Reactions to the premiere were not limited to New York, since the broadcast afforded listeners and critics the chance to hear the symphony wherever they were.95 On the West Coast, readers were exposed to penetrating evaluations of the work, which highlighted its political significance. In Los Angeles, music critic Isabel Morse Jones praised NBC for calling attention to the cause of Russian war relief, and claimed the Seventh was “rhythmically clever.” Nevertheless, those who insisted on labeling Shostakovich the “Russian Beethoven” were engaging in “ill-considered nonsense.”96 Her readers also learned that Stokowski had been present in NBC’s Hollywood studio listening to the performance, and that there was talk of making a feature film based on the symphony, which would include him as the conductor.97 Music, not movies, was on the mind of the San Francisco Chronicle’s critic Alfred Frankenstein, who suggested the emotionally rich symphony was quintessentially Russian. The composer had created an enormous “musical fresco,” making it an “international gesture” of considerable significance.98
In the wake of the broadcast, Shostakovich remained in the news for the next few months as the nation’s orchestras seized the chance to play his symphony for local audiences. The first concert performance, given a month after the NBC broadcast, was led by Serge Koussevitzky at Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony. However, on this occasion the ensemble was the estimable Berkshire Music Center Orchestra, which comprised some of the country’s best student musicians, many destined for positions in top orchestras. In the audience on the evening of August 14 was Soviet Ambassador Maxim Litvinov, along with Crown Princess Juliana of the Netherlands, and as before, the concert would benefit Russian war relief.99 Speaking to the audience about the importance of the Russian war effort and Russian heroism, journalist Dorothy Thompson called the symphony “a shout of triumph aimed straight at the heart of all mankind.” Shostakovich had captured the voice of the Russian people, who would not be “trampled into the ground.”100
In the student orchestra that evening was a young string player, Walter Trampler, a German refugee destined to become one of the great violists of his generation. He never forgot that August performance, he said later. “We heard Toscanini was going to do it first . . . , but we resolved to play the hell out of it.” Trampler also recalled that Koussevitzky had declared the Russian composition and Beethoven’s Ninth the two greatest symphonies.101 Whatever the merits of the piece, the reaction of the audience was extraordinary. In a breach of etiquette, the crowd applauded after every movement, though the most thunderous response was reserved for the symphony’s conclusion.102
Among the critics, the usual differences were heard, though none questioned the work’s emotional power or the quality of the performance. The Worcester Telegram’s critic was enamored of the music, calling it an “eloquent indictment of Axis tyranny” and the greatest orchestral work of the last one hundred years.103 In the pages of PM, music critic Henry Simon declared the piece, with its “direct appeal to humanity,” would extend long past the present moment because it had such a profound impact on those who encountered it.104 And not surprisingly, the Daily Worker, the Communist Party organ, also detected greatness in the symphony, its critic claiming that Shostakovich’s music captured powerful emotions at “this hour of human history.”105
Eight days after the Tanglewood performance, Chicagoans heard their orchestra perform the piece, under the direction of Frederick Stock, at Ravinia Park, the ensemble’s summer home. As before, the proceeds from the concert went to Russian war relief, with ticket prices ranging from $1.50 for general admission to $100 for a box. The day before the concert, the Chicago Tribune printed a large photo in which three small children and a parrot in a substantial cage were all said to be working for the cause. The photo was headed “Give Their Parrot a Lesson in Patriotism,” with the caption informing readers that the children, whose mothers were working to galvanize support for the benefit performance, were teaching the bird to say “Polly wants a victory.”106
Throughout the fall, American audiences heard the Seventh in performances by top orchestras led by important conductors. Concertgoers in Boston, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, Minneapolis, and New York (again) had the opportunity to experience the musical phenomenon that was the Shostakovich Seventh. The first performance by the Boston Symphony under Koussevitzky was heard in October, and even if the Boston Herald’s critic thought the piece was disappointing, he acknowledged its “smashing emotional intensity” and political power.107
