Symphony No 13 Babi Yar

"There is no monument above Babi Yar," Yevgeny Yevtushenko laments in his poem about the Ukrainian ravine where the Germans shot thousands of Jews in 1941. Twenty years later, he and Shostakovich created a memorial more lasting and searing than any marble headstone. Yevtushenko's poems express fiery political protest and youthful idealism and, as in other "choral" symphonies, the words and voices add immeasurably to the emotional impact of the music. Scored for solo bass, male chorus (singing in unison) and a large orchestra, each of the symphony's five movements is set to a poem depicting an aspect of life under Stalin; the music complements and heightens the poetry's atmosphere, mood, and narrative intensity. "Humor" and "A Career" are vintage Shostakovich Scherzos: sardonic, grotesque, with robust, almost vulgar irregular dance rhythms and a sophisticated fugal section - the gallows-humor of despair. "In the Store" is a lament-laden hymn to the hardships of Russian women; "Fears" is a spooky, ominous, frightening description of the pall of dread hanging over everyone. The longest, most wrenching movement, of course, is "Babi Yar." Dark, mournful, often wild, it is an outcry of the helpless down-trodden against the inhumanity of the powerful, but the poet's attempt to identify with the suffering Jewish victims by being a "true Russian" is not entirely convincing. The symphony represents the composer at the height of his technical and expressive power. Solo and choral passages alternate, the orchestration is stunning, full of dynamic and timbral variety and contrast. The performance is splendid; the German orchestra and chorus sound as authentic and involved as the Russian soloist and conductor. --Edith Eisler