Suites from the Opera "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District". Scores.

Throughout his entire creative life, Shostakovich compiled suites (or authorised those compiled with other musicians) based on the music he wrote for films, plays, and operas and ballets, ranging from the opera The Nose, Op. 15 (1928), to his last film music at the end of the 1960s.

Suite from the Opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. op. 29a

Orchestra:

Piccolo, 2 Flauti, 2 Oboi, Corno inglese (F), Clarinetto piccolo (Es), 2 Clarinetti (B), Clarinetto basso (B), 2 Fagotti, Contrafagotto
4 Corni (F), 3 Trombe (B), 3 Tromboni, Tuba
Timpani, Triangolo, Legno, Tamburo, Piatti, Cassa, Tam-tam
Silofono, 2 Arpe
BANDA: Cornetti (Es), Cornetti (B), Trombe (B), Alti (Es), Tenori (B), Baritoni (B), Bassi (Tube)
Violini I, Violini II, Viole, Violoncelli, Contrabassi

At the end of 1932, probably after the opera score was finished (it was completed on 17 December), Shostakovich compiled the symphonic Suite (written in ternary form) from the opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. The manuscript copy of the suite was kept in the Library of the USSR Music Foundation. The suite of 1932 comprises three interludes, the Interlude between scenes two and three, the Interlude between scenes seven and eight, and the Interlude between scenes six and seven (thus the last two interludes of the opera were transposed). The movements of the Suite are not named this way. It is clear from the state of the manuscript that it was used many times, but we do not have any specific information on the performance of the Suite. It is obvious that the dramatic fate of the opera as a whole had an effect on destiny of the suite. The opera first made a triumphal tour of the whole world and was then banned and removed from musical life for quarter of a century.

Five interludes from the Opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (Katerina Izmailova). op. 29/114a

Orchestra:

Piccolo, 2 Flauti, 2 Oboi, Corno inglese (F), Clarinetto piccolo (Es), 2 Clarinetti (B), Clarinetto basso (B), 2 Fagotti, Contrafagotto
4 Corni (F), 3 Trombe (B), 3 Tromboni, Tuba
Timpani, Triangolo, Legno, Tamburo, Piatti, Cassa, Tam-tam
Silofono, 2 Arpe
BANDA: Cornetti (Es), Cornetti (B), Trombe (B), Alti (Es), Tenori (B), Baritoni (B), Bassi (Tube)
Violini I, Violini II, Viole, Violoncelli, Contrabassi

The new suite from the opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District/Katerina Izmailova, Op. 29/114(a), appeared in the form of an independent orchestral composition after a new version of the opera was prepared in 1956. It is possible that in order to distinguish this work from the Suite in ternary form of 1932 and from the attempts of other composers, the composer called the cycle “interludes” rather than “suite”. When preparing Five Interludes as an independent orchestral work, Shostakovich introduced many changes into the score relating to new combinations of the interludes, not within the framework of the opera performance, but within a single symphonic cycle, as well as to the way they sounded on the stage of the concert hall, and not in the orchestra pit.

It is known that after the premiere of the second version of the opera, the composer made a number of changes to the opera score, dating completion of the work 31 January 1963. In the same way, after several concert performances of Five Interludes, Shostakovich came back to this composition and made several new changes to it. The most significant of them was to eliminate the elaborate xylophone part from the Interlude between scenes two and three.

Interlude between Scenes 6 and 7 from the Opera Katerina Izmailova (concert version). op. 114b

Orchestra:

Piccolo, 2 Flauti, 2 Oboi, Corno inglese (F), Clarinetto piccolo (Es), 2 Clarinetti (B), Clarinetto basso (B), 2 Fagotti, Contrafagotto
4 Corni (F), Tromba piccolo (B), 3 Trombe (B), 3 Tromboni, Tuba
Timpani, Tamburo, Piatti, Tam-tam
Silofono
Violini I, Violini II, Viole, Violoncelli, Contrabassi

In the mid-1960s, at the request of Maxim Shostakovich, the composer wrote a new orchestral version of the Interlude between scenes six and seven, which was meant to be performed as an independent concert number (for encore), by eliminating the brass band from the score, introducing a piccolo trumpet into the orchestra and radically editing the instrumentation (for example, in the initial bars of this version only the strings are heard instead of the tutti in Five Interludes). The fair author’s manuscript of this score is kept in the Dmitri Shostakovich Archives.

This volume of the New Collected Works contains the Suite, Op. 29(a), Five Interludes in its final version (1963), and the Interlude between scenes six and seven in the author’s concert version without the brass band. The differences between the 1956 and 1963 versions of Five Interludes are few but significant, therefore the first version is not only of scientific-historical, but also of artistic interest.

All scores are being published for the first time.

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, Mstislav Rostropovich and Maxim Shostakovich for their assistance and valuable advice in preparing this volume for publication.