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Carnegie Hall Sound Insights - The Music of Shostakovich
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“I find it hard to make any judgment about Michelangelo, but it does appear to me that the essence has come through. And by the essence of these sonnets, I had in mind: Wisdom, Love, Creation, Death, Immortality.”
—Shostakovich, letter to Glikman |
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In anticipation of the 500th anniversary of Michelangelo’s birth in 1975, the Soviet Ministry of Culture decided to commission some composers to write songs on his texts. For Shostakovich this proved a fortunate opportunity to discover for himself a great poet, through powerful translations by Abram Efros. The composer selected 11 poems, all written in the first person, and gave them titles such as “Truth,” “Love,” “Anger,” “Creativity,” “Death,” and “Immortality,” so that the Suite reads like a testament, like a final summation of a life. The Suite proved to be one of Shostakovich’s last works, and its confessional nature is unmistakable. At the same time, Shostakovich seems to welcome the opportunity to engage in a kind of role-playing through the use of archaic musical elements: austere unison lines, sequences of parallel chords, repeated rhythmic patterns, and recitative passages in the style of early opera. But Shostakovich avoids eclecticism and mere pastiche, assimilating all these elements to his laconic and richly symbolic late style.
The Michelangelo Suite is a work of symphonic proportions, monumental and chiseled—Shostakovich seems to be happy to appropriate the strokes of the sculptor’s hammer as a metaphor for his own creativity. The predominant austerity makes the occasional touches of lyrical warmth all the more personal and poignant. The songs “Morning” and “Separation” are just such touches, one a dithyramb to the loved one, another a renewed avowal of love at the moment of death, reminding us that Shostakovich dedicated the Suite to his wife Irina. In both songs, the piano part is minimal, allowing the voice to express every nuance of the recited verse.
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 Morning
Courtesy of Delos Records
Death
Courtesy of Delos Records
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