From: finkel@sdi.com
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: "Story Applause", by Rostislav Dubinsky
Date: 23 Jul 92 15:55:11 CDT
Organization: Systems by Design of Illinois (SDI), Chicago

	 [Please forgive me if this is a repost; I'm pretty sure my
	 mailer was not working when I originally posted this.]

	 Folks,

	 I recently finished reading the excellent "Stormy Applause -
	 Making Music in a Worker's State", by Rostislav Dubinsky.

	 I should think that this work would be of interest to the
	 members of this newgroup.  For in it, Dubinsky, a founding
	 member and artistic director of the Borodin Quartet (now a
	 member of the Borodin Trio) describes the obstacles
	 encountered by many musicians in the former Soviet Union,
	 while focusing on the particular difficulties for so called
	 non-Russians (read Jews), as well as free-thinkers, such as
	 Shostakovich.  

	 Through recollections of his own experiences, he details the
	 careful manuevering around, and the subtle manipulation of,
	 the bureaucracy that demanded strict adherence to the rules
	 of the state-defined, and state-controlled 'socialist
	 realism'.  His easy style allows this thoroughly readable
	 work to project the dynamics of the quartet, whose varied
	 personalities and political loyalties occassionally led to
	 great tension, particularly as they travelled abroad.

	 While Dubinsky's distrust of, and anger towards, the Soviet
	 bureaucracy leads him to an unfortunate distrust and anger
	 towards socalism and Marxism in general, his inability to
	 distinguish the former from the latter is understandable and
	 hardly unique.  One cannot fault Dubinsky for learning a
	 lesson from his Soviet commanders, even if this lesson was a
	 cruel and devastating lie.

	 What is not a lie is Dubinsky's heart, his striving for
	 musical excellence, and his commitment to artistic freedom.
	 The fact that such freedom had to be fought for daily is a
	 testimony to the power, both social and political, of music.
	 Such power, for instance, made the music of Shostakovich a
	 palpable danger to the Soviet authorities.

	 One passage that most clearly describes this danger revolves
	 around a performance of the then rehabilitated Shotakovich's
	 Fourth String Quartet.  With Shotakovich in the audience,
	 which was otherwise dominated by Party elites, the Borodin
	 Quartet ended the work to a polite applause that betrayed
	 the audience's ignorance of lack of understanding.  

	 At the party afterwards, where toasts to Shostakovich and
	 his art dominated the proceedings, and where the voldka
	 flowed particularly freely, the intrusion of an anti-Semitic
	 boor, dressed in black leather, brought deep depression upon
	 all those present, including a vice minister from the
	 Ministry of Culture.
	
	 At Dubinsky's suggestion, the quartet retrieved their
	 instruments and played the Quartet once again.  Through
	 the voldka, 
	
	     "A peculiar, drunkenly rhythmical balance, from which
	     it was dangerous to diverge, had settled in the music.
	     We played fairly successfully up to the recapitulation,
	     where the initial melancholy melody reappeared. Several 
	     voices began to sing along with us...

	     "It really means something if people sing Shostakovich's 
	     music!

	     "They sang along again in the scherzo, which we played
	     in the manner of a street gang's song.  With the
	     discordant voices there appeared a particular musical
	     effect, which would be impossible to write into a
	     quartet scrore.  This seemed to please Shotakovich,
	     because he also started singing...

	     "This was unexpected and frightening.  I never heard
	     Shostakovich sing before or after that evening.

	     "Gradually, the quartet got used to the drunkeness, and
	     by the 'Jewish' finale we were playing confidently.
	     After the incident with the man in the black leather
	     jacket, it rang out in a somewhat different key.

	     "There was neither applause nor praise, only the long
	     silence that is so necessary after such music, until at
	     last [the composer Nikolai] Peyko said, 'We have to
	     drink.  And right away!'

	     "Around the table people stirred; there was the sound
	     of pouring liquid and the clink of glasses.

	     "I put my violin in its case and furtively watched our
	     vice minister.  I saw his frozen stare and his forehead
	     covered with sweat.  It was clearer than ever, to him
	     and to all of us, why this music had been banned, and
	     not very understandable why they had suddenly permitted
	     it...

	     "...'We still have to drink,' said Peyko, and in a sort
	     of frenzy added, 'To Shostakovich!'

	     "Nothing better could be suggested now.  We all raised
	     our glasses and held them in the air, until the the
	     mystical link between Shostakovich and the wine became
	     tangible..."

-- 
	 "Stormy Applause - Making Music in a Worker's State"; Rostislav
	 Dubinsky; Hill and Wang; 1989

Postscript: 

	 I have recently tried to find recordings of Shotakovich's
	 Quartets played by the Borodin Quartet.  The entire cycle
	 has been released on EMI, and while the reviews are
	 excellent, they feature the Bordin Quartet after the
	 departure of both Dubinsky and Alexandrov (second violin).

	 I was able to find one CD recording of Shostakovich's String
	 Quartet No. 8, perhaps his most personal, that was recorded
	 by the original Borodin Quartet in 1962.  It is on the London
	 label, #425-541-2, and is most remarkable.

-- 
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		Vote for Ron Daniels for president

  Joel R. Finkel   Systems by Design of Illinois (SDI) 	 finkel@sdi.com
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Newsgroups: rec.music.classical