For the last three decades Irina Shostakovich has been conducting the same important mission that Cosima Wagner and Elena Bulgakova carried out with love and self-sacrifice. When Irina was a very young woman, she married a composer who was already world-famous and had experienced both the bitterness of disgrace and the elation of universal worship. She stood by him during the last 13 years of his life — a time of creative insights as well as a period of worsening health and physical decline.
After Shostakovich’s death, the composer’s copyright was inherited by his wife and his two children from his first marriage, who for a long time had their own homes and their own families. All the cares and needs connected with the meticulous preservation and study of the composer’s substantial archive, the protection of his works from free interpretations and distortions, and the verification of their new editions against the manuscripts fell on Irina’s frail shoulders. She was forced to engage in a whole complex of activities and resolve a number of difficult tasks.
Today all these issues have been laid to rest. The archive has been transferred to an apartment across the street from the composer’s memorial apartment and is being studied by experienced scholars. Their research is yielding important findings and discoveries of previously unknown facts and secrets of the Master’s creative workshop. A private publishing house set up by Irina is collaborating closely with people who are researching the composer’s manuscripts. The name of the company is derived from the letters of Shostakovich’s monogram DSCH. The composer weaved the monogram into the fabric of many of his works as a motif consisting of four notes: D, E flat, C, and B.
Finally, the Paris-based Dmitri Shostakovich International Association has become a center for popularizing and studying the composer’s heritage. Its members are not only musicians but also appreciators of his music. Film directors, conductors, and performing musicians refer to the center to receive information and advice, listen to audio disks, and use a multilingual collection of books on the composer’s creative work.
THE YEAR OF SHOSTAKOVICH
Various countries have celebrated the 100th anniversary of Shostakovich’s birthday by hosting festivals, seminars, meetings, and new theatrical productions connected with his music. Irina Shostakovich has been a welcome guest everywhere. That is why we Kyivites appreciated it all the more when she agreed to come to Ukraine’s capital and speak at the international conference “Shostakovich and the 21st Century” organized by and held at the Tchaikovsky National Music Academy of Ukraine. During the two days we spent with this wise, modest, and spiritually rich woman, who conducted herself with both simplicity and great dignity, we asked her several questions about her life and her memories of Kyiv.
Mrs. Shostakovich, could you tell us about your parents and family?
My parents were born in Belarus. They met in Vitebsk and later did their studies in Leningrad, where I was born. Both of them worked in the humanities. My father was a specialist in comparative linguistics and belonged to the school of the famous Orientalist and linguist Nikolai Marr. Marr’s theories explaining the origins of language gained both supporters and active opponents. After his death in 1934, Stalin himself criticized his views. In 1937 my father was arrested and sent to the Gulag. A short while later my mother died. I was left in the care of my mother’s parents, who in the face of possible persecution helped my father and sent him letters and parcels, whereas some of his relatives rushed to disown him.
Did you remain in Leningrad even during the blockade?
In 1942 I was transported with a group of small children first to Yaroslavl. There my grandfather died of exhaustion. Faced with the threat of being placed in an orphanage, I wrote a message in printed letters, as well as I could manage, and sent it to my aunt, my mother’s older sister, asking her to come for me. Then we ended up in Kuibyshev, where I started school. Much later, when Dmitri and I were already married, we found out that during this war period he was also in Kuibyshev, where his famous Leningrad Symphony was first performed. On top of it, we were living not far from each other, but at the time, of course, I did not know anything about him.
ENCOUNTER
How did you first meet Dmitri Shostakovich?
It happened in Moscow. I had a job as an editor at the Soviet Composer publishing house where the vocal score of his operetta Moscow, Cheriomushki was published. The libretto was written by Mass and Chervinsky, two popular playwrights in those days. The operetta was first performed in the Moscow Operetta Theater on Jan. 24, 1959. When we were preparing the score for publication, we needed to get the composer’s agreement on some stylistic corrections to the text. There was also a proposal for a new musical piece to be composed. Shostakovich refused the proposal point-blank but he did accept the corrections. This was our first meeting. Later we happened to see each other several times; I saw him at concerts and other places. I was all ears for what musicians had to say about him. What I heard was invariably enthusiastic comments and the highest regard for his personal traits.
How did he propose to you?
He was a man of the old school, so he asked me to marry him according to all the strict rules of etiquette. But this did not happen until several years into our acquaintance. Then he started introducing me to his friends, sometimes seriously and sometimes in jest, warning them, “I want you to know that if you hurt her in any way, in doing so you will be hurting me.”
Was Dmitri Shostakovich a difficult person to live with?
No. It was always easy for me to live with him because he was exceptionally tactful and caring. He never underscored his superiority and exceptionality. On the contrary, he loved repeating that he was an ordinary man who feels and experiences everything in the same way as other people and who tries to convey these feelings in his music.
Did the composer share his creative plans with you?
You see, I am not a musician and I did not dare judge music as a professional. He nurtured his plans by himself. He would compose everything in his head without using any musical instruments, only occasionally jotting down brief notes for later use. In most cases he would write down the whole work. After he finished a piece, he would play it on the piano. And then he would call me to come and listen.
SHOSTAKOVICH AND KYIV
Mrs. Shostakovich, no doubt you were present with your husband at all the premieres of his works. Did you come to Kyiv with him for the first time to attend Katerina Izmailova in 1965?
