“The Meeting on the Elbe”. Music to the Film
Opus 80
1948 year
premiere:
16-March-1949
"Mosfilm" studios. Scriptwriters: Brothers Tur and L. Sheinin. Director: G. Alexandrov.
first publication:
1949, "Muzgiz" Publishers, Moscow.
manuscripts:
Russian State Archive for Literature and Art (Stack 2048, Inv. 1, Item 40). Hand-written score in the RNMM (Stack 32, Item 100).
Dmitri Shostakovich’s music to the film
The Meeting on the Elbe
The film The Meeting on the Elbe, made in 1948-1949 at the Mosfilm studio, begins a period in Shostakovich’s work when, following the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) on the opera The Great Friendship by Vano Muradeli, he participated in three propaganda films: in addition to The Meeting on the Elbe directed by Grigory Aleksandrov, he also composed music to two films by Mikhail Chiaureli—The Fall of Berlin (1950) and The Unforgettable Year 1919 (1952).
Shostakovich was invited to work on The Meeting on the Elbe at the end of September 1948. Beginning from the second half of October, he travelled to Mosfilm many times to view the footage and meet with Aleksandr Tsfasman, Nadezhda Obukhova and Raisa Lukina. Composition of the music lasted for more than two months, from mid-October to almost the end of 1948.
On 3 March 1949, the film was shown to cinematographers at the Moscow House of Cinema, and on 16 March, the film was released.
Shostakovich’s music for The Meeting on the Elbe was described by the official music critics as a demonstration of his “creative revival” under the influence of the 1948 decree. Tikhon Khrennikov wrote the following about it: “The historic decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on the opera The Great Friendship had a favourable influence on the composer’s work. First of all, we should note Dmitri Shostakovich’s significant progress in democratising music language and intensifying the emotional content.”
The film The Meeting on the Elbe enjoyed tremendous success and received high official praise: in 1949, several of its creators were awarded the Stalin Prize, First Class. In 1949, in Czechoslovakia, the film won the Labour Prize at the 2nd International Workers’ Festival in Gottwaldov and at the 4th International Festival in Mariánské Lázně.
In the mid-1960s, the film The Meeting on the Elbe was restored at the Mosfilm studio (Tamara Lisitsian supervised the restoration). Some episodes were rearranged and rerecorded. Today, the film can only be seen in this revised form.