Russian influence When Britten met Shostakovich
The composer’s friendship with two Russian greats defied politics and ideology. Ivan Hewett explores their touching legacy
Almost 60 years ago, one of the great encounters in musical history took place. The date was September 21 1960, the place, the Royal Festival Hall in London, which nine years after its opening was already the most prestigious venue for classical music in Britain. In a box were two of the most revered composers in the world: Dmitri Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten. They were there for the London premiere of Shostakovich’s first cello concerto, given by Russian virtuoso Mstislav Rostropovich, for whom Shostakovich had composed the piece the year before.
After the concert Shostakovich introduced Britten to the fiery young cellist, whose first response was to laugh. He knew nothing about Britten except that he’d composed some variations on a theme of Purcell and so jumped to the conclusion the composer must be a contemporary of Purcell and therefore had been dead for nearly three centuries. Fortunately he stifled the laugh, caught the composer in his usual bear-hug and said: “When will you compose something for me?”.
How one would like to have been a fly on the wall at this encounter between the impulsive cellist, the nervous, frightened Shostakovich, and the buttoned-up Englishman, who was clearly stirred by the presence of these two exotic creatures from a forbidden, closed world. Later that evening, Shostakovich complained to Rostropovich that every time Britten admired something in the cellist’s playing, he would poke Shostakovich in the ribs and say how marvellous it was. “And as he liked so many things throughout the concerto, I am now suffering!”. This was the beginning of a three-way friendship that produced a wonderful creative harvest, which will be celebrated later this month at the Britten Weekend: Britten and Russia. It will take place at Snape Maltings, the Suffolk concert venue originally created by Britten in 1967 for the Aldeburgh Festival.
It was an unlikely alliance, not just because of the differences in temperament between the three, but the sheer difficulty of maintaining a friendship across the Iron Curtain. The Cold War was at its height, and relations between the Western and Soviet blocs were governed by a mutual, morbid suspicion. The encounter only happened because there was a temporary thaw in relations, brought about by Nikita Khrushchev’s accession to power in Moscow, and the helpful intervention of “Madame” Furtseva, the canny and ambitious Soviet culture minister who was determined to let a little Western chic into the greyness of her nation’s cultural life. The thaw soon froze over, which meant the friendship was often plagued by great-power politics. Travel between the two blocs for such well-known figures as these had to be sanctioned at the highest level, and could be cancelled at a moment’s notice if relations went sour – as Britten was to discover later. The Soviet government refused to let Rostropovich’s wife, the soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, travel to Coventry for the premiere of Britten’s War Requiem in 1962, and five years later stopped Rostropovich from playing at the Aldeburgh Festival.
Nevertheless, the friendship thrived, with repeated visits by the two Russians to Britten’s Suffolk fastness in Aldeburgh, and three trips to the Soviet Union by Britten and his long-term partner, the tenor Peter Pears. In fact it would be truer to say “friendships”, because the relationship between Britten and Rostropovich and Britten and Shostakovich were two very different things. The first was a more light-hearted affair, buoyed up by Rostropovich’s volcanic enthusiasm and lust for life, which acted like a tonic on the increasingly ailing Britten (his life was overshadowed from the Sixties onwards by the heart ailment that eventually killed him). Britten and Pears and Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya became an inseparable foursome, often photographed together on holiday in Venice or in the Suffolk countryside.
Thanks to Rostropovich, Britten discovered a passion for the deeptoned, expressive cello, an instrument which until then had hardly interested him. The two often performed together, and after Britten’s death, Rostropovich declared there were certain pieces he could never perform again, as no one could approach Britten’s perfection as an accompanist. Rostropovich’s incredible technical mastery inspired Britten to compose works that are now pillars of the cellist’s repertoire, including the Cello Sonata, the Three Suites for Solo Cello and the Symphony for Cello and Orchestra – all of which, with the exception of the 2nd Suite, can be heard at the Britten Weekend.
The relationship between Britten and Shostakovich was deeper emotionally, but also marked by the hesitations and ambiguities that are bound to arise in a friendship between two creative giants, each anxious to guard their creative space from any accusation of undue influence. There was certainly much to draw them together. Britten’s enthusiasm for Russian music, especially Tchaikovsky, went back to his teens. He became aware of Shostakovich’s music during the Thirties, when his own politics for a while became strongly pacifist and Left-wing. There was a biting, militaristic, parodic strain in some of Britten’s early pieces such as the Pacifist March and the Lullaby for a Retired Colonel, which could show the influence of Shostakovich’s early works, such as the 1st Symphony.
As for Shostakovich, he was barely in a position to know much of the younger man’s music, as access to Western music in the Soviet Union was limited. But he knew of Britten by reputation, and from the beginning must have felt an affinity for a man whose nervous sensitivity and sense of being an outsider were so like his own. Running through the work of both composers is a sympathy for the oppressed and the victimised, though the actual targets of that sympathy were very different. In the case of the repressed homosexual Britten, it was a loathing of militarism and male violence. Shostakovich, on the other hand, infused his music with deep sympathy for the victims of Stalin’s oppression.
Just as important as this temperamental affinity was the fact that both composers genuinely revered each other’s music. Shostakovich adored Britten’s War Requiem, and had to ask for a second copy of the LP recording because he wore the first one flat from repeated listening. Britten was not an enormous fan of Shostakovich’s grand symphonies, but loved the composer’s smaller-scale pieces. About the 10th Quartet, Britten said, “I thought it was the most extraordinary piece of music – completely new for him, immensely simple, immensely direct, but quite, quite surprising.”
As the friendship deepened, a mutual influence started to creep into their music, with the haunting silvery sound of Britten’s percussion soundworld appearing in Shostakovich’s music, and a definite echo of Shostakovich’s tragic vein appearing in Britten’s cello suites and his final opera Death in Venice, which premiered in 1973. By then Britten was gravely ill, and two years later, when Shostakovich died, he could barely write a handwritten tribute. But the declaration is eloquent in its simplicity: “Shostakovich was the greatest composer that I shall ever have the honour to know.”
It was the final touching gesture of a relationship whose value is more than just musical. It’s a reminder of the mysterious way human beings can discover affinities with each other, beyond all differences of politics and language and ideology. In the present distracted times, that may be the most precious legacy of these two great composers’ unlikely friendship.
Their travel had to be sanctioned at the top level, and could be cancelled if relations went sour