It is well known that Britten visited the Soviet Union on five occasions between 1960 and 1971 and established warm friendships with members of the Soviet musical elite: Dmitri Shostakovich, Sviatoslav Richter, Mstislav Rostropovich, and Galina Vishnevskaya. Using a range of declassified archival material, this article places this engagement in the wider historical context of Anglo-Soviet political, commercial, and cultural relations, from the wartime alliance with Stalin to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. It considers the operation of the Anglo-Soviet Cultural Agreement, alongside the importance of individuals such as the impresario Victor Hochhauser and a sequence of supportive British ambassadors and cultural attachés. It also examines the role of the British Council on the ground and some of the constraints placed upon this cultural engagement through resourcing and the rules of the political game. Finally, it assesses engagement beyond Britten’s lifetime, in the light of the visits of pop artists such as Sir Cliff Richard and the Bootleg Beatles to the Soviet Union and the first performances of works hitherto taboo, such as Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius.

Britten's First Musical Engagement with Shostakovich

Although Britten's connections with Shostakovich have become increasingly recognised since both composers’ deaths, Britten did not mention Shostakovich as a favourite composer in 1961, and the BBC fiftieth-birthday tribute to Britten two years later made no reference whatsoever to the composer. Yet from the Second World War onwards it was not uncommon for the two men to be linked, even before their first meeting, which was on 21 September 1960 in the ceremonial box of the Royal Festival Hall during a performance of Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, at which Rostropovich played Shostakovich's newly completed First Cello Concerto (Illus. 3). In 1946 the Press Attache of the British Embassy in Moscow had reported that Grigory Shneerson (1901–82), the Head of the All-Union Society of International Cultural Relations Abroad (VOKS) Music Section from 1942 to 1948, said that ‘he had studied the piano score of Peter Grimes and … thought that Britten had something in common with Shostakovich, especially in his writing for the piano’. In the United States, Virgil Thomson observed that both composers were ‘Very similar in their approach and the nature of their success’, going so far as to describe Britten as ‘a local Shostakovich’, though this was intended as an uncomplimentary reference to cultures that exploit ‘the vein of publicpleasing serious music’. On the other hand, the first symposium on Britten's music in 1952 did not make any reference to Shostakovich, and, while the depth of the personal relationship was certainly recognised among both composers’ close circles by 1968, it was not until after Britten's death that wider aspects of the creative relationship were acknowledged. Key voices in this reassessment, which was made increasingly possible by the publication of a variety of Britten's pre-1942 scores and, in 1991, of the first two volumes of Britten's selected diaries and correspondence, were Donald Mitchell (1984) and Eric Roseberry (1995) and, in Russia over the same period, the work of Liudmila Kovnatskaia.

21 May 2008

Boris Tishchenko (1939–2010) was a postgraduate composition pupil of Shostakovich at the Leningrad Conservatory from 1961 to 1965.

[Extract translated from the Russian]

In the Fourteenth Symphony Shostakovich used percussion in a different way from The Nose and the Fourth Symphony. In these works percussion is very important, but still holds the auxiliary character, whereas in the Fourteenth Symphony percussion has the front role.

I am not familiar with the thoughts of the musicologist Levon Hakobian, but I have never found any ‘canonical lines’ in Shostakovich. I remember how he played the whole of the Fourteenth Symphony to me on the grand piano and then asked, ‘Is this a symphony? And if not, what should I call it?’ I answered that I didn't think it was a symphony and that the first half should be called ‘De Profundis’. Dmitri Dmitrievich listened and then still chose to do it his way, which proves the absence of a taste for ‘canonical lines’. And in general, the Fourteenth Symphony is not a ‘Shadowy Mass for the Dead’, but rather a protest against death. These are the words of Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich.

By the way, I wouldn't be too far from the truth if I noted that the theme of death in ‘Malaguena’ on the same note to the words ‘Death entered and left the tavern’ has something in common with the theme of death in my Rekviem, also on the same note, to the words ‘The stars of death stood above us’.

