There's That Ambiguity Again

This disk by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Bernard Haitink contains Symphony No 6 and Symphony No 12 by Shostakovich. The sixth symphony war written in 1939 when Shostakovich was walking on eggs in his relationship with the Stalin regime. The symphony shows some influence of Mahler both in overall feel and orchestration and is superficially a high spirited piece but as ever with Shostakovich there is considerable ambiguity and is it in the end a pessimistic piece ( how could it be otherwise you may ask being composed at the time and in the location that it was ). Symphony No 12 is subtitled "The Year 1917", has a dedication to "the memory of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" and the four movements also have programmatic titles referring to the revolutionary events of that year. Written in 1961, there was no longer the immediate threat that Stalin posed but it was still necessary to tread a careful path with the Soviet authorities. By taking the initial revolutionary flowering prior to any corruption of ideals, he was on safer ground and able to write a piece of what could be called "musico-historical painting". Non Shostakovichian input comes from folk themes rather than revolutionary songs and that clue indicates where the symphony is really coming from and who the heroic figures really are. Haitink's Shostakovich interpretations are very fine, even if some insist on a more strictly "Russian" approach.