I did start my analysis of DSCH 4 sans dots, not knowing how involved I was to become. It was obvious quite soon that even with the mere eight or so recordings I was then using that there would be many places where I'd have little chance of pinning down exactly what was going on without visual aid, and I've not regretted the purchase of the score for a minute.

Rei, I'd normally agree with you on this, though it does depend on how complex the work is.

I did the last movement of 5 purely aurally, and 2 and 3 as well, but for 4, which is a good deal busier in places that the later Shostakovich norm, it was impossible even on repeated listenings of several recordings to be able to sort it all out by ear alone.
 
 I'm intending to return to 2 at some point, since I've picked up the score for that, and now I find that the edition I'm using includes the sketches which are the precursor to 4 with 3, so I'll really have to have that too, once I get back from the trek...

Yes and you got it! Our description of a first hearing (in message 170: http://r3ok.myforum365.com/index.php?topic=698.msg21642#msg21642) is all about the music, and contains no reference to boots or trousers. The only external references therein are to 1) Beethoven's "Victory of Wellington" (not one of his better efforts); 2) the two comic characters in the third movement to which the excellent Mr. Lebrecht draws our attention; and 3) the plagiarism from Carmen and Khachaturian.

We also invoked a clutch of much better composers in passing comparison: Tallis, Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Bruckner, Chayceffscy, Sibelius, Scryabine, Rachmanineff, and Tyubine.

There is nothing at all in our analysis which refers to any "historical context", oh dear no! The Member labours under a serious misapprehension on that point and we would never dream of doing such a thing.

It is true that Andrew Zhdaneff is mentioned but only so as to point out in passing that his description of the work is in precise agreement with our own objective description. Here he is by the way (second from the left) in a happy family snap:



They look as though they are taking care not to fall through the cracks do not they.


"Character assassination"? The Member sounds superbly confident, but again oh dear no! Here the Member appears to have mixed up in his mind 1) our preliminary remarks by way of introduction to the composer's character as reflected in his music (messages 28: http://r3ok.myforum365.com/index.php?topic=698.msg14396#msg14396 and 228: http://r3ok.myforum365.com/index.php?topic=698.msg20865#msg20865  ) and 2) our objective description of a first hearing of the symphony (message 170). These are two quite distinct subjects! Our preliminary remarks deal with the character of the man (which is after all the thrust of this thread), but our subsequent analysis in message 170 deals only with his music. It does not at all do to stir the antipasto into the main course!

And again "hearsay" - dear oh dear oh dear! We will have none of that! That is a considerable and indeed noteworthy error. All we did was gather together a few observations published by Grove, Gerald Abraham, and Procophieff. It makes a fine collection does it not? Seven or eight points. These are eminently trustworthy sources and they would not we are absolutely certain publish mere "hearsay".

The "Ladybird book of Great Composers" is a work with which we are unacquainted but we are sure that if it is an English publication it will have been carefully checked for accuracy before its release to impressionable youths.

How quickly misinformation and even disinformation will spread if not rooted out at birth!

Baz - you might be interested to note that the young girl is Stalin's daughter Svetlana - pictured, I think, before she fell out of her father's favour. It's hard to tell from the picture, but the chap on Zhdanov's right may be Stalin's son Yakov. But no, they don't look especially happy (apart from Zhdanov himself, but he was likely drunk).

Thanks Baz and Tim for the info. Tim, am I to understand it's a Stalin 'family snap', then, not a Zhdanov one? Any idea why Zhdanov was present if so?

I think 'taking care not to fall through the cracks' seems a curiously apt description, though possibly not in the way its speaker intended it?

It looks like one of Stalin's holiday snaps - Simon Sebag-Montefiore's excellent biography is full of such things. (The front cover of that book shows another such photo - Stalin and his wife Nadya with Mr and Mrs Voroshilov relaxing on a sunny picnic.)

Stalin had a bunch of holiday homes around the USSR and spent several months a year at them, dragging the politburo with him: the Ukrainian famine was orchestrated from such places, eg, while Stalin and his crew went duck hunting. All the families used to go on holiday together. One thing that emerges from SS-M's book is that the Kremlin - especially pre-war - was run like a particularly incestuous hall of residence. Of all the top men, only Beria, I think, actually had a permanent home outside the Kremlin itself, and they constantly dropped in on one another for cups of sugar, etc. They were all good chums - before they started killing one another that is.

Little tangent here - Sebag Montefiore's view of the Holodomor, whilst also adhered to by Robert Conquest and others, is not universally shared amongst historians. Robert Service, in his A History of Modern Russia (I haven't read his biography of Stalin), certainly doesn't accept the view of the famine as genocidal, and seems somewhat ambivalent about the extent to which it was a deliberate policy. Lewis Siegelbaum, in the chapter 'Building Stalinism 1929-1941' in Gregory Freeze (ed) - Russia: A History, accepts that the deprivation suffered by the rural population was due to a political decision, but does not go as far as to accept the notion that it was planned. Please don't think for a moment I'm trying to excuse Stalin, who was a brutal mass-murderer, just to suggest that the representations of these things by right-wing historians such as Sebag Montefiore shouldn't necessarily be taken as the whole story (nor should those by leftist historians).