Saturday, June 7 / 8:00 p.m. / Tyl Municipal Theatre, Kutná Hora
STALIN vs. SHOSTAKOVICH
Julian Barnes: The Noise of Time
Literary adaptation of a fictitious biography of Dmitri Shostakovich who spent almost all his life in Soviet Russia. He was persecuted during the Stalinist era because his formalist music did not meet the state propaganda requirements. Exposed to extreme political pressures which he was brought on to bear in the prevailing atmosphere of the cult of Stalin’s personality, he was eventually coerced into adjusting his work to the regime´s doctrine.
stage director – Viktorie Vášová, concept – Matěj Samec, set design – Anna Gumboldt, music&sound – Jakub Rataj, lights – Jiří Zewll, production – Magda Juránková, stage manager – Jana Hrušková, cast – Tomáš Janypka, Anna Datiashvili, Matěj Šumbera,
violoncello – Štěpán Drtina
Dmitri Shostakovich: String Quartet in C minor No. 8, Op. 110
Milan Pala, Helena Jiříkovská – violins, Vladimír Bukač – viola, Jiří Bárta – violoncello
About programme
Shostakovich made clear that this was a profoundly introspective and very personal work right in the opening bars of his String Quartet No. 8. There, his musical “signature”, using the letters DSCH (D for Dmitri and SCH from the first three letters of his second name in its German spelling), set as their musical equivalents, DEs (D + E flat in German notation), CH (C + B in German notation), obtaining an extremely rewarding musical theme, is introduced at the beginning of the first movement to recur all through the composition’s course. The theme, made up of semitones, suggests anguish, and accordingly, the entire first movement oscillates in mood between an atmosphere of distressed resignation with sporadic moments of calming down. It is followed by an Allegro part using the same motif, ushering in a characteristic element of agitated energy; and the third movement evoking a mock waltz of sorts. Rather surprisingly, the composer then proceeds to bring the quartet to its close with two slow movements. The fluent progress of the sound of the violin is interrupted by tormenting strikes providing a most eloquent and succinct expression of the state the composer was in at a point when, following a period of persecution and fears for his life, he was commandeered into joining the Communist party. The final movement is largely meditative, ending in silence with a hint of reconcilement. No wonder that a friend of Shostakovich understood the quartet to be meant as an epitaph, and came to believe that the composer was considering suicide.
Text: Dita Hradecká