No, we first came to Kyiv to visit Borys Hmyria, the famous Ukrainian bass singer whom my husband valued greatly and who excelled at singing his series called “Five Romances Set to Ye. Dolmatovsky’s Poems.” At that time they were talking about Hmyria’s possible participation in the 13 th Symphony. He invited us to stay at his dacha in a picturesque area near Kyiv. Unfortunately, collaboration with Hmyria ceased soon afterwards when he wrote a frank letter to my husband saying that the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Ukraine had urged him not to get involved with this work. Dark clouds began gathering over this symphony even before it was first performed in Moscow. The reason was that the first part mentioned Babyn Yar and the Holocaust issue, and the whole libretto was written by Yevhen Yevtushenko, a young poet who was then out of favor with the government. They made it very clear to Hmyria that the symphony would never be performed in Ukraine.
Fortunately, this gloomy prediction did not come true, and the time when “the comrades from the Central Committee” controlled all events in the country is also in the past. During the last 15 seasons the National Philharmonic Society of Ukraine has staged all 15 of Shostakovich’s symphonies. Our famous conductor Roman Kofman included all of them in his repertoire, which he performs both in Ukraine and the West. How did Dmitri Shostakovich get along with Kostiantyn Simeonov, the very talented conductor who directed Katerina Izmailova?
He had a very high opinion of Simeonov as a musician and loved him as a vivid and remarkable individual.
This is proved by the book of memoirs, letters, and material for conductors, which bears an inscription in Shostakovich’s handwriting and includes the title pages of the vocal scores to the opera Katerina Izmailova, as well as the cantata for bass, chorus, and orchestra, The Execution of Stepan Razin. The book also contains some of Shostakovich’s letters to Simeonov. One of the letters, written before they began working on the Kyiv production of the opera, says, “As a great and long-standing admirer of your talent, I am very happy that you took my Katerina Izmailova. I am looking forward to meeting you and am eager to see and hear you.” We know that the first performance of the opera on March 24, 1965, was a great success and was highly praised by the composer. You were with him in Kyiv at that time. Where did you stay?
We stayed in a hotel across the street from the theater. This was especially convenient because Dmitri attended the rehearsals, and in the evening we could see some plays at the Kyiv Opera House. I have especially vivid memories of Lucia di Lammermoor by Gaetano Donizetti, starring Bella Rudenko. We also used to stroll along Andriivsky Uzviz. Kostiantyn took us to a lovely park overlooking the Dnipro. Our next trip to Kyiv was connected with a recording of Katerina Izmailova for a film opera with Halyna Vyshnevska playing the leading role and Kyiv musicians headed by Simeonov pe rforming the music. This was Shostakovich’s choice. This time we stayed on Taras Shevchenko Boulevard in a spacious, old-fashioned suite at the Ukraina Hotel, as it was called at that time.
Our fourth trip to Kyiv was again for Katerina Izmailova, this time staged with a new cast. We came in December and the opera was staged right before the New Year, on Dec. 28. I remember this performance and its reception by the Kyiv audience as being marked by unprecedented enthusiasm, general involvement, and a sense of the extraordinary significance of this cultural event. We were especially impressed by the vivid images of Katerina and Boris Timofeevich played by Yevdokiia Kolesnyk and Oleksandr Zahrebelny, who were young singers at the time. Of course, the conductor was, like before, the central figure of the entire production. This time we were given a room in the Kyiv Hotel, with windows facing the Dnipro, a park, and the beautiful Mariinsky Palace.
Shostakovich called the Kyiv performance with the director’s work, sets, and, of course, the beautiful music, the closest interpretation of the opera as he had conceived and envisioned it. I remember my conversation with Irina Molostova, a director who much later was invited to stage Katerina Izmailova at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg. We talked about the two versions of the opera, and we both gave preference to the second one, which was staged by the composer when he was in his mature years, with huge experience behind him. Molostova said she was convinced that all the modifications and corrections that were made were prompted by the author’s desire to convey more precisely his attitude to the plot and the characters, especially to the female protagonist. But people in the West still consider the first 1932 version to be the only true one, and they believe that the composer was later forced to introduce changes and to deviate in some way from his original design.
I know that Dmitri urged theaters to stage only the 1963 version. This was the author’s will. When the famous La Scala Theater contacted him for permission to stage the first version of the opera, he turned it down. When Mstislav Rostropovich succeeded in having the score of the first version introduced and published in the West, the publishers became interested in promoting it for theatrical performances. To this day they have been influencing theater audiences and critics in a certain way.
THE ANNIVERSARY
Mrs. Shostakovich, today Katerina Izmailova is being staged in many theaters. Belgrade recently hosted the first performance, dedicating it to the 100th anniversary of the composer’s birthday. In what other places have festivals and important events taken place?
Virtually all over the world. A large festival was held in Moscow by Valery Gergiev. There was a wonderful Shostakovich music festival in Oldborough, an area in England associated with Benjamin Britten, Shostakovich’s fellow composer and good friend.
We would like to thank you once again that at the end of this intensive anniversary year you found time to come to Kyiv. We are positive that Shostakovich’s music will continue to be performed in our country and the number of its sincere admirers will continue to grow.
