Symphony No. 13 BABi YAR (Shostakovich) Gwangju 2023 Dae Young Kim
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: Symphony No. 13 Babi Yar
- Composer: Shostakovich Dmitri
- Libretto: poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko
- Venue & Opera Company: Gwangju Arts Center Grand Theater, Gwangju, South Korea
- Recorded: December 14, 2023
- Type: Concert Live
- Singers: Dae Young Kim
- Conductor: Seokwon Hong
- Orchestra: Gwangju Symphony Orchestra
- Chorus: Noi Opera Chorus
- Stage Director:
- Costume Designer:
Information about the Recording
- Published by: Hankyung art TV
- Date Published: 2023
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: nosubs
- This Recording is NOT AVAILABLE from a proper commercial or public source
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
The Symphony No. 13 in B-flat minor, Op. 113 for bass soloist, bass chorus, and large orchestra was composed by Dmitri Shostakovich in 1962. It consists of five movements, each a setting of a Yevgeny Yevtushenko poem that describes aspects of Soviet history and life. Although the symphony is commonly referred to by the nickname Babi Yar, no such subtitle is designated in Shostakovich’s manuscript score.
The symphony was completed on July 20, 1962, and first performed in Moscow on December 18 of that year. Kirill Kondrashin conducted the premiere after Yevgeny Mravinsky declined the assignment. Vitaly Gromadsky sang the solo part alongside the basses of the Republican Russian Chorus and the Moscow Philharmonic.
Movements
The symphony consists of five movements.
Babi Yar: Adagio (15–18 minutes)
In this movement, Shostakovich and Yevtushenko transform the 1941 massacre by Nazis of Jews at Babi Yar, near Kiev, into a denunciation of anti-Semitism in all its forms. (Although the Soviet government did not erect a monument at Babi Yar, it still became a place of pilgrimage for Soviet Jews.) Shostakovich sets the poem as a series of theatrical episodes — the Dreyfus affair, the Białystok pogrom and the story of Anne Frank — extended interludes in the main theme of the poem, lending the movement the dramatic structure and theatrical imagery of opera while resorting to graphic illustration and vivid word painting. For instance, the mocking of the imprisoned Dreyfus by poking umbrellas at him through the prison bars may be in an accentuated pair of eighth notes in the brass, with the build-up of menace in the Anne Frank episode, culminating in the musical image of the breaking down of the door to the Franks’ hiding place, which underlines the hunting down of that family.
Humour: Allegretto (8–9 minutes)
Shostakovich quotes from the third of his Six Romances on Verses by British Poets, Op. 62 (Robert Burns’ “Macpherson Before His Execution”) to colour Yevtushenko’s imagery of the spirit of mockery, endlessly murdered and endlessly resurrected,denouncing the vain attempts of tyrants to shackle wit. The movement is a Mahlerian gesture of mocking burlesque, not simply light or humorous but witty, satirical and parodistic.
In the Store: Adagio (10–13 minutes)
This movement is about the hardship of Soviet women queueing in a shop. This arouses Shostakovich’s compassion no less than racial prejudice and gratuitous violence. Written in the form of a lament, the chorus departs from its unison line in the music’s two concluding harmonized chords for the only time in the entire symphony, ending on a plagal cadence functioning much the same as a liturgical amen.
Fears: Largo (11–13 minutes)
This movement touches on the subject of suppression in the Soviet Union and is the most elaborate musically of the symphony’s five movements, using a variety of musical ideas to stress its message, from an angry march to alternating soft and violent episodes.
Harmonic ambiguity instills a deep sense of unease as the chorus intones the first lines of the poem: “Fears are dying-out in Russia.” (“Умирают в России страхи.”) Shostakovich breaks this mood only in response to Yevtushenko’s agitprop lines, “We weren’t afraid/of construction work in blizzards/or of going into battle under shell-fire,” (“Не боялись мы строить в метели, / уходить под снарядами в бой,) parodying the Soviet marching song Smelo tovarishchi v nogu (“Bravely, comrades, march to step”).
Career: Allegretto (11–13 minutes)
While this movement opens with a pastoral duet by flutes over a B♭ pedal bass, giving the musical effect of sunshine after a storm, it is an ironic attack on bureaucrats, touching on cynical self-interest and robotic unanimity while also a tribute to genuine creativity. The soloist comes onto equal terms with the chorus, with sarcastic commentary provided by the bassoon and other wind instruments, as well as rude squeaking from the trumpets. It also relies more than the other movements on purely orchestral passages as links between vocal statements.
Quoted from Wikipedia