#sollertinsky

during the siege of leningrad, shostakovich and sollertinsky couldn't meet up because shosty was stuck where he was (he refused to leave his home town until the very last minute).

Letters from Shostakovich to Sollertinsky:

Often at night, suffering from insomnia, I begin to weep. Nina and the children sleep in the other room so I don't disturb them. I often think of you and can't do without your company.

I miss you terribly [...] your company is as essential for me as the air I breathe [...] each day I dream I will soon come to Novosibirsk and we will see each other after almost a year's separation.

from 1941 to 1943 shostakovich stayed in leningrad until the Red Army cleared a land corridor for them to escape. So they had renewed hope of meeting again, and life might go on as usual, even with the war, as long as the two friends were together.

No. In the beginning of 1944 Sollertinsky suffered a heart attack and passed away. The last time they met were for a brief while in a train station in 1943, when they thought that they would finally be reunited, away from the throes of the war.

My god. what would shostakovich have felt then? To lose such a dear friend, in the midst of a lengthy, dreadful war. Shostakovich had been composing the second piano trio then, and finished it late in 1944. He dedicated it to Sollertinsky. Such human grief can be heard in that piece! I can't even begin to describe it but I really hold this piece in reverence. The first movement opens with difficult cello harmonics and is dissonant. The second movement has a playful character that stands in stark contrast to the rest of the piece. I can't figure out what this might mean! Perhaps it's like a person dancing closer and closer to the edge of delirium. Idk really.

the third movement opens with some heavy slow chords on the piano, again in contrast to the previous movement's allegro, and the specific markings of marcatissimo and pesante. There's some other stuff that's too deep for my less than satisfactory music theory to do it justice, something about most of the piano parts in this mvmt being chords symbolising grief blah yada yada. And lastly there's the fourth movement with its infamous jewish theme. F# G C C C Then suddenly the theme from the first movement hits you again and you're overpowered by such violent sorrow. Ouhuhhh. Ughhh., WAAAAAHHH

Pictured above is Dmitri Shostakovich with his best friend, Ivan Ivanovich Sollertinsky. The two of them met invariably in the years preceding, but struck up a friendship after hitting it off at a party of a mutual friend in 1927. The extroverted Sollertinsky paired well with the rather inward-facing Shostakovich. In particular, Shostakovich was taken by his witty, merry, and "entirely down-to-earth" personality. Sollertinsky was himself quite the scholar: he studied ballet, music, linguistics (he also spoke 26 languages), and philosophy, to name a few.

Sollertinsky, as well, was fiercely loyal to Shostakovich, as proven during the fallout in the wake of Muddle Instead of Music (an article published in January 1936 which dragged Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk through the mud, resulting in much professional and personal turmoil for the composer). While many colleagues and indeed even friends were quick to jump on the Shostakovich-slandering bandwagon, Sollertinsky refused to do so, despite the harm it could have, and indeed did, cause his own career. Sollertinsky admired his friend so much that he broke a familial tradition of naming their firstborn sons "Ivan", and instead named his firstborn son "Dmitri".

The Second World War got in the way of their friendship, however. In June 1941, Nazi Germany broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact and invaded the otherwise neutral Soviet Union. The Wehrmacht set their sights on Leningrad very early on, and by August, had nearly fully encircled the city. Sollertinsky was evacuated with the staff of the Leningrad Philharmonia on August 22nd, and Shostakovich was at the train station to see him off. Sollertinsky was evacuated to Novosibirsk, while Shostakovich was evacuated to Kuibyshev later that year. The two kept up their communications via letter (as they had over the past seventeen years), and in 1944 were giddy at the possibility of both living in the same city again (Shostakovich had, at that point, been moved by the government from Kuibyshev to Moscow). However their excitement was short-lived, as soon after returning to Novosibirsk after visiting Moscow, Sollertinsky died of heart complications on February 11th, 1944.

