Revolution & Revelry: Shostakovich 5
What to Listen For
Overture to Candide:
Bernstein’s Overture to Candide opens with a fanfare that is built on the interval of a minor 7th, followed by a major 2nd. This fanfare serves as a motto throughout the whole operetta. The seventh sets up an expectation of B-flat major, but, instead, it immediately seems to lose its balance and fumble, going instead to E-flat. This switch of key helps reinforce the humorous and satirical tone Bernstein uses repeatedly through the operetta. Right after the fanfare, Bernstein introduces a jumpy-sounding syncopated rhythm, which will be used throughout the overture. Can you hear when it reappears?
After this impulsive-sounding beginning, contrasting music follows, when the lyrical melody based on “Oh Happy We” is introduced with a warm string sound. Then, notice how the solo flute and clarinet pass the melody around before a counter-melody joins and creates an even richer texture.
Toward the end of the quick development section, you will hear a fast, virtuosic melody, “Glitter and be Gay,” which will be sung by the character Cunegonde in the body of Candide. This melody becomes a dazzling instrumental highlight before the piece ends, with a thrilling build-up of volume and tempo.
It is not immediately obvious, but Bernstein has structured his overture in traditional sonata allegro form. Listen to see if you can tell when the exposition of the themes is complete. Bernstein goes on to develop those themes in the development section. To conclude, he returns to reintroduce the themes in the recapitulation, which becomes the grand finale.
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 2 in A Major:
Liszt wrote this concerto using his own new creative structural principle: he shapes the concerto into one long movement. Although concertos usually have three movements, Liszt essentially includes six interconnected parts within this one-movement work. He derives the structure from the plaintive first theme you hear at the very beginning, when the woodwinds introduce the melancholic, pensive melody. You can identify where one thematic strand ends and the next begins by noticing when a change of speed or a change of mood or color indicates a new “movement.” Listen for how many of the six you can find!
Note that sections of a dreamy, romantic character may be closely followed by very spirited or martial music or passages of virtuosity. Also listen for the improvisatory character of this work. (Liszt excelled at spontaneous improvisation.) Do you think the work qualifies as a concerto for piano, or does it sound more like a tone poem (without a descriptive program) or, maybe even a fantasy?
Symphony No. 5 in D minor:
Throughout its four movements, Symphony No. 5 abounds in easily recognizable themes and in sustained passages of lyrical beauty, yet it also has a constant, pressing intensity.
Moderato
The opening movement is rich in dramatic contrasts. It begins with a daring theme that passes from violins to horns and then trumpets. As the rhythm becomes increasingly more propulsive, the tempo quickens, and more brass enters to intone thematic statements. The tempo slows for the recapitulation when the whole orchestra joins together to repeat the opening theme.
Allegretto
The second movement is a waltz-like scherzo with a contrasting middle trio section featuring a solo violin.
Largo
The third movement should be approached differently. The symphony reaches its climax in this movement, one of the composer’s most original and deeply felt movements. It begins calmly, builds with momentous intensity to the climax, and then returns to the mood of the beginning.
Allegro non troppo
The fourth and final movement is an extended rondo, militant and march-like, with the brass instruments introducing the theme. A rondo is a lively, cyclical form where a main theme (the refrain) keeps returning, separated by contrasting sections (episodes). Grandeur and power are delivered in many musical ideas that erupt one after the other in fiery succession. The mood then softens in a slower section, but returns to the spirit and tempo of the opening before the triumphal conclusion.
Leonard Bernstein: Overture to the Comic Operetta, Candide
Born: August 25, 1918, in Lawrence, Massachusetts
Died: October 10, 1990, in New York
Date of Composition: 1956.
Premiere: Dec.1, 1956, on Broadway, New York; the concert version was premiered on January 26, 1957, at Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic under the composer’s direction.
Orchestration: 1 piccolo and 3 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets plus E-flat clarinet and bass clarinet, 2 bassoons and contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, and strings.
One of the greatest American musicians of the 20th century, Leonard Bernstein was the Music Director of the New York Philharmonic; he composed three symphonies, diverse concert works, and musical theater works.
Bernstein and his collaborators, the dramatist Lillian Hellman and the poet Richard Wilbur, did not allow Candide to be presented with the usual billing of “a new musical,” describing it as “a comic operetta based on Voltaire’s satire,” which immediately claimed it a place alongside the works of Offenbach, Johann Strauss, and Gilbert and Sullivan. Although the first stage production did not become a commercial success, the music instantly acquired an independent life. The original Broadway cast recording was popular for many years, and the overture joined the standard orchestral repertoire. In the 1970’s, Candide had a revival on Broadway, with significant libretto and staging revisions; it enjoyed a long run and stimulated many new productions. In the 1980s, Candide entered the repertoire of the New York City Opera, and in 1997, it appeared again on Broadway.
Candide is the hero of the novel by Voltaire (1694-1778) that bears his name. He, with his beloved Cunegonde, experiences countless adventures and misadventures, yet fails to understand, until the very end, that they are in “the best of all possible worlds.”