Shostakovich praised Britten's War Requiem. The modesty of his expression is connected with his not liking superlatives, as he was a very great man, and very moderate in his emotions. I never heard from him the words ‘greatest’, ‘genius’, ‘unsurpassed’.

Tchaikovsky: Complete Collected Works [Chaĭkovskiĭ Polnoe Sobranie Sochineniĭ] (Moscow: 1940–71; vols. 2 and 43 also published in Leningrad) (BPL). For the contents of individual volumes, search for ‘Pyotr Tchaikovsky: Complete Collected Works’ on the International Music Score Library Project website: <imslp.org>.

Key

An asterisk indicates that the volume is inscribed with a Musica Rara [25 Newport Court, London W2] or English price marking, so was probably obtained by Britten between 1955 and his first visit to the USSR in 1963. Boldface indicates a volume listed at the rear of Britten's 1963 pocket diary under the heading ‘Tschaikov. Ed vols not got (last one got in 62)’ – i.e. a volume not then in his possession.

Operas

1A (1953)

1B (1953)

1C (1953)

1 (additional volume) (1953) [two copies; one *]

2 (1950)

3A (1959)*

3B (1959)*

4 (1948) [Evgeniĭ Onegin, full score; signed ‘Benjamin Britten’ with corrections by Britten on pp. 152 and 160]

5A (1964)

5B (1964)

6A (1969)

6B (1969)

7A (1951)*

7B (1951)

8A (1948)*

8B (1949)

9A (1950)*

9B (1950)*

9C (1950)

Ballets

11A (1957)

11B (1957)

12A (1952)*

12B (1952)*

12C (1952)*

12D (1952)*

13A (1955)

13B (1955) [minor annotations, possibly by Britten, on p. 81]

Music for Dramatic Productions 14 (1962)*

Full Scores of Works for Orchestra

15A (1957)

15B (1954)*

16A (1949)*

16B (1949)*

17A (1963)*

17B (1963)*

18 (1949)*

19A (1948)*

19B (1948)* [signed ‘Benjamin Britten’; ‘Reves d'enfant’ from Suite No. 2, annotated for performance by Britten (pp. 144–75)]

20 (1946) [signed ‘Benjamin Britten’; Suite No. 4, Mozartiana, annotated for performance by Britten (pp. 224–98)]

21 (1952)

22(1960)

23 (1950) [Romeo and Juliet, 1880 version, annotated for performance by Britten (pp. 89–195)]

24 (1961)*

25 (1961)*

26(1961)

Vocal Works with Orchestra

27 (1960)* [contains an invoice from Musica Rara, dated 9 January 1962, for a subscription to Pears]

Works for Piano with Orchestra

28 (1955)*

29 (1954)

Works for Violin with Orchestra

30A (1949)

London, 16 March 2012

The diplomat Sir John Morgan kcmg (1929–2012) was British Cultural Attache in Moscow, 1962–5.

How did you first encounter Britten in the Soviet Union?

I was first in the Soviet Union as Private Secretary to the Ambassador in 1953: Stalin had died in March and I arrived in October. I subsequently became friends with a number of people prominent in the thaw such as Ilya Erenburg. That word – ottepel [thaw] – became engraved on everybody's hearts. By the time of my second posting to Russia in 1965, the cultural side was generally relaxed. There were some cultural figures who had been told to shut up, but the thaw wasn't just a slogan: it really meant something. It was a very happy two years. In December 1965 I was giving a party for the British students in Moscow in my small flat on Kutuzovskiĭ Prospekt. At that time the British Council had students all over the Soviet Union. It was blowing a blizzard outside. Benjamin Britten was due to arrive with Peter Pears and I thought it would be nice to welcome them, so I battled through the blizzard with a nice lady from the Ministry of Culture [probably Toya Sokolova] who acted as a sort of go-between. Madame Furtseva was more difficult: I'd taken her to see Moses and Aron at Covent Garden earlier in the year and she'd hated every minute of it.

How was Britten regarded in the Soviet Union at this time?

