English Commentary by Sergio Cánovas 

Shostakovich’s Symphony No.3 was composed between April and October 1929, being successfully premiered on January 21 of 1930, performed by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra and Academy Capella Choir conducted by Alexander Gauk. It follows the footsteps of the second, being written in a single movement with a choral ending. Shostakovich wrote “While in the Second Symphony the main content is struggle, the Third expresses the festive spirit of peaceful construction». The ending sets a text by Semyon Isaakovich Kirsanov praising May Day and the October Revolution.

The piece was finished shortly after the concert premiere of Shostakovich’s «The Nose», which was viciously attacked by the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians. The composer, who was openly being labelled as a formalist and decadent, probably saw Symphony No.3 as a more politically acceptable piece to show his compromise with Soviet aesthetics. Stalin’s hold on power was quickly ending the period of «free» soviet cultural expression. Later on, Shostakovich viewed the piece (like the second) as a failed experiment. However, unlike the second, the work largely abandoned the modernist and atonal language in favour of a more tonal and conventional one as desired by authorities

Kirsanov’s poem uses the annual May Day parade as a metaphor for the march of socialism and justice, and Shostakovich took the idea one step further by composing the musical equivalent of a parade, in which themes and sections pass by and are gone, without the repetition and development that are generally considered the essence of symphonic form. While working on the piece, he told to a friend «it would be interesting to write a symphony in which no theme is ever repeated.” One can hear everyday images of Soviet life in form of marches, and perhaps crowds singing in unison, or even an oration, particularly in the extended passage for unison trombones.

A lyrical solo clarinet opens the symphony, then pairs with another in a sweet duet over pizzicato strings, establishing a pastoral mood with images of springtime and stirrings of revolution. A solo trumpet, the symphony’s principal actor, announces a fanfare and the full orchestra jumps in for an extended march-like episode. Piccolos and flutes squeal, undermining the heroic message. The strings enter with what sounds like a unifying theme that is soon submerged in a multi-voice fugato. Following a huge climax reinforced by percussion, the snare drum takes centre stage, joined by horns and trumpet in an oddly jocular and comic military march. For the slower andante, the mood turns ominous and brooding, then briefly tranquil. But the insistent march returns, led by the mocking woodwinds, then taken up again by the brass and the full orchestra.

The snare drum announces a new scene: the proceedings of a grand political May Day meeting. Octaves resound, representing solidarity and unity. In a slower passage, the tuba, trombones, and trumpet enter like orators. The assembly responds approvingly with ascending string glissandos, followed by a bold statement of unanimity from the brass. In the finale, the chorus sings a «mass song» typical of the period, featuring plentiful octaves and simple intervals, ending in jubilant fanfare-filled, poster-like affirmation. By concluding with this ecstatic hymn to a coming utopia, Shostakovich may well have been imitating the «Ode to Joy» finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, a work very popular in the USSR at the time for its revolutionary sentiments.

Picture: «Bolshevik» (1920) by the Russian painter Boris Kustodiev.

Musical analysis partially written by myself.

Sources: https://tinyurl.com/27wapp9s and https://tinyurl.com/28vl3l7d

To check the score: https://tinyurl.com/29zl8kl7