Volochayevka Days

Score for the film by Georgi Vasiliev and Sergei Vasiliev.


Shostakovich composed his score for ‘Volochayev Days’ at a very difficult time, around the same period as he was working on the 5th Symphony and when he was still under deep official suspicion, in the wake of his public condemnation in the newspaper Pravda, early in 1936. The film, directed by the ‘Vasiliev brothers’ (who were not in fact brothers but simply shared the same surname), was based on an story of Soviet patriotism and heroism against overwhelming enemy odds. It is set in the Far East during the Russian Civil War immediately after the 1917 Revolution, when Bolshevik partisans found themselves struggling to defend their new country against a Japanese invasion.


Shostakovich wrote his own patriotic song for this score, the Song of the Partisans, and also quoted many already well-known patriotic songs by earlier composers, as well as adaptations of Russian folk songs. A short suite is available for performance, consisting of an overture based on ‘The Song of the Partisans’, two contrasted battle scenes follow, and a finale which is a setting of another patriotic song, for men’s chorus and full orchestra.


Note by Gerard McBurney