The Suite for Variety Orchestra No. 1 is a suite in eight movements arranged by Levon Atovmyan after 1956, based on music by Dmitri Shostakovich. An editorial error in the tenth volume of the Shostakovich collected works edition published by Muzyka in 1984 resulted in the Suite for Variety Orchestra No. 1 being misidentified as the “Suite for Jazz Orchestra No. 2” or “Jazz Suite No. 2”. The score was first published with the correct name in 2001. Atovmyan, who arranged and assembled the suite, was a close friend of Shostakovich, and was regularly tasked with arranging concert suites of his film music. He also made numerous other transcriptions and arrangements, often without the composer’s involvement and only his tacit approval. The Suite for Variety Orchestra No. 1 includes arrangements of excerpts from Shostakovich’s ballet, theatre, and film music. It has not been precisely dated, but is believed to have been composed after 1956.
No manuscript score of the Suite for Variety Orchestra No. 1 exists in Shostakovich’s hand. Its instrumentation, movement arrangement, and generic titling of movements also do not correspond with Shostakovich’s style. No precise date for the suite’s composition can be ascertained, but it is believed to have been composed in the late 1950s, some time after 1956 The unusual scoring, which includes three sections of violins and two pianos, suggests that the suite may have been assembled for a specific ensemble.
The Suite for Variety Orchestra No. 1 consists of eight movements:
- March (Giocoso. Alla marcia)
- Dance I (Presto)
- Dance II (Allegretto scherzando—Poco meno mosso—Tempo I)
- Little Polka (Allegretto)
- Lyrical Waltz (Allegretto)
- Waltz I (Sostenuto—Tempo di valse—Poco più mosso)
- Waltz II (Allegretto poco moderato)
- Finale (Allegro moderato)
Each of the suite’s movements is arranged from Shostakovich’s scores for the ballet, theatre, and cinema. The first and last movements are based on the “March” from the 1940 comedy film Adventures of Korzinkina, the “Waltz I” is an arrangement of a cue that had been cut from the film. “Dance I” is based on the “Marketplace” cue from the 1955 film The Gadfly, which is alternatively known as “National Holiday” in Atovmyan’s concert suite of the film music. “Dance 2” is an arrangement of the “Invitation to a Rendezvous” number from The Limpid Stream, itself an arrangement of the number “Pantomime and Dance of a Priest” from The Bolt. The “Little Polka”, “Lyrical Waltz”, and “Waltz II” are arrangements of cues composed for the soundtrack to The First Echelon; the first two cues had been discarded from the final version of the film score. A typical performance of the Suite for Variety Orchestra No. 1 lasts approximately 20 minutes.
The first documented performance took place on December 1, 1988, at the Barbican Hall, played by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mstislav Rostropovich. The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Riccardo Chailly made a successful recording of the suite in 1991. In 1994, André Rieu released a recording of the suite’s “Waltz II” that broke into the top 5 of the Dutch Mega Top 50 and sold over 50,000 copies. It was later included in the soundtrack to Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. Nicholas Kenyon in his review of the Suite for Variety Orchestra No. 1’s premiere for The Observer wrote that the music was “Shostakovich at his most unbuttoned and jovial”: He also called the work “fairly cynical pieces of writing-to-order”.
