p This year marked the start of a period of renewed creative and public activity in Shostakovich’s life. The main event, of course, was the premiere of the Fifth Symphony, on 21 November at the Leningrad !’hilharmonia. The orchestra was conducted by Yevgeny Mravinsky, who was a close friend of the composer’s for many years. At about the same time the Fifth Symphony was also performed-with equal success -at a special meeting of Party activists.

p The premiere of the Fifth Symphony was immediately hailed by both audience and critics as a prodigious landmark in the development of Soviet music. The writer Alexei Tolstoy, me of Shostakovich’s faithful admirers, wrote in the newspaper Izvestia: ’Glory to our age for showering the world with such an abundance of great sounds and thoughts! And glory to our people for bringing forth such artists!’ The Soviet press at that time was full of ecstatic comments on the symphony, which has become one of the gems of world orchestral music.

p Although many months in 1937 were taken up with intensive work on the symphony, it was a busy and fruitful period in other respects too. Shostakovich continued to perform his own works. For example, in February he played his Piano Concerto in Tbilisi with the Georgian Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Nikolai Rabinovich. In May the second part of the film trilogy about Maxim, Maxim’s Return, was released, and shortly thereafter the composer finished music for another film, Volochayevka Days. He also wrote four romances for a planned (but never completed) cycle based on Pushkin’s poetry.

p In the autumn Shostakovich embarked on a new sphere of activity—teaching. He was invited to work at the Leningrad Conservatoire, where, until 1941, he took a class in composition. His pupils from that period included Sviridov, Yevlakhov, Boldyrev, Lobkovsky, Levitin, Fleischman and others.

p Shostakovich began once more to take part in public affairs, appearing in newspapers and participating in various discussions. He showed a great interest in the work of his colleagues: cf.,for example, the extract published here from his review of Oles Chishko’s opera Battleship Potyomkin. In short, he was entering a period of maturity and flourishing.

p Very recently I finished writing my Fifth Symphony, which is to have its first performance at the end of November. At the moment I am putting the finishing touches to the score for Volochayevka Days by the Vasiliev brothers, after which I shall set to work on music for Ermler’s film A Great Citizen. Another film in the offing, for which I shall be composing music, is Friends, produced by Tikhonov and Arnstam.

p There will be not a great deal of music in Volochayevka Days. The most difficult task for rne here was to write the song which will serve as a leitmotif running right through the film music.

p So far I have experienced great difficulty in the field of song-writing. Apart from The Counter Plan, I have not written a single song in the whole of my career as a composer. But the song in Volochayevka Days is quite different from that in The Counter Plan; it is a heroic song, in the fullest sense of the word. It required a good deal of work-I made ten different versions of the song, and only the eleventh satisfied me.

p The reason I am writing at such length about this song is that it runs through all the music in the film. The theme can be sensed everywhere-in the overture to the film, in the finale and in choral sections-and this was where the complexity of the work lay.

p I would like the film music to play an independent role, rather than being a mere accompaniment or an added effect in various sequences. In addition, I would like the music to be entirely realistic and to perform its intended function properly.

p In Arnstam and Tikhonov’s film Friends, the music will be of very great importance. I shall have to deal, for the first time, with folk music, and I must say his work par icularly ap ealed to me. I am presently studying the songs and music of various Caucasian peoples—from Chechnya, Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria-which I shall use when I start writing music for the film.

p On the whole, the music for Friends will play an even greater part than in the earlier film Girlfriends.

p As well as film music, I am now starting preliminary work on an opera, also called Volochayevka Days the libretto for which is being written by N. Ya. Bersenev, The opera is to show the foreign intervention during the Civil War and Red Army capturing the Volochayevka fortifications, on which the White guards and interventionists had pinned all their hopes. The opera is still in its initial stages, but many fragments and episodes have been written.

p This task has been greatly lightened by my work on the music for the_ film of the same name, which serves as a starting-point for the opera music.

p I envisage the opera as a heroic work on a monumental scale, with many crowd scenes. It will include much material based on songs.

p My aims in writing the opera are very straightforward. I want it to be a large-scale, heroic work, with truly memorable moments, so that on leaving the hall the audience will take with them a good song, a good aria and passages of symphony music.

p I have a lot of material, but there is still a great deal of hard work ahead.

p Sometime soon I want to switch over for a while to the field of chamber and vocal music.

p When I say vocal music, I am not thinking of large choirs, but of romances, which are written so seldom these days. I have set four of Pushkin’s poems to music, but shall not publish them, until the whole cycle of twelve romances is ready.

p As far as chamber music is concerned, I intend to take it up very seriously, for this is another neglected area, almost ignored by Soviet composers. I, too, in all my years as a composer, have composed only one sonata for cello and piano. I now propose to write several chamber works for our performers, including such genres as the quartet, concert pieces for piano, and so on.^^1^^

I think it would be wrong to do away with illustrative music in the cinema entirely, but it is also true that the music should clarify the events and the author’s attitude to them. Music is a very powerful emotional force and therefore should not be assigned a merely illustrative role.^^2^^

p Battleship Potyomkin is undoubtedly a great triumph for the Kirov Theatre. Having seen the opera only once, I should not venture to analyse it in detail, but what struck me as best was the work of the orchestra, choir and soloists-and especially of the conductor, Ari Pazovsky. Since this great master joined the theatre, the orchestra has changed beyond recognition: it is now quite magnificent. The same goes for the choir, led by Vladimir Stepanov. The Kirov Theatre again ranks among the top theatres in the Soviet Union.

Chishko’s music is very good; I was particularly impressed by Act Two. The choral sections are most successful. The delineation of certain characters, on the other hand, is rather insipid. But in general the work betrays the hand of a master, narrating the heroic Potyomkin epic with sincere emotion, I feel that from a dramatic point of view Spassky’s libretto is marvellous. It has been said that there are weak spots in the text, but I have to admit I did not hear them...^^3^^