In Cleveland, Artur Rodzinski, a champion of Shostakovich’s music, offered an October performance. On the eve of the concert, Rodzinski alluded to the precarious military situation in Europe, where the Soviet Union, demanding more American and British assistance, was shouldering the burden of the struggle against Germany. “Let us open a second front, at least musically!” the conductor declared. He called the performance not just “one of the greatest musical events of years, but one of the greatest political events.”108
The Los Angeles Philharmonic played the work that same month. Two performances, one in the orchestra’s concert hall and the other for soldiers at a desert army base, were led by Stokowski, the man who had longed to conduct the premiere.109 Again, local journalists evoked the Russians’ fighting spirit. To music critic Isabel Morse Jones, the first performance, in the city, was the year’s “most important musical event,” though it was far more than a “purely musical” happening.110 On the second night, the audience comprised thousands of American soldiers, leading another writer for the Los Angeles Times, Ed Ainsworth, to observe, if the first performance was “a success,” the second was “an epic.” This being Southern California, opening remarks were supplied by the actor Edward G. Robinson, who, if press accounts can be believed, stepped to the microphone and declared, “Listen, youse mugs, pipe down for the big doings.” The Hollywood tough guy then told the story of Shostakovich’s heroism during the siege of Leningrad, after which Stokowski went to work. As the Times reported, once he raised his hands, “Shostakovich took over the California desert,” and the soldiers, enthralled, would never forget this night when the “musical spirit of war came to cactus land.”111
That autumn, the New York press agreed the new composition left much to be desired, even as they praised the Philharmonic’s October performance under Toscanini, who had earlier conducted the American premiere with the NBC Symphony.112 Whatever the critics thought, the extramusical power of the piece was highlighted in a cable to the composer from members of the Philharmonic, who spoke of the “common struggle against [the] . . . barbarism of Fascism,” and conveyed their belief that performing the symphony could fortify the bond between the United States and the Soviet Union.113
It was hardly an exaggeration when, more than a year after the Seventh’s premiere, Newsweek claimed the “whole world knows about Dmitri Shostakovich” and suggested that those who could not “spell his name [could] at least pronounce it.”114 For his part, Shostakovich expressed satisfaction that Americans had enjoyed his composition, though what mattered most, he said, was that they understood it. Both peoples had “feelings in common about war and peace.”115
The story of the Shostakovich Seventh was entwined in the effort to deepen America’s support for the Soviet Union, an ill-fitting Communist ally in the struggle against fascism. Both a government and a private initiative, the endeavor emphasized the bonds between the two peoples, highlighting their ostensible similarities, along with Russia’s selflessness and love of freedom.116 A key to this effort was Serge Koussevitzky, who, even before America went to war, had a national platform from which he expressed support for his native land and sought help from the American people.
In the fall of 1941, Koussevitzky became the honorary chairman of a new organization, the Massachusetts Committee for Russian War Relief, which would raise funds for nonmilitary supplies, including medical and surgical materials, foodstuffs, and clothing. The group, affiliated with the
larger New York-based organization, Russian War Relief, Inc., would utilize transportation facilities provided by the Soviet government to move the essential supplies across the Atlantic. Speaking to the press about his desire to help the Soviet Union, the musician explained that it was necessary to ignore the recent Russian past; it was time to forget the “Bolsheviks. It’s the Russian people we must remember. [They] gave their blood to save everybody in the democracies.” According to the conductor, it was essential to help his former compatriots. They would never be defeated, even if, by nature, the Russian was not a soldier. “He likes his home, his forests, his village and his songs. But when he has to go fight . . . he will fight until he dies.”117
Serge Koussevitzky
Koussevitzky’s support for the Soviet Union was striking because only months before he had quite publicly become an American citizen. In a hymn to his new country on the day he and his wife passed their citizenship test, the conductor called America the only democratic nation in the world. The sixty-six-year-old musician recalled how he had lost everything, first to the Bolsheviks who took his home and his possessions, and later to the Germans who seized his French home and turned it into a Nazi headquarters.118
