The Counterplan: Three Orchestral Fragments

Score for the film by Fridrikh Ermler and Sergei Yutkevich.





Despite its primitive propaganda message, ‘The Counterplan’, a cheery and romantic tale of the heroic efforts of young workers in a Soviet turbine factory in the years of the first Five-Year Plan, produced one of Shostakovich’s brightest and most popular scores, filled with the simple dancing rhythms and easily memorable tunes so much loved by the broad film-going public all over the world before the Second World War. The film was directed by the talented team of Friedrich Ermler and Sergei Yutkevich.


The principal tune, the film’s title-song called ‘The Song of the Counterplan’, really did go all over the world, being arranged by Stokowski, used in American musicals, sung in the 1940s as ‘The United Nations March’, played in brass-bands in the North of England and even used in Swiss registry offices as a wedding march for young couples.


A three-movement suite exists, culled from the often fragmentary complete score. A first movement abounds in good tunes. The slow movement is one of the soupiest and most romantic slow wallows this composer ever penned. And the finale is a series of cheerful variations on ‘The Song of the Counterplan’ itself. This is music to delight the innocent ear.


Note by Gerard McBurney