# Looking for a personal account at a premiere



## Aurelian (Sep 9, 2011)

Does anybody know of a personal account of being in the audience at the premiere in 1955 of Shostakovich's 1st Violin Concerto? I am asking because it must have been an extremely emotional experience - the music saying what could not be said openly. The beginning of the 3rd movement is not hard to interpret.


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## Guest (Sep 18, 2014)

"Interpret" is le mot juste.

The third movement, in common with the first and second and fourth ones, is music. It does musical things. If it "says" anything, they are all musical "sayings."

To make it express something in the same way that language does requires interpretation. Requires it to be perceived as something other than music. Which it's not.

It's music.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Aurelian said:


> Does anybody know of a personal account of being in the audience at the premiere in 1955 of Shostakovich's 1st Violin Concerto? I am asking because it must have been an extremely emotional experience - the music saying what could not be said openly. The beginning of the 3rd movement is not hard to interpret.


Look in Elizabeth Wilson's Shostakovich: A Life Remembered. There is an account of the premiere by Marina Sabinina and there might be others as well. Don't think there was anything too interesting in Sabinina's tale.



some guy said:


> "Interpret" is le mot juste.
> 
> The third movement, in common with the first and second and fourth ones, is music. It does musical things. If it "says" anything, they are all musical "sayings."
> 
> ...


While I agree with your sentiment and detest literalistic interpretation, in fact, things are not so simple for the music of Shostakovich. First of all, it was more or less illegal to write music without meaning under the doctrine of socialist realism and, consequently, many composers, including Shostakovich, seem to have composed with specific conventions of interpretation in mind, historically sanctioned and documented ones as well as those routinely applied by party-approved critics. In simultaneously observing such conventions while finding ways to undercut them, and in incorporating quotations from texted works, musical monograms and the like, it was possible, or perhaps even unavoidable, to express meanings not readily fitting the category of the purely musical. I could make a good case for how this works using the Tenth Symphony as an example (not Volkov's interpretation!), but it would be a lot of work.


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