Britten and Pears were universally liked in Moscow. Britten fitted into the Soviet scene with no difficulty at all. His homosexuality was not talked about – that would have been a very un-Russian thing to do. Peter Pears – and you can't talk of Britten in Russia without Pears – was very much the spokesman and the more social of the two. The Russians loved him: they admired his cultural sensibility, intelligence and warmth.

How would you explain Britten's interest in Russia?

As far as I know there was nothing faintly political about it. It was purely cultural. I wasn't aware that Britten admired Tchaikovsky, but he was very fond of Shostakovich and they got on extremely well.

Shostakovich Centre, Paris, 31 March 2009

The Russian literary scholar Irina Antonovna Shostakovich (b. 1934) was the composer's third wife. They married in 1962.

[Interview translated from the Russian]

How would you explain the development of a friendship and creative relationship between Britten and Shostakovich?

It seems to me that it began with a very friendly attitude on the part of Britten to Dmitri Dmitrievich and to his music. This was followed by a mutual interest in their creative work, in each other's music.

At what point did Shostakovich first become aware of Britten's music?

I cannot say now, but I know that in 1962 when we came for the rehearsals of Katerina Izmailova at Covent Garden we were informed that Britten had been very helpful in staging this opera and that he once attended a rehearsal. Maybe somehow via Lord Harewood he assisted in putting this opera on the stage.

Which Britten works did Shostakovich mention in conversation?

Dmitri Dmitrievich knew many works by Britten. He was interested in them and listened to them as soon as they appeared. He would try to listen to every new work, as he was interested in Britten's musical ideas. Dmitri Dmitrievich very much appreciated War Requiem. I also remember that the chamber opera from England came to Moscow and gave Britten's operas at the Stanislavsky Theatre and we attended all their performances.

Shostakovich clearly liked and respected Britten as a person.

Britten was very attractive in his modesty, kindness and full-heartedness.

How far was Shostakovich aware of the difficulties Britten faced in his life on account of his homosexuality?

I cannot answer that. I think that Dmitri Dmitrievich was not interested in it. It was something obviously we did know, but when people like each other and have a good attitude to each other they understand each other more easily.

Britten's creative relationship with Russia can, in the first instance, be placed in the context of the dissemination of Russian culture in the United Kingdom which began in earnest in the second half of the nineteenth century: in this sense, Britten and Pears should be seen as part of a much wider trend. Yet, placed in the musical context of the 1930s, the degree of Britten's admiration for Tchaikovsky was exceptional. The scores in which he appears to make reference to Tchaikovsky's music – notably The Prince of the Pagodas but also smaller-scale works such as the Third Cello Suite – suggest that this composer was the most fully assimilated Russian influence on Britten's music. On the other hand, from Britten's point of view, Tchaikovsky's ‘Russianness’ was always secondary to his melodic invention, refinement and creative temperament, and he seems to have responded to the composer's affinity to Mozart rather than his debt to Glinka. Britten's relationship with Shostakovich represents a more complex phenomenon, and the factors that contributed towards a personal friendship and limited musical convergence in the 1960s, not least Rostropovich's crucial influence and Britten's self-perception as a composer, were not identical to those which had excited his initial interest in Shostakovich's music in 1934–6; nor, by the 1960s, were they entirely related to ‘Russia’. Britten's lack of enthusiasm for Musorgsky is particularly striking in this regard. Although the friendship between Britten and Shostakovich in the 1960s may have particularly fostered creative overlap, at the start of the decade the composers’ musical language and preoccupations were already moving into similar channels; by 1970 the relationship was equally one of admiration, empathy and personal affection. Assertions of direct musical influence, as opposed to similar responses to related themes (such as the topic of death), should therefore be viewed with caution, and one must not discount other, non-Russian, sources of influence – for example Bartok – on each composer's ‘late style’.