The Overture to Candide has become an enormously popular concert classic. (The New York Philharmonic, in honor of its former music director, now has a tradition of playing the Candide Overture without a conductor.) The Overture opens with a fanfare built on the interval of a minor 7th, followed by a major 2nd, a typical Bernstein sound. This fanfare serves as a motto throughout the whole operetta. The love duet, “Oh, Happy We,” provides lyric contrast to the fanfare and is followed by a passage derived from the ending of the coloratura aria, “Glitter and Be Gay.” A brilliant coda brings the short overture to a close.
Franz Liszt: Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 2 in A Major
Born: October 22, 1811, in Raiding, Hungary
Died: July 31, 1886, in Bayreuth, Germany
Date of Composition: 1848, final revision 1863
Premiere: The premiere of Piano Concerto No. 2 occurred in the Grand Ducal Theater in Weimar, Germany, on January 7, 1857, with the composer conducting and Hans von Bronsart von Schellendorf, Liszt’s student, the dedicatee, and a Berlin pianist/composer/conductor as soloist.
Orchestration: In addition to the solo piano, the orchestra includes 2 flutes and piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, cymbals, and strings (violin, viola, cello, and double bass)
Franz Liszt was an unmatchable piano virtuoso and an innovative composer. He created a new style of piano performance, invented the symphonic poem, joined folk and art music in a new way, and reconfigured the piano concerto. His new ideas profoundly influenced several subsequent generations of composers and performers. One of Liszt's ambitions was to create extended works (symphonies, concertos, and sonatas), as large through-composed continuous compositions rather than in separate movements. In his new symphonic poems, he emphasized the programmatic, often using a story or an historic event to bind the parts together.
This romantic concerto uses a new creative principle that Liszt had evolved during his years of composing, using a minimal number of different musical subjects, but presenting each in many different guises, in a process of constant variation and transformation. Liszt subdivides the single, long, continuous movement of this concerto into six parts, each one marked by a change of speed or character. Almost all of the parts are derived in some way from the opening theme that is presented plaintively and poignantly at the very beginning, with the woodwinds articulating a pensive, melancholy melody. Liszt makes tracing its progress possible through a series of changing tempos and kaleidoscopic alterations of mood, color, shape, and harmony until it finally becomes a thunderous victory chant: The work was performed many times in Liszt’s concerts in the last years of his life, but Liszt, himself, never played the solo part.
On January 7, 1857, with the composer conducting and Hans von Bronsart, a Berlin pianist/composer/conductor as soloist, Piano Concerto No. 2 premiered in the Grand Ducal Theater in Weimar on January 7, 1857. Liszt began composing the concerto in 1839 and completed it in 1849. He revised the concerto before the premiere and even made further revisions before it was published in 1863.
Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5 in D minor
Born: September 5, 1906, in St. Petersburg
Died: August 8, 1975, in Moscow
Date of Composition: spring 1937
Premiere: Leningrad, on November 21, 1937
Orchestration: piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, small clarinet in E-flat, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, piano, harp, and strings.
Shostakovich’s originally Polish family settled in Russia after his grandfather’s exile in Siberia. Shostakovich took his first piano lessons from his mother; at 13 he entered the Leningrad Conservatory. In 1925, at 19, he completed Symphony No. 1 as a Conservatory graduation piece. This period after the Russian Revolution was a time when Soviet rulers felt that their new society should support new kinds of art, and Russian composers, poets, novelists, and painters formed a true avant-garde. Before long, however, political ideology and views of Soviet art changed.
After the USSR was formed, increasing official Soviet disfavor toward Shostakovich, one of the most formidable Russian composers of the 20th century, created difficulties for much of his career. Although his early music met with approval internationally, as soon as Shostakovich composed his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and his next symphonies, Pravda, the official Soviet news agency, began condemning his work for its “bourgeois decadence.” They described his symphonies as un-Soviet, unwholesome, cheap, eccentric, and lacking in “songfulness.” Authorities suggested he should compose music that would have greater appeal for the masses, music that was simpler, more melodic, more optimistic, and more heroic. Ultimately, Shostakovich was rehabilitated, but not until after an unsettling period of soul-searching. Success finally returned with this, his Symphony No.5, a work more expansive and heroic than those that had preceded it. The authorities quoted Shostakovich as describing this work as “a Soviet artist’s practical, creative reply to just criticism”; finally, he was allowed to re-enter the mainstream of Russian musical life.
Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 is widely recognized as his most popular work. Describing it programmatically, perhaps because he felt compelled to, he said: “The theme of my Symphony is the stabilization of a personality. In the center of this composition – conceived lyrically from beginning to end – I saw a man with all his experiences. The Finale resolves the tragically tense impulses of the earlier movements into optimism and joy of living.” Shostakovich wrote the symphony to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Soviet Union. It debuted in Leningrad on November 21, 1937, and was very successful at its first hearing in Russia as well as several months later in its United States premiere. An original and inventive work, the symphony displayed the sure hand of a mature creator who is artistically and ideologically confident. Its subjects are long melodies used in new but simple ways.
Between 1925 and 1970, Shostakovich wrote 15 works in symphonic form. These works are enormously varied in character and size, but each embodies the essential idea of being extended and highly developed, based on their large number of contrasting themes. No composer of the 20th century made so extensive, so important, or so durable a contribution to symphonic literature. Shostakovich’s symphonies combine somber tragedy, mordant wit, expressive melody, dramatic development, and profound emotion, all under a brilliantly orchestrated surface.
© Susan Halpern, 2026