Symphony 1

The astonishing fact about Shostakovich's First Symphony is that it was written by a teenager. Most of us at the age of eighteen are struggling to come to terms with life and Shostakovich was certainly no exception. It was only his genius that gave him the gift to write a symphony of such assurance, confidence and depth whilst still struggling with youthful insecurity. As the music unfolds, it becomes apparent that he is not taking tentative steps on the symphonic pathway; this is no student essay. From the opening phrases, the music is pure Shostakovich, a blueprint of ideas that would appear time and again in his later works. Whilst Shostakovich was able to express confidence through composition, his personal life during the period of the Symphony's gestation was under strain. The Scherzo of the Symphony was submitted to his composition class where it was severely criticised by his teacher Maximilian Steinberg. "What is this enthusiasm for the grotesque? There were grotesque passages in your Trio (Opus 8), all your cello pieces (Opus 9) are grotesque, and finally this scherzo, too, is grotesque! Probably there will be some critic in Leningrad who'll say this is brilliant, this is wonderful, and that'll be the end of you!" To Steinberg's credit he did tell Shostakovich to carry on with his Symphony. In June 1924, ill and depressed, he was sent to convalesce in a Crimean sanatorium and forbidden to play the piano.

In October 1924, he wrote to his girlfriend, Tanya, that he was so fed up with his family's poverty that he had taken an engagement as a cinema pianist. A month later he tells Tanya that he is writing a symphony saying that it is "quite bad, but I have to write it so that I can have done with the conservatory this year, since I'm sick of it and don't feel like writing a symphony now." By the beginning of January 1925 he had finished three movements. "In my view it's turned out very well, the most substantial of my works" adding "and it'll be performed badly since I won't be there to show them how it should go." At the same time, Shostakovich's sister, Maria, found employment as a dance teacher and he was able to give up a cinema job which had become ever more demanding and irksome although he still had the energy to sue the cinema owner for unpaid wages. Life continued to lurch between moments of blissful happiness and suicidal depression. "Doubts and problems, all this darkness suffocate me. From sheer misery I've started to compose the finale of the Symphony. It's turning out pretty gloomy - almost like Miaskovsky, who takes the cake when it comes to gloominess." A further letter to Tanya describes his "sweet ecstasy" whilst composing, often until the early hours of the morning, but outlining an attempt to hang himself yet not having the courage to kick away the chair. At last on the 26th April he had finished the symphony announcing that he was pleased with the result.

Although in his adult years Shostakovich wrote his orchestral music directly to manuscript, his First Symphony was in piano-score and the arduous task of writing out the score and orchestral parts made him ill again. A first performance was scheduled for the 12th of May, 1926, at the Leningrad Philharmonic Hall with the great Nicolai Malko in charge of the Leningrad Philharmonic - a prestigious debut that would have thrilled most student composers. Even so Shostakovich had doubts, regarding Malko as a good conductor yet afraid that he was incapable of presenting the symphony the way it should be, "Even the slightest deviation from my wishes is painfully unpleasant." After all this angst, it was an enormous boost to Shostakovich that the première received a triumphant reception.

So much for the troubled labour of Shostakovich's first-born Symphony. What of the music? The composer's son Maxim, himself a pianist and conductor, describes the opening march-like movement as "the beginning of a journey", the second is "on the road, as if from an old fairy tale". The deeply felt third movement is "one long phrase" and the Finale, prefaced by a side drum roll, is preferred to the other movements. " I like it very much. It works very much like a film. The fast material means a lot of time is passing quickly. With the sound of the timpani, you're back to real time." Shostakovich's contemporary, Lev Lebedinsky, portrayed the Symphony as "An alarm, a forecast of the terrible future." Some years later he expanded on this statement: "As a true democrat, he [Shostakovich] deeply detested the communist system, which continually threatened his very life. In his first major work, his First Symphony, he already challenged the forces of evil. I was the first to note that the timpani in the last movement sound like a depiction of an execution on a scaffold. When I remarked to Shostakovich, 'You were the first to declare war against Stalin,' he did not deny it. Already, from his early years, Shostakovich understood what was going on in our country and what was to come." However much Shostakovich's life and music were bound up with politics and the social conditions of his motherland, the music is pre-eminent. Shostakovich, the foremost symphonist of the twentieth century, has produced a work full of an emotion which speaks directly to a willing audience.