repeated nevertheless. People think and act similarly in many things… I wanted to show this recurrence in the Eleventh Symphony. I wrote it in 1957 and it deals with contemporary themes even though it’s called “1905”. It is about the people who have stopped believing because the cup of evil has run over. That is how the impressions of my childhood and my adult life come together.” Shostakovich himself was not witness of the bloody suppression of the 1905 St Petersburg uprising, but his family discussed this event all the time. He personally experienced the October Revolution of 1917, whose 40th anniversary had just been celebrated in 1957, and throughout his life he also felt its consequences: bullying and injustice on the one hand, and bombastic tributes and platitudes on the other. He was also constantly confronted with the regime that the 1917 Revolution had established, by which he was attacked and dragged under.

Symphony No. 11 in G minor, Op. 103, was written in 1957 during Shostakovich’s summer stay in Komarovo near what was then Leningrad. Two themes run through the entire work – the theme introduced by the string section at the beginning of the symphony and, in contrast, the ominous timpani strokes. These leitmotifs, which constantly undergo a transformation, symbolize the historical repetition of events mentioned by the composer over the course of four movements played without a pause. Other elements include quotations from 19th-century political songs – songs of the revolutionary year 1905, as well as from Shostakovich’s other compositions. The first movement, introduced by the two contrasting themes of strings and timpani, features a melody of the song “Slushay!” (Listen!) from 1864, followed by “Arrestant” (The Prisoner) from 1857. In the second movement Shostakovich has incorporated melodies from his Ten Choruses on Texts by Revolutionary Poets from 1951; they are gradually escalating into sharp marching rhythms. The uprising breaks out, is defeated, and a deathlike silence reigns outside the Winter Palace. The third movement is a symbolic remembrance of the fallen victims, featuring the well-known funeral march of the Russian revolutionaries “You Fell Victim to a Fateful Struggle” and quotes from other revolutionary songs such as “Baikal”, “'Boldly on We March, Comrades!” and “Welcome, Free Speech”. A new revolution sprouts out of the grief for the dead, and it spreads with the other songs included in the fourth movement. The coda, again with the motif of Palace Square, anticipates a new bloodshed and warns against it.

The symphony premiered on 30 October 1957 in Moscow under Natan Rakhlin. Understandably, it was met with mixed reactions. Party leaders ranked it among the exemplary works of Socialist Realism and honored the composer with the Lenin Prize, but in circles that had already begun to shake off the chains of demagoguery it was regarded as a libation and, as far as its artistic value was concerned, as illustrative film music. After another 50 years, many details of the composer’s complicated life, sandwiched between the millstones of constant party criticism and his own convictions as an artist and human being, are now known. The symphony is now seen in the spirit which Shostakovich himself suggested – as a manifestation of the strangely turning wheel of fate, which returns many moments of development to the starting point from which humanity sets out each time to find anew the justification for its existence.