Seven Poems by Alexander.Blok Op.127

Presnia Ofelii

Gamayun, ptitsa veschaya

Mï bïli veneste

Gorod spit

Buria –

Taynïe znaki –

Muzika

Prominent among Shostakovich’s friends and colleagues, before they were more or less forced out of the Soviet Union in 1974, were the soprano Galina Vishnevskaya and her cellist husband Mstislav Rostropovich. Having already dedicated significant scores to each of them, the composer readily agreed to a request for a work they could perform together. It turned out, however, to be a rather more problematic project than he had anticipated – partly because of heart attack that had put him in hospital and, worse still, had led to him being forbidden cigarettes and alcohol. It was only on discovering a bottle of brandy his wife had failed to conceal from him, he later confessed, that he was able to concentrate on the new work, which was to be a set of seven songs on early poems by the Russian symbolist poet Alexander Blok.

That, however, was not the end of Shostakovich’s problems since it became clear to him after completing the first of them that a solitary cello in support of the voice did not give him enough colour variety and that he would have to add two more instruments. The “Vocal and Instrumental Suite for Soprano, Violin, Cello and Piano,” as it is so informatively subtitled, was first performed by Vishnevskaya and Rostropovich with David Oistrakh (violin) and Moisei Weinberg (piano) in Moscow in October 1967.

The full instrumental ensemble is held in reserve for the last of the songs. In the first of them a lonely cello weaves poignantly expressive melody round the voice of the lamenting Ophelia. Inspired by a famous painting by the Revivalist artist Victor Vasnetsov – depicting the mythical bird with the face of a beautiful woman which foretold the long Tatar domination of Russia in the middle ages – Gamayun, ptitsa veschaya features a declamatory vocal line and a thunderous piano part written mainly in primitive octaves. As a timely contrast, Mï bïli veneste evokes an atmosphere of lyrical reflection, the violin offering not only a sympathetic commentary, adapting its figuration to represent the murmur of the stream, but also an eloquent postlude. Gorod spit takes the form of a passacaglia, the piano presenting the recurring material as a bass line, moving as slowly as the Neva, under the sad observations of the voice and the double-stopped cello.

The last three songs follow each other without a break. Buria, with its vividly dramatic vocal line and stormy colouring on violin and piano, subsides into a cello soliloquy at the start of Taynïe znaki, which develops into a doom-laden duet for the two string instruments. Under sustained lines on violin and cello the piano enters in contemplative mood at the beginning of Muzïka (Shostakovich’s title rather than Blok’s) which expresses a religious commitment to the art of music and, after a passionate last stanza, ends in great beauty.