Suite from The Gadfly (1955)

arranged for viola and piano by Vadim Borisovsky (1900–72)

Scene

Intermezzo

People’s Holiday

Romance

Bearing in mind the title and date of the film The Gadfly, directed by Alexander Faintsimmer and released in the Soviet Union in 1955, one might expect the music that Shostakovich wrote for it to be in his bitingly satirical vein. In fact, true to the setting of the story in revolutionary 19th century Italy, it is an engagingly romantic score which – while it might not be as entertaining as Prokofiev’s music for an earlier Faintsimmer film, Lieutenant Kijé – is a convincing demonstration of the composer’s gifts as both a melodist and a pasticheur. That is presumably what attracted Vadim Borisovsky, founder-violist of the Beethoven Quartet and a prolific arranger of music for his own instrument, to write a viola-and-piano version of four of the 24 pieces that make up the film score.

The opening Scene, with its ominous piano introduction and its passionate viola part, most effectively reflects the romantic atmosphere of the story, even if its echoes of Tchaikovsky call Russian ballet rather than Italian opera to mind. Resisting the temptation of the Nocturne – in the original score it is a cello solo surely not beyond the scope of the viola – Borisovsky chose as his central slow movement the Intermezzo, which is more developed, more varied, and no less expressive. Also known as “Tarantella” and “Neapolitan Dance,” People’s Holiday draws on Shostakovich’s recently completed Festival Overture for the best of its several tunes. The concluding Romance has achieved a reputation of its own through its use in the British TV series Reilly, Ace of Spies – which was entirely appropriate, since Ethel Lilian Voynich, the British author of the novel on which the film is based, is said to have made him the model for the “gadfly”central character of the story. Not that an alluring Italian-style melody like this should have needed TV exposure to secure its popularity.