Interpreters on Shostakovich
Vassily Sinaisky on conducting Shostakovich
Interview reproduced by kind permission from the DSCH Journal
Earlier this year the DSCH Journal had the good fortune to speak with maestro Sinaisky from his Amsterdam home:
DSCH Journal: Tell us something about early musical impressions and influences as a young conductor.
Vassily Sinaisky: It was a very interesting musical life in Leningrad at that time, the 1960s; we had Mravinsky with the Philharmonic Orchestra in Leningrad. He was very active during this period added to which we also had many orchestras from abroad, with their conductors: a great time as then I was then only a teenager. But my teacher my professor at the Conservatoire was Musin - the very famous conductor and teacher.
DSCH J: How did it feel at that time walking into Musin's class? He was such a legend by then.
VS: Ultimately it was a case of learning the skills; the lessons were in effect really about that. I remember that every class was extraordinarily interesting and so valuable for me in particular at that time. I felt myself to be very flexible and open for new ideas and approaches - not only Musin and Mravinsky but other conductors with whom I worked as well. You know that the conducting tradition in Russia at this time was very, very strong: it had been handed down from 19th German tradition and many conductors graduated from the Leningrad conservatoire. This was such a strong tradition, and of course Musin was a part of it.
DSCH J: Tell me something about the Karajan competition.
VS: Well I won the gold medal and the first prize in 1973 which was unusual for Soviet conductors taking part in this competition. It was very, very hard. Five rounds and very many pieces you had to know by heart, as well as rehearsing with the orchestra.
DSCH J: You had the choice of works that you can conduct?
VS: No it was the jury who instructed us to conduct certain works or simply extracts of movements and you were informed of this choice just five or ten minutes before you were to go on stage. It was very tough.
DSCH J: So what about your work with Kondrashin?
VS: I first became his assistant with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra: Mr. Kondrashin invited me and I spent a lot of time working with him. Later I became principal conductor of the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra in 1991.
DSCH J: Kondrashin was of course one of the greatest exponents of Shostakovich's music - how did he change your perception of this repertoire?
VS: Kondrashin was from a very special conducting school that had as one of its principal objectives the promotion of new works. In this and all respects, Kondrashin was very strong in all that concerned the training of an orchestra and its players - really top class. This was particularly interesting for me as the Moscow approach was different from that of the Leningrad Philharmonic. Kondrashin and Mravinsky were similarly paradoxical in that they were not very open people and yet at the same time they were such active and demanding musicians who spent a huge amount of time with the orchestra's musicians, rehearsing. Kondrashin had a very similar approach to that of Mravinsky: very thorough, very painstaking and very strict with the orchestra - perhaps he had a slightly warmer personality than Mravinsky in front of an orchestra. As far as rehearsals were concerned Mravinsky's opinion was that concerts where a work would be rehearsed only once and then performed were of no interest to him whatsoever: his view was that rehearsals were the most important phase of the conductor's role and that in fact the concert performance should merely be a repetition of what was achieved during rehearsals. And even in the most familiar works such as Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony and for that matter Shostakovich's Fifth - these works Mravinsky conducted for over 40 years, yet Mravinsky was always working on new aspects of interpretation - quite a remarkable fact.
DSCH J: Coming to Svetlanov - had you got to know him before you took over the orchestra?
VS: I knew his reputation as an artist: however as a conductor Svetlanov had rather closed relations with people, and I was much younger. Of course I attended many of his concerts. At this time in the capital there were three great orchestras performing: Kondrashin's Moscow Philharmonic, Svetlanov State Orchestra and also the Radio Orchestra with Rozhdestvensky. This was a wonderful time in Moscow with three great conductors working with three great orchestras.
DSCH J: Going back to earlier days, what memories do you have of the Shostakovich repertoire you heard during your childhood?
VS: This would have been at the Conservatoire when I first conducted some of the symphonies, for example numbers 1, 5, 9 and so on. We were really so fortunate as we were able to hear Shostakovich's music in the Philharmonic Hall performed by so many great musicians. I remember vividly many wonderful occasions at the time of the premieres of some of his works; for example the first performance of the Fourth Symphony under Kondrashin. People were so surprised as of course the work is so different from the Fifth - it's a completely new world, grandiosomania or not!
