Symphony was a great public success in Leningrad with over 45 minutes of loud applause at the end and critics were similarly positive in their response. And so, this meant successful rehabilitation for the composer. Thus the story remained the same for the next 40 years, as witnessed by the Hugh Ottoway’s BBC Music Guide to the Shostakovich Symphonies published in 1978. Views about the Fifth Symphony changed dramatically with the publication of Solomon Volkov’s Testimony in 1979. The authenticity of these alleged memoirs has long been contested and there is no doubtthat the methodology for much of Volkov’s work is dubious. However, people who were close to Shostakovich, including his great friend the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, have vouched for the truth behind many of the views expressed. According to Solomon Volkov’s Testimony Shostakovich reportedly said: ‘I discovered to my astonishment that the man who considers himself its greatest Interpreter [Mravinsky] does not understand my music. He says that I wanted to write exultant finales for my Fifth and Seventh Symphonies but I couldn’t manage it. It never occurred to this man that I neverthought about any exultant finales, for what exultation could there be? I think that it is clear to everyone what happens in the Fifth. The rejoicing is forced, created under threat, as in [Mussorgsky’s] Boris Godunov. It’s as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, “Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing,” and you rise, shaky, and go marching off, muttering, “Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing.” What kind of apotheosis is that? You have to be a complete oaf not to hear that.’ Since then further hidden codes within the Fifth have been uncovered. David Rabinovich in his biography Shostakovich, Composer, pointed out the relevance of Shostakovich’s only other serious composition of 1937, the Four Pushkin Romances, Opus 46. The first song, Rebirth, is quoted directly in the central quiet passage of the Fifth’s Finale, with the lilting accompaniment in high strings referring to the final quatrain: Thus delusions fall off My tormented soul And it reveals to me visions Of my former pure days. This perhaps suggests the composer’s hope that one day the true message of the Fifth would be appreciated and show that Shostakovich had not betrayed his basic ideals. The musicologist Gerard McBurney also pointed out in a talk on BBC Radio 3 in January 1993 that the march theme in the Finale is derived from the quatrain: A barbarian painter with his somnolent brush Blackens the genius’ painting, Slapping over it senselessly His own lawless picture. Following Stalin’s savage Pravda condemnation, we do not need to think too hard about the identity of the ‘barbarian painter’ who besmirched his work. More recently Stephen Johnson spoke on Radio 3’s Discovering Music about his realization that the duet between flute and horn over gently pulsing strings in the closing stages of the first movement echoes the Habanera from Act One of Bizet’s Carmen. This is when Carmen sings of love as a rebellious bird who will not be tamed. Shostakovich may have been thinking about an unrequited love aff air at the time or he may be referring to the final victory of love over oppression.
