Soviet's Best Bet

For many war-weary months the people of Leningrad have known solemn, youthful Dmitri Shostakovich as a fire fighter, a trench digger, an embattled citizen like themselves. But the rest of the world has continued to think of him as the only living composer, aside from Finland's Jean Sibelius, who can make musical history by writing a new symphony. Last week musical history was again on the make. In Kuibyshev, secondary Soviet capital, the orchestra of Moscow's Bolshoi Theater began rehearsals on Shostakovich's long-heralded Symphony No. 7. Composer Shostakovich has dedicated his symphony, a musical expression of war's effect on "ordinary, simple people," to the citizens of Leningrad. Says he: "I always try to make myself as widely understood as possible, and if I don't succeed I consider it's my own fault."

Dmitri Shostakovich started making himself understood in 1926, when, in contrast to much modern music that sounded merely disillusioned, cynical and ugly, young Shostakovich's First Symphony spoke up brightly with gusty tunes and youthful zest. This month, phonograph record shops all over the U.S. put on display two outstanding albums of the premier Russian musician: his Symphony No. 6 (Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski; Victor; 9 sides); his Piano Quintet (Vivian Rivkin and Stuyvesant String Quartet; Columbia; 8 sides).

The Sixth Symphony combines a slow, philosophizing opening movement which rises to moments of quivering beauty with two high-geared, jolly movements, raucous with peasant mirth.

The Quintet, which harks back to 18th-Century simplicity, was shrewdly judged so good by Soviet officials that in March 1941 they awarded Shostakovich a Stalin prize of 100,000 rubles for it (about 19,000 U.S. dollars), the biggest coin ever paid for a piece of chamber music.

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