That Britten engaged with such a towering twentieth-century musical phenomenon as Igor Stravinsky is hardly surprising. Even Cecil Gray, whose A Survey of Contemporary Music Britten read with enthusiasm in 1932, prefaced a by no means positive assessment of Stravinsky's music with the observation that:

By 1930 most commentators on the composer concurred with the related viewpoint that ‘there are very few composers who have not fallen under the influence of this powerful … creative art … With his mighty and masterful hand he has frequently turned the course of his creative art and together with it turned the whole musical world.’ Stravinsky was thus the sole Russian highlighted in the first symposium on Britten's music, in 1952, as a significant assimilated influence in terms of instrumental technique, orchestral texture and rhythm. The connection was seen in terms of an obvious corollary between ‘Britten's own search for a European stylisation and Strawinsky's patent and potent Europeanism’, coupled with the ‘extraordinarily powerful appeal to Britten's imagination’ of the composer's ‘essentially extrovert personality’. A greater appreciation of Britten's earlier works would now lead one to make a more nuanced assessment, recognising that powerful external influences such as this tended to reflect and develop existing features of his musical language, such as his acute appreciation of individual timbres and preference for a clear orchestral texture. Moreover, in a discussion of the wider Russian influences on Britten there is something of an irony in that Stravinsky spent Britten's entire creative life in exile from Russia, and that his personal relationship with Britten had conspicuously deteriorated by the 1960s. Given that the musical influence of Stravinsky on Britten has received the most consistent attention of all his Russian connections, particularly in Peter Evans's landmark study of 1979, it is more illuminating in this case to consider why the relationship between the two composers took the unpredictable and ambiguous form it did, both personally and musically.

8 September 2010

Oleg Vinogradov (b. 1937) choreographed The Prince of the Pagodas for the 1972–3 season of the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad.

[Interview conducted by telephone and translated from the Russian]

What would you say about the music and scenario of The Prince of the Pagodas, particularly in the light of their relationship to Russian ballet?

I am absolutely delighted with the ballet's music. I loved it then and I still love it today. It is simply beautiful. But the dramatic basis of the work, its scenario, did not correspond to the norms and forms of Classical ballet. The script is overburdened with plot lines, situations and characters. This is especially relevant in Act I. But we could not shorten Britten's work. In choreography, however, there are specific rules. For example, variations can last between one and three minutes, but by no means five. The same is true about corps de ballet parts. None of these rules is followed in the work. I do not know if Britten wrote the ballet together with a choreographer, but if he had, the choreographer would have advised him. If we take Tchaikovsky, for instance, the musical plans which he received from Marius Petipa contained detailed chronometric study of every number, specified by seconds, minutes and musical examples. The performances which they created together stand out by their absolute harmony.

As for Stravinsky, he composed short ballets, there's nothing to shorten there. Britten's is a huge ballet and the audience in England was not ready for such a massive stage work. In Russia, however, there exists a tradition of long ballets in three to four acts. But the tendency is to reduce the length. It started quite a while ago and continues today. Prokofiev was well aware of this tendency; he tended to take into account the peculiarities of the ballet genre. He would work with a choreographer and pay attention to time requirements. But today even Prokofiev's ballets, as well as those by Tchaikovsky and Glazunov, are reduced. Three acts is a long time today, the time in which one can fly to London.

Harewood House, Leeds, 13 March 2009

George Lascelles, Earl of Harewood (1923–2011) had an important role in promoting opera in the United Kingdom. For a summary of his association with Britten, which, it should be noted, ended in mid-1964, see BBLL 3, p. 475.

Britten's creative relationship with Russia is unusual for an English composer. How would you explain it?

Ben's initial feeling over Russia in the mid-1930s was instinctive, because he was instinctively a rebel, and at that time we were not on good terms with Russia. He also felt that the Russians treated musicians – particularly composers but probably other creative artists as well – rather better than we treated them over here, and I think that impressed him.

Why did Britten admire Tchaikovsky?

I don't know when this started or how. I do remember taking him for the first time to see Eugene Onegin [in Zurich in 1952] and his enthusiastic reaction to it. Ben admired Tchaikovsky because he thought the music marvellous. He was very particular in the music he liked and didn't like. He didn't like Brahms and said, ‘I need not be right, but I'm entitled to say it because I think I know every note that Brahms wrote.’ The later relevance over The Prince of the Pagodas is a more specific one. Ben said that Tchaikovsky was so professional amongst other things that the actual lengths of Tchaikovsky's ballets for dancers would be accurate. It was very important for him to get an idea from a composer, as opposed to a choreographer, of these lengths.

