This is one of the earliest of Shostakovich's nearly 50 scores for Soviet sound films. He had successfully composed a silent movie score of rather modernist quality for The New Babylon and had shown his ability and imagination in 1931 with the film Alone, including a hit song called "How beautiful life will be."

As congenial as that project must have been to the composer (evidenced by the 18 full-scale numbers he wrote for it) Sergei Yutkevich and Friedrich Ermler's film The Counterplan (also known as "The Passer-by") must have been correspondingly disgusting to him. The plot of this propaganda film involves an effort to catch "wreckers" at work in a Soviet factory. He seems to have written only three brief orchestral numbers and two songs, one for solo voice and the other for female choir.

Shostakovich, of course, had no choice but to work on the films to which he was assigned. This was doubly true since Ermler was a career officer in the dreaded Cheka (which would later become the NKVD and then KGB).

A "wrecker" was an antisocial wretch, of which Soviet society was said to be infested in large numbers. Having liberated themselves and gained an ownership share in their factories and farms, these citizens were said to be devoted to the idea of taking food from their own mouths by sabotaging equipment and even causing injurious accidents. The campaign against them served Stalin's purpose in three ways. First, it explained failures to meet planned production levels and therefore continued privation. Second, it justified harsh repression and show trials. Finally, it gave a reason to urge all citizens to be vigilant and report dissenters and nonconformists to the authorities, fostering terror and paranoia.

For this film Shostakovich added music only to the happier, upbeat scenes. Absent are the modern harmonies of this period and the dark mood of much of his independent art music. He shows a nearly Tchaikovskian melodic gift and a warm, radiant style of orchestration. And one piece became his best-known music, "The Song of Meeting." This theme, which Shostakovich used in other film scores, where it never failed to bring down the house, so penetrated Russian consciousness that it is as ubiquitous there as "Happy Birthday to You," and, similarly, it surprises people (even in Russia) that it not only has a composer, but that the composer is Shostakovich. It became a hit in the United States in 1942, with English lyrics by Harold Rome, under the title "The United Nations" (which was then a term for the Allied powers fighting with the U.S. against Hitler, including Russia). In 1943 it was included, with some words changed, in a highly popular patriotic musical from MGM called Thousands Cheer, with Gene Kelly heading an all-star cast.

Recording projects at the end of the twentieth century began to focus attention on this and other products of Shostakovich's film career. Arrangements of this score are excellent candidates for pops and light music concerts.



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