His death left Shostakovich heartbroken, and one that he never truly got over. He would still talk fondly about his friend Ivan Ivanovich Sollertinsky to his friends, family, and colleagues well into the 1970s.

Ivan Ivanovich Sollertinsky, born December 3rd 1902, Vitebsk, Belarus, was a Soviet Polymath. Sollertinsky was an expert in theatre and languages but he is best known for his musical accomplishments: work in music field as a critic and musicologist. He was a professor at the Leningrad Conservatory and the Artistic director of the Leningrad Philharmonic. During these times he was an enthusiast and advocated Mahler’s music in the USSR. Sollertinsky had exceptional memory according to his coetaneous’; he was able to speak 32 languages, some of which were dialects.

After moving from Vitebsk to Leningrad, he graduated from Leningrad University with a degree in Romano-Germanic philology. In 1927, he became close friends with Shostakovich, and is known for introducing him to the works of Mahler that greatly impacted his style of composing and some of his compositions. Examples being his opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and his 4th symphony. Shostakovich wrote letters to Sollertinsky; letters date from early 1927- the 4 few days following Sollertinsky’s premature death in Novosibirsk.

In 1936, Shostakovich faced his first denunciation for the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Pravda launched a series of attacks calling it “Muddle instead of Music.” Sollertinsky greatly supported the opera and even wrote that it was an “enormous contribution to Soviet musical culture” in 1934 for a review in “Workers and Theatres”. However, in Pravda, he was termed as “The troubadour of formalism”. After the denunciation, criticism grew on the opera which resulted in accumulating pressure on Sollertinsky to withdraw his previous statements. However, he did not do so until Shostakovich told him to, fearing for the safety of Sollertinsky.

Sollertinsky contracted diphtheria in 1938 which temporarily paralysed his arms, legs and jaw. During this time, he married his third wife Olga Pantaleimonovna. He fathered a son with her, whom he named Dmitri Ivanovich, after Shostakovich: this broke the generation-long tradition where the son would have their first name as Ivan. During the 4 months in which he was hospitalised, Sollertinsky studied Hungarian. Soon after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Sollertinsky evacuated from Leningrad to Novosibirsk. In Novosibirsk, he engaged himself in a number of creative works, give lectures and speeches and to attend other cultural/artistic events. Even though him and Shostakovich didn’t see each other frequently during the war years, the Soviet composer, Vissarion Shebalin arranged for Sollertinsky to teach a course of music history at Moscow Conservatory. This was where Shostakovich was living at the time. Sollertinsky stayed in Moscow briefly to give a speech upon the death of Tchaikovsky in 1934. After, he moved back to Novosibirsk in the same year, there he gave a speech upon the premiere of Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony. This would be the last speech he would give before his death.

Doubts over the cause of Sollertinsky’s death persist to this day: according to a Wikipedia article, “On the night of February 10, 1944, Sollertinsky, feeling unwell, stayed at the house of the conductor A.P. Novikov. He died in his sleep at the age of 41”. The Russian newspapers say he died of a heart illness but rumours spoke of his having been murdered by the NKVD. Shostakovich expressed a heartfelt and touching message portraying his feelings for his dear friend:

“I cannot express in words all the grief I felt when I received the news of the death of Ivan Ivanovich. Ivan Ivanovich was my closest and dearest friend. I owe all my education to him. It will be unbelievably hard for me to live without him.”

Shostakovich dedicated his Second Piano Trio to the memory of Sollertinsky. He started this in 1943 and completed it within the following year in August. It was premiered on 14th November 1944. Sollertinsky’s death greatly impacted Shostakovich, he struggled with composing and fell into depression in the following months. One time the composer said that “It seems to me that I will never be able to compose another note again.” He was awarded the Stalin prize for the trio.

The relationship between Shostakovich and Sollertinsky was exceptional and heart warming. The two were inseparable and were always there for each other in times of need and to comfort one another. Sollertinsky was indeed an important and influential aspect of Shostakovich’s life.