Shostakovich's "Tahiti Trot" [by Lewis Saul]

SHOSTAKOVICH, Dmitri (1906-1975)

Tahiti Trot (1928)
Staatsoper Berlin
Daniel Barenboim, cond.
(4:08)

Vincent Youmans composed Tea for Two for his musical No, No, Nanette in 1927.

 

Shostakovich and his friend, the conductor Nicolai Malko, recalled hearing the tune in '27 at the Meyerhold Theatre in Moscow in a play called Roar, China. In one of the scenes some Americans on a ship are dancing to the tune, which Malko recalled as being named Tahiti Trot. (It was -- of course -- Tea for Two.)

At some point before October, Malko jokingly suggested to Shostakovich that he should orchestrate Tea for Two and proposed a bet:

"If you, Mitenka, are as brilliant as they all say, then please go into the next room, write that song down from memory, orchestrate it, and I will play it. I will give you an hour to do this."

 

It only took Dmitri 45 minutes, and he dedicated the score to Malko as a "token of his best feelings."

The premiere at the Moscow Conservatory was on November 25, 1928. Then came the problems.

The Central Committee of the CPSU, People's Commissar of Education Anatol Lunacharsky said that no task was more urgent for Soviet culture than to rebuke the "aggressive, jazzy syncopations of the foxtrot."

 

"The bourgeoisie would like man to live not so much by his head as by his sexual organs. The fundamental element of the foxtrot derives from mechanization, suppressed eroticism, and a desire to deaden feeling through drugs. We do not need that kind of music."

Just-Say-No Anatol

 

By 1930, Shostakovich was furiously spinning his wheels repudiating the stupid thing. Letting Malko perform it had been a "political mistake." He had meant it as a movement for The Golden Age (1930, not likely) -- a satirical take on such music (it was censored anyways), and he kinda blamed Malko for the fiasco. [Nobody ever said Dmitri was perfect!]

The score was withdrawn and quickly forgotten until Gennady Rozhdestvensky  reconstructed it in 1984.

Comments

[Peter Frank]

So this wasn't where Shostakovitch˙ - or Lunacharsky, or Prokofiev, or Tahiti Trotsky -- argued that jazz, sourced in the culture of the African-American, was an expression of resistance to the oppressor?

[Lewis Saul]

Peter Frank: After '34, Shosty tried hard not to ever argue with anything Stalin said. As for DS, an examination of his work quickly evinces his true love of jazz.

btw, I just came across a CD_ROM entitled "The Travelogues" by one Peter Frank. I think we might have met in Paris.

In any case, I thoroughly enjoyed your work.

LS