Wrote Dmitri Shostakovich, “Jewish folk music has made a most powerful impression on me. I never tire of delighting in it; it is multifaceted – it can appear to be happy while it is tragic. It’s almost always laughter through tears…. This quality of Jewish folk music is close to my ideas of what music should be….”

Keeping that in mind, this week on “Music from Marlboro,” we’ll hear Shostakovich’s song cycle “From Jewish Folk Poetry.” The work was conceived in 1948 at great personal risk to the composer (who, by the way, was not Jewish). Under the Zhdanov decree, Shostakovich had already been denounced for the second time with charges of “formalism” for his alleged embrace of decadent Western tendencies in his music. Furthermore, it was a time of heightened anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, as Stalin targeted Jewish intellectuals and artists. For these reasons, Shostakovich’s songs were not given their first public performance until 1955, two years after Stalin’s death. The first eight of them were performed at a private birthday celebration at the composer’s home in September of 1948. Shostakovich would incorporate Jewish music, whether as an act of solidarity or a gesture of subversion, in many of his major works.

“From Jewish Folk Poetry” was toured around the United States by Marlboro musicians in 1968. We’ll hear a 1967 performance from the Marlboro Music Festival, featuring soprano Benita Valente, mezzo-soprano Glenda Maurice, and tenor John Humphrey, with Luis Batlle at the keyboard.

Then we’ll turn to a String Quintet in A major, by a composer Shostakovich knew very well, Alexander Glazunov. Glazunov, who was director of the Petrograd Conservatory, saw to it that the talented young Shostakovich be allowed to bypass preparatory theoretical courses and enter directly into the conservatory’s composition program. In general, Shostakovich was lukewarm on his mentor’s music, but he had very kind words for the man and expressed admiration for his scherzos.

The String Quintet is full of serene lyricism, generously melodic and beautiful. We’ll hear it performed at Marlboro in 1982, with Sylvie Gazeu and Ernestine Schor, violins; Toby Hoffman, viola; and Peter Wiley and David Soyer, cellos.

That’s an hour of music from Russia, with love, on the next “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

PHOTO: Once and future cellists of the Guarneri Quartet (David Soyer passing the bow to former student Peter Wiley in 2001) will be heard in music by Alexander Glazunov on this week’s “Music from Marlboro”