To my mind the performance of the Fourth must have marked something of rehabilitation for Shostakovich himself: you know, Shostakovich was not always that popular - I remember times when he was not at all referred to as a popular composer that the audiences found him quite difficult to understand.
DSCH J: What is your opinion regarding the different interpretational approaches employed by conductors both Russian and from the West when performing Shostakovich's music - and in particular the symphonies? Was there anyone conductor whom you felt really got under the skin of the composer and his work?
VS: You know this is a particularly difficult question because of the enormous scope and scale of Shostakovich's works. Therefore interpretations of these works were also extremely wide; you know Shostakovich was never particularly strict about interpretation - about tempi for example - it could be a little faster or a little slower but he never insisted; he did nevertheless always insist on fine phrasing and that the orchestral playing as a whole should be very transparent. So for these criteria I think there is no question that the first name would be Mravinsky, then Kondrashin, then I would add interpretations by Haitink and also the later recordings by Rostropovich; in my view his Fifth and Eleventh Symphonies bring quite wonderful performances.
DSCH J: Let's talk about your interpretations of Shostakovich: what was your broad overall approach when contemplating a series of Shostakovich symphonies?
VS: I prefer a different approach; that is, than a purely symphonic approach. First of all I became engrossed in Shostakovich's chamber music; the quartets in particular and also learned some piano pieces. Through this idea I began to work on different aspects of phrasing within his music, finally transferring this to the symphonies I was about to perform. This also allowed the context of the symphonies to play a part in my interpretational approach. To my mind this is one of the keys to opening the world of some of the Shostakovich's large-scale symphonies: my view is that a conductor has to know far more about Shostakovich - his life and his other works before being able to hope to tackle some of the largest-scale works in his symphonic repertoire.
DSCH J: You didn't conduct the complete cycle this time round, but what would your preference be in terms of performing order? Chronological order for example?
VS: I think I would be more interested in a combination of very different symphonies from the Shostakovich repertoire: a good example would be the Twelfth and Thirteenth Symphonies - consecutively written but very, very different in terms of their sources of inspiration and also the style in which they were composed. Also one of my ideas is to perform in the final concert the Fifteenth Symphony coupled with Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde .
DSCH J: How did your project to record Shostakovich's film music come about?
VS: Well the idea initially was to perform and record some of these pieces in conjunction with special agreement the BBC Philharmonic have with Chandos: to record film music from different composers including Shostakovich, for which I was chosen. This was a successful venture and so I decided to continue it. The next issue in the series will include Hamlet .
DSCH J: What is your view in overall terms of the artistic merit of the film scores in Shostakovich's repertoire, compared to his symphonic and chamber works?
VS: Well I would say that maybe 90% of this repertoire is very strong and impressive music. Because you know Shostakovich was like some of our Russian writers - he had universal qualities. He had very, very sad eyes you know... Shostakovich had the ability to produce a portrait of someone in just ten bars; so in his film music there is a huge amount of excellent material. Of course occasionally this music did become too silly and too Soviet.
DSCH J: What film scores would you be looking to the conduct in the near future?
VS: First of all I would choose his late film scores - King Lear and Hamlet and then I would move to some of his early films such as the Girl Alone and the Maxim Trilogy, The Gadfly while also maintaining a focus on the unknown film music.
DSCH J: So your cycle of recordings is set to continue?
VS: Yes it certainly is.
DSCH J: Coming back to the general interpretation of Shostakovich's music and in particular the non-programmatic music such as the symphonies, what is your view of the notion of 'hidden meanings' within Shostakovich's music - message to read between the lines and so on?
VS: For me, really great music should be free from psychological and analytical questions and problems. It should be the music itself that allows us to enter into the composer's creative mind. Of course Shostakovich's music can also be somewhat enigmatic and at times might even appear to be naïve or unsentimental. For example in the opening movement of the Tenth Symphony - one of the largest-scale movements we know - the clarinet theme close to the opening is very, very simple and many Soviets commentators claimed that this theme embodies song, whereas others find that this strikes them as it being a very fearful theme, like music written in oppressive circumstances.