A month later, Koussevitzky participated in a Boston rally on “I Am an American Day,” an event that drew close to twelve thousand people to the banks of the Charles River for merriment, speeches, and music performed by the Boston Symphony. The nearby streets were filled with popcorn vendors, strolling couples, and picnickers. The vast audience was moved by the words of Koussevitzky, who, before raising his arms to lead his ensemble, spoke about what becoming an American citizen meant to him and about what art meant to America. America was unique, he told the assembled thousands, a place “where freedom of life . . . is preserved; where art—and especially musical art—is so deeply appreciated, and the importance of art, in relation to life, is so well understood.”119
After the United States entered the war, Boston’s newly minted citizen-conductor was no less energetic in his political activism. From the earliest days after Pearl Harbor, Koussevitzky articulated a patriotic vision meant to inspire his fellow citizens; this, along with his status as one of the country’s leading musicians, transformed him into a powerful advocate for the US-Soviet alliance. On December 7, 1941, Koussevitzky and his orchestra were in Rochester, New York, for a concert (the next day) when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Boston’s conductor responded to the attack, saying the violent event would bring the country together. Shifting his gaze, he reflected upon the European war, highlighting the courage of the Russian people and how they would vanquish Hitler. The German dictator was learning that his opponent was not merely the Russian army, but “every peasant, every man, woman and child.” Their courage was clear. “They may die for defense of their soil,” Koussevitzky declared, “but they will kill twenty Germans for every Russian.”120
A few months later, the nation’s capital was the scene of a gala benefit concert offered by Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony, all proceeds donated to Russian War Relief. In the audience of some four thousand on the night of March 31, 1942, were many of Washington’s most prominent figures from the world of politics and diplomacy, including Eleanor Roosevelt; Vice President Henry Wallace; the chairwoman of the event, Marjorie Davies, wife of Joseph Davies (former ambassador to the Soviet Union); Soviet Ambassador Litvinov; and members of the Supreme Court, the cabinet, and the Senate. The presence of Mrs. Woodrow Wilson added a touch of history.121
Blending martial and patriotic fervor, the affair was set in Constitution Hall. With Boston’s orchestra ready to perform an all-Russian program and the audience waiting expectantly, the event began with a corps of drummers and buglers from the US Marines marching down the center aisle while sounding a salute. A procession of color-bearers came next, carrying the twenty-six flags of those nations grappling with Hitlerism. As each was announced and presented to the audience, the Marine buglers blasted a fanfare.122 An announcer then intoned praise from General Douglas MacArthur on the gallant Russian army. The crowd roared.123
Covered by newspapers across the country, the concert was a feast from the Russian symphonic menu: Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony, the Shostakovich Sixth, and to close the program, Tchaikovsky’s Fifth.124 An especially exciting moment, in an evening organized to assist the Russian people and to cement the US-Soviet alliance, was the performance of the “Internationale,” the workers’ hymn the Soviet Union had embraced as its national anthem, which was followed by “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Hearing the “Internationale,” Madame Litvinov, her shoulders squared, said she was deeply moved.125 The audience responded enthusiastically to both patriotic airs, and columnist James A. Wechsler highlighted the fact that “hundreds of strange bedfellows in ermine and boiled shirts . . . militantly applauded the playing” of the left-wing tune while they “beamed lovingly” at the Soviet ambassador. As Wechsler tartly observed, in reflecting on the audience with its share of anti-labor politicians, Lenin might have “stirred perceptibly in his tomb.”126
Throughout these years, Koussevitzky spoke eloquently about classical music’s power to ameliorate suffering. In a 1943 address, “Music in Our Civilization,” the maestro claimed the current war was not merely a conflict of armies, but of people, which meant the artist was as important as the soldier.127 Classical music was a “powerful medium against evil,” he claimed, for it could “heal,” “comfort,” and “inspire.” Indeed, Boston’s maestro sounded less a proud son of Russia than an artist animated by America’s global mission: “Let us write hymns of freedom . . . ; compose marches to vanquish the foe; . . . ; let us sing the song for . . . faith in the ageless ideals of . . . democracy. Let music become the symbol of the undying beauty of the spirit of man. Let us conquer darkness with the burning light of art.”128