Was Britten's aversion to Musorgsky a reflection of a suspicion of musical nationalism?

He certainly knew Musorgsky's music, but wasn't enthusiastic about it and I don't think he was particularly interested. I don't think he ever made a judgement without having the knowledge to back it up. He knew an awful lot of music and had such a powerful musical personality himself that he could become familiar with a piece of music, and know more about it, as he was a great composer himself, than other people who had known it much longer.

London, 24 September 2009

The diplomat Alan Brooke Turner cmg (1926–2013) was British Cultural Attache in Moscow, 1962–5.

What was the context of Britten's first visit to the Soviet Union?

Much, but not everything, changed when Khrushchev came to power in the aftermath of Stalin's death. To people living in the Soviet Union this was perhaps the first moment when they could feel that, after the appalling privations and sacrifices of the Second World War, they could hope for a peaceful development of East–West relations. The arrival of foreign orchestras, musicians, actors and, rather more rarely, foreign films in Moscow and Leningrad began to create the sense that the selfimposed isolation of the Soviet Union from the cultural life of the Western world was coming to an end. The guardians of Communist orthodoxy, by accepting in the Soviet Union the best of what Western culture had to offer, had shown to the public, and especially the intelligentsia, that in these areas, contacts with the West were acceptable. Before I had arrived in the Soviet Union, the Royal Ballet had paid a triumphantly successful visit; and during my three-and-a-half years as Cultural Attache there were visits by the Royal Shakespeare Theatre (with Paul Schofield playing King Lear) and the National Theatre (with Laurence Olivier playing Othello), as well as great companies from other countries, such as the Komische Oper from Berlin. All these performances were immensely popular; people not only stood for hours in hopes of obtaining a returned ticket, but even attempted to gain entry to concert halls and theatres by crawling up the ventilation shafts.

But for me, the two most memorable events were a performance of Bach's Mass in B Minor in the Great Hall of the Conservatory in Moscow by the Robert Shaw Chorale from the United States. At the end of the performance I noticed that many people in the audience, especially the elderly, were weeping. It dawned on me that because of the campaign against the Church, which was still being continued, this was the first occasion many would have had to hear this great work. The other event was the return of Stravinsky to Moscow in 1962.

The Poet's Echo

Britten's song cycle The Poet's Echo, a setting of six poems by Pushkin (1799–1836), was composed in August 1965 at the Composers’ Colony for Creative Work in Dilizhan, a spa town about 60 miles north of the Armenian capital. The work has been seen as the most obvious expression of Britten's Russian affinities and provides further evidence of his remarkable sensitivity to language, even language of which his formal understanding remained rudimentary. The explicit ‘Russianness’ of the work is exceptional both in terms of his own output (his only other setting of Russian poetry was a three-line translated extract of Yevtushenko's ‘Lies’ in Voices to Today, also composed in 1965) and that of all other English composers up to that point with an interest in Russian music. Narratives of its genesis, shaped largely by Pears's vivid diary of their visit to Armenia, have tended to emphasise these features, together with the spontaneity of the work's composition in Dilizhan's idyllically beautiful natural landscape and the unanimously warm reception it received from its first Russian listeners. Yet Britten's setting of Pushkin can also be seen as a more calculated gesture, representing his response to the creative challenge of producing an authentic and highly condensed gesture of homage to Russia's greatest poet in a language with which he was unfamiliar, coupled with an intimate expression of some of the preoccupations at the heart of his creative personality.

Britten was already considering a Russian vocal setting for Vishnevskaya by 1963, two years ahead of his Armenian visit, but the first documentary reference to setting Pushkin comes instead from Boosey & Hawkes, when Rufina Ampenoff wrote: ‘Your interest in setting some Russian poetry to music is very much in my mind and I have ordered a selection of Pushkin poems in Russian with an English translation. I have also ordered a collection of poems by Evtoushenko.