Shosty's Potboiler

Russia's Dmitry Shostakovich, 51, is one of the 20th century's most gifted composers, but that has not kept Soviet politicians from pounding him like a bass drum. In the '30s and '40s Communist officials let him have it fortissimo for writing music that failed to trace a melodic line straight to the heart of the average Russian. Composer Shostakovich has long since recanted his sins and been allowed once again to sing for his supper. The song he sang last week, his brand-new Eleventh Symphony, was supposed to help celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Actually, it was dedicated not to the big (1917) Bolshevik Revolution but to the lesser, abortive rebellion of 1905. The composition, too, was lesser and abortive.

Its Moscow premiere was performed by the Soviet State Symphony Orchestra, under Conductor Nathan Rakhlin, in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, which was packed with 3,000 people. The four movements were played without a break. None of the music came as a surprise to Soviet bigwigs in the audience. It had had its world premiere shortly before in Leningrad, and just to be absolutely sure everything sounded the way it ought to, Composer Shostakovich had previewed the symphony on the piano for a picked group of Moscow's upper-echelon music lovers and party-line watchers.

It was program music, more on the level of a movie sound track than a concert piece. The first movement, "Palace Square," evoked an atmosphere of imminent tragedy, with its ominous drumbeat in the background. The second, "January 9th," is a musical treatment of the mob scene on "bloody Sunday." The third, "In Memoriam," is a funeral hymn to the fallen heroes, based on revolutionary songs of the period. The fourth, "Tocsin," rising to a crashing coda, was described in a Moscow daily as "a call for tireless struggle for the highest ideals of mankind.'' The work evidently satisfied Moscow brass as a classic example of socialist realism (although that unsocialist romantic, Tchaikovsky, had been capable of similar stuff in his heavy-ordnance 1812 Overture). Last week's audience could almost see flashes of fire and smell gun smoke as the bugles sounded, the drums beat, and the entire orchestra rose to a grand finale of cannon fire. The Moscow audience applauded the symphony warmly, but not with unusual enthusiasm. Wearing a dark, double-breasted suit, Composer Shostakovich walked up to the stage and took a breathless, jerky bow. Correspondents noted that he was fighting a nervous tic.

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