If Koussevitzky worked to fortify the US-Soviet relationship, Toscanini remained the country’s most politically significant figure in the classical-music community. Celebrated for his devotion to the American cause, the aged conductor was recognized for his commitment to the struggle against tyranny. Writing to Toscanini after a special concert with the NBC Symphony in March 1943, President Roosevelt praised the conductor’s generosity on behalf of a children’s charity, which had been the beneficiary of the event, and commended his devotion to the struggle for freedom: “Like all true artists you have recognized . . . that art can flourish only when men are free.” In response, the musician told the president, “I shall continue unabated on the same path that I have trod all my life for the cause of liberty,” which is “the only orthodoxy within the limits of which art may . . . flourish freely.”129
Throughout the war, Toscanini placed his music-making in the service of the American cause, his benefit concerts with the New York Philharmonic and the NBC Symphony (and even both together) helping to raise millions for the US government and for private organizations like the Red Cross. In 1943, he led an Easter Sunday concert with the NBC Symphony in which the pianist Vladimir Horowitz participated in an all-Tchaikovsky program, which, through the sale of war bonds, added more than $10 million to the government’s coffers. Another million came from auctioning off the original manuscript of Toscanini’s arrangement of the national anthem, for which retail magnate W. T. Grant submitted the winning bid. As a piece in Radio Age, the quarterly of the Radio Corporation of America, observed, this was one of the many times Toscanini had “lifted his baton to flay the dictators.” Thanking the conductor for his willingness to contribute, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau wrote that the maestro and his orchestra had “expressed in music the . . . fierce resolve . . . to battle to victory.”130 Perhaps a New York Post headline writer, describing the 1943 concert, put it best: “Toscanini Slams a $10,000,000 Gate Right in the Fuehrer’s Face.”131
Toscanini’s courage—both moral and physical—was amply documented in these years, as journalists highlighted his passion for battling political oppression. Readers of the America
n Mercury were reminded of this in a piece by Arthur Bronson who described Toscanini as a “gallant fighter against tyranny” who had grappled with political injustice over many decades.132 In the New York Times, Olin Downes knitted together the conductor’s power as an artist and his political fearlessness, which propelled him to seek truth not merely in his interpretation of a Beethoven symphony, but also in his defiance of evil in the public sphere. The day was near when “artists” and other creative figures would be seen as essential to a progressive society, and Toscanini was perfectly equipped for the task.133
The maestro’s determination to help crush fascism was evident in his feelings for Italy, the plight of which caused him enormous anguish throughout the war. In the previous decade, the conductor had been outspoken in opposing Mussolini, a posture he maintained until the dictator was overthrown in 1943. Having exiled himself from his native land, Toscanini was seen as both musician and political symbol, as artist and antifascist.134
On September 8, 1943, Italy’s fascist state collapsed. The next day, Toscanini led the NBC Symphony in a special broadcast concert, “Victory, Act I,” which celebrated the event by marking the first of three victory concerts he planned to lead as the Allies defeated their fascist enemies.135 The concert, which lasted half an hour, included the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, Rossini’s Overture to William Tell, the conductor’s arrangement of the Garibaldi “Hymn” and “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The choice of pieces mattered. The Beethoven included the famous “V for victory theme,” the opening four notes sounding the letter “V” in Morse code; the theme of the Rossini opera embodied the struggle against tyranny; the “Hymn” of Garibaldi memorialized a past fight for Italian democracy; and the American tune, of course, captured the spirit of American nationalism. As he walked to the podium to begin the studio performance, which was attended only by his wife, son, and two members of his household staff, tears streamed down his face. As the orchestra played “The Star-Spangled Banner,” he belted out the words with gusto.136
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