In the final years of Stalin's reign, Shostakovich turned out gigantic choral-orchestral hymns to the wisest of the wise with terrible regularity. There was the awful Song of the Forests in 1949, the Ten Poems on Texts by Revolutionary Poets in 1951, and, perhaps worst of all, The Sun Shines on Our Motherland in 1952. Setting a text by Soviet poet laureate Evgeni Dolmatovsky, Shostakovich's cantata is scored for mixed chorus, boys' chorus, large symphony orchestra, and an added brass band of trumpets and trombones. Dolmatovsky, who had also provided the insipid text for The Song of the Forests, outdid himself with platitudes of The Sun Shines on Our Motherland, the sun of the title being the symbol of the Communist Party leading Russia forward into the future. The work is in essentially three sections: a lyrical opening for boys' chorus, a faster central section for men's chorus, and a concluding hymn for everyone. When the work was premiered for the 35th anniversary of the October Revolution, Aram Khachaturian called it "the apotheosis of a major triad" (Shostakovich, A Life, Laurel Fay, page 183). In retrospect, Khachaturian was kind.

© James Leonard, All Music Guide