Review: The author reconsiders the interpretation of the concept of Shostakovich’s Symphony No 5 based on the fact that the composition was created during Stalin’s Great Terror of the 1930s and after a harsh criticism of his compositions by the Communist Party and the USSR government in the early 1930s. During the creation of the Symphony No 5, the Soviet music experts defined its concept as a celebration of a “happy” life of Soviet people, However, in the author’s opinion, the symphony has another idea. The researcher notes that the triumph of the Symphony No 5 in the global culture had happened only owing to the director’s interpretation by Yevgeny Mravinsky during the premiere at Leningrad Philharmonic Hall on November 21, 1937, after which the Symphony was performed all over the world and became the gold standard of the Soviet music. Probably, Shostakovich intended to create an optimistic finale for the Symphony. But there are many examples when the composer’s goal doesn’t correspond with the final result. The author provides the conclusion that almost all music experts, who analyze this symphony, use abstract phrases: contrast themes, lyrical image, enemy, etc. But the only proven fact is that a “mechanistic” march is a heavy and ponderous advance of the power of a tyrant eliminating everything he wants based on the principle “who is not with us is against us”. This idea pierces into the Forth and later the Seventh Symphonies by Shostakovich. Today, the Symphony is still a music masterpiece and a part of the global music heritage, but the new socio-cultural interpretations of modern directors each time reveal the new faces of this composition.
 

Keywords: repressions, symphonic music, Mravinskiy, conductor's interpretations, Shostakovich, Soviet composer, Fifth Symphony, musical style, orchestral classics, conductor

Review: The research subject is the symphonic works of an outstanding Russian composer of the late 20th century Boris Ivanovich Tishchenko (1939 - 2010). The article considers his compositions of the 1960s - 1980s: the first six symphonies with numbers and some symphonies with titles. The author studies such aspects of the topic as Tishchenko’s innovatory role in the renovation of Russian symphonic style of the 1960s, the interrelation of music and poetry in Tishchenko’s large orchestra compositions, and the significant influence of literary concepts on the development of his symphonic style. Special attention is given to the issue of Tishchenko taking over from the large Russian symphonic tradition. The main contribution of the research is the idea that Tishchenko is among the few of his generation who held true to the genre of large “pure” symphony, and took over from the symphonic line of his genius teacher D. Shostakovich. The author’s special contribution is the analysis of all symphonic works by B. Tishchenko. Such a detailed study is the first in Russia. The scientific novelty of the research consists in the fact that the author proves a close connection between Tishchenko’s symphonic style and his epoch, the controversial cultural and social processes suffered by his generation.

Keywords: Dramaturgy, Renewal, Symphony orchestra, Poetry, Music in the USSR, Symphony, Boris Tishchenko, Word and music, Musical theatricality, Leningrad