MUSIC
IF Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony fails to make such an impact in this country as in Prague and America (where it has recently received the New York Music Critics' Circle award as 'the finest orchestral work performed in New York during the past year'), it will not be due entirely to the newspaper strike. Nor will it have been for want of an occasion. The first performance here, given at the Festival Hall by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Adrian Boult, with the Soviet Ambassador in the audience, was the first in Western Europe. The fault lay in the performance, which not only had numerous minor blemishes in the playing, and was badly balanced, with a very thin and meagre string tone against the rest, but completely failed to grasp the formal dimensions of the work, and misrepresented its character. When it was played in Prague last year by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Franz Konwitschny it made a deep and strong impression, and seemed decisively the best of Shostakovich's symphonies. Some concession to ideological pressure was still discernible in the too-sharp contrast between the serious first and third movements, and the 'optimistic' second and fourth, but the composer seemed to have been more successful than usual in maintaining a consistent and congenial per- sonal tone throughout and in finding a con- cise, coherent form. The first and third movements were quiet, lyrical, flowing and serene, rather than emotional or pretentiously earnest, and the finale, although light and animated, did not force the gaiety excessively. Only the brief, noisy scherzo seemed an ideo- logical compromise, out of character.
In Boult's performance little remained but the brevity and noise of the scherzo (and even this lacked the brilliance of sound and springy rhythm of the other), the quietness of the first and third movements, and the consistent per- sonal tone—which was, however, not hit true. The tempi for the first and third movements seemed very slow, and their rhythm certainly did not flow, with the result that the lyrical Impulse entirely failed. The first movement never got into motion at all, and seemed an Immense, faltering, laborious construction, and the third collapsed into an incoherent succes- sion of episodes. The long introduction to the finale had no tension, no effect of a question Posed, awaiting resolution, as of a true Introduction, and consequently the finale Proper, which when it came lacked vivacity and decision, seemed to have no connection With it.
In spite of its more personal, less strident tone, and its clearly more successful solution of the ideological-artistic problems that have always so obviously tormented Shostakovich, the symphony seemed as long and as dull as any of his others. The composer has himself pointed out the great length of three of the movements, but more by way of suggesting that the scherzo ought to have been longer to balance them, than that they should be shortened. Whereas Konwitschny's perform- ancc confirmed his opinion, nobody on Sun- day could have wished for anything but cuts in the work. Boult has given many excellent performances of modern music, and perhaps he, and the symphony, will have better luck another time. Until then, let no disappointed admirer, or apparently confirmed detractor, of Shostakovich believe that he has heard the Tenth Symphony.
COLIN MASON
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