DSCH J: But for example the Fifth Symphony, especially given the context in which this work was composed at a very difficult time for the composer; it is now a very commonly held view that the symphony has at least two levels of interpretation from a listener's point of view and so I assume also for the conductor of the work.
VS: Yes of course you're right. There are two sides to this symphony - the official side with its very loud ending and of course the unofficial side. I agree with Kurt Sanderling when he describes this ending as stating the word "Ya" meaning, in Russian, "I". And so this ending is a protest from the composer against the power of the State. But at the same time for me this is simply great music, especially in these last pages where we see the music pass from major to minor and then back to major again. Also here the use of dissonances is very striking.
DSCH J: Are there any of the symphonies that you consider to be truly weaker?
VS: Some people consider that numbers 2 and 3 are weaker, but I can tell you that if you look deeper into these works, then fine and strong ideas emerge. For example the Third Symphony is a very interesting work in terms of its form and its orchestration and I very much disagree with those musicians who say that it is too long - of course it is not too long!!
DSCH J: A hypothetical question is how might Shostakovich's symphonic output evolved had he not been so strongly criticized in Pravda ; would the Fifth that we know so well today have been radically different?
VS: Yes, you might say that at times this symphony sounds somewhat compromised - for example in the scherzo - but at the same time this is typical of his acid humour. Also, Shostakovich was not very strict, he told Mravinsky "try to find something special, try to find something special!"
DSCH J: Tell me something about your approach to the Fifteenth Symphony.
VS: As a matter of fact I have just recorded this symphony in Manchester along with the Second Piano Concerto: certainly the work is not without its challenges and difficulties. In fact everything is difficult in the Fifteenth - for example the problem of finding the right tempo - too slow in the second movement or too fast in the first and this simply does not work! And then there is the final movement - a testimony to Shostakovich I believe, and again this is quite a challenge most of all the end of the symphony with the special colors and special attention to percussion, a typical Shostakovich style that you can find in the film music from the 1930s and also in the Fourth Symphony.
DSCH J: And the quotations in the Fifteenth Symphony - do you have any particular thoughts about these?
VS: [laughing] You know I know very many interpretations of these quotations and I think that Kondrashin had a point with his view that they simply "came out of Shostakovich's childhood memory." Personally I'm not sure that it is so simple; in this work I hear many typical motifs from his work [sings four-note percussive pattern] which we find everywhere in Lady Macbeth , in the Fourth and even First Symphony. I think of this as being Shostakovich's language.
Again this symphony illustrates perfectly the extreme colours derived from Shostakovich's personality and musical style - from the lively and joyful to the gloomy and intensely sad. There is no better example of this in the Fifteenth Symphony than the quotation from Wagner's Tristan .
DSCH J: And the Rossini quotations?
VS: Again elements from the composer's youth - and again a strong rhythmic motif, this time with the three note pattern dominated with spiky humour. As I say there can be and in fact there are very many interpretations of this symphony.
DSCH J: What is your view on the different controversies surrounding Shostakovich, in particular those of Testimony ?
VS: Well you should ask Maxim - although he himself changed his opinion three times I believe. You have to be careful - Shostakovich was very, very clever - this we know now from his letters, in particular the letters to Glikman - and sometimes the meaning is the absolute opposite of what he wrote. Some of his opinions about music and his relationships with certain musicians - well, you see this was very much a Soviet style that comes from Lenin. Shostakovich was very fond of making jokes, but often when he spoke about things that were quite serious, Shostakovich couched these in a humorous language, including projections of himself, and this was often misleading, deliberately so. It was instinctive - everyone had to find their way of surviving.
With regard to Volkov, you know he was a very young man when he met Shostakovich for the first time and it took some time before the composer would open up to him. Shostakovich only had two or three friends, devoted friends. I think in the end Shostakovich chose Volkov because he was seeking a young man with the will to understand the composer's life and language.
You know, many people used to avoid Shostakovich, some because of conflicts he had with the Soviet State - for example in his Thirteenth and Fourteenth Symphonies.
Personally I think the most wonderful thing about Shostakovich's music is that we will simply never get to the bottom of it!
Interview: DSCH Journal, July 2006
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