14, ‘To October’, View fugueforthought’s profile on Facebook, View fugueforthought’s profile on Twitter, Lisa Casal-Galietta: A (Red) Door to Classical Music, Follow Fugue for Thought on WordPress.com, Beethoven Piano Sonata no. ‘I am in a terrible mood,’ he continued. Wiki says: Though Shostakovich had been commissioned by Muzsektor rather than Agitotdel, and was thus expected to produce a composition of abstract music instead of a propaganda piece, writing a short agitprop symphony seemed to solve all of Shostakovich’s problems. performed by the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and Chorus under Neeme Järvi, or as below with the WDR Radio Chorus and WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne under Rudolf Barshai. But the style was about to change. He was born Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich on September 25, 1906, in St. Petersburg, Russia. 2 Seattle Symphony Judith Fong Conductor Emeritus Ludovic Morlot conducts the Seattle Symphony in music by Caroline Shaw, Shostakovich and Beethoven featuring cellist Alisa Weilerstein on Thursday, November 12, 2020 at 7:30pm on Seattle Symphony Live . ( Log Out /  This was considered Klangflächenmusik (cluster composition) before the term was officially coined. Wikipedia tells us that it is “meditative” and that Shostakovich described it as “the “death of a child” (letter to Boleslav Yavorsky) killed on the Nevsky Prospekt.”. 2 in G Major, Op. October, the Commune and Lenin. But for Shostakovich, it need not have been a question of one or the other. That’s okay, though: there’s the first, symphonies 5-8, the less gargantuan ninth, followed then by the incredible tenth and eleventh… and four more. The piece was written as a birthday present for Shostakovich’s nineteen-year-old son Maxim – himself an accomplished pianist. Possibly because of this, the authorities insisted on the commission concluding with a text by the Komsomol poet Aleksander Bezymensk, straightforward propaganda describing the hopeless conditions faced by workers before the Revolution and the heroism of Lenin in solving all their problems. It’s marked largo, and the first real utterance of any kind, out of this jumble of sound, comes from the brass, in the form of more low growls, and eventually a trumpet solo. Concerto No. It is unremittingly tragic, and not so much about 1905 or 1956, perhaps, as about the persistently tragic pattern in human events. The symphony opens with a virtuosic brilliance heavily influenced by Stravinsky’s Petrushka. Shostakovich himself called the première his ‘second birth’. All this darkness suffocates me. Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his Symphony No. ( Log Out /  5 at our European Tour Preview Concerts with Hilary Hahn on February 23, 24 & 25. Solomon Volkov, of the second symphony’s finale. How ironic if Stalin’s lifelong attempts to fetter his composer prodigy might actually have been the stimulus behind Shostakovich becoming the exceptional musical voice for the realities of the Soviet Union in the twentieth century. As an added bonus, Maestro Litton is the piano soloist for the Piano Concerto No. The upbeat nature of the two scherzos should sound hollow, the phoney heartlessness of large groups of people. Initially proud of these works, Shostakovich proclaimed them to be failures in the 1950s. The memoirist Ilya Ehrenburg has written of ‘a generation without tears, callous, a stranger to tender passion and to art’. Still, for me it stands as a fascinating glimpse of the composer who might have been but for the Lady Macbeth debacle, etc. And yet, despite suffering from malnutrition and tuberculosis, there are also stories of him losing his job for laughing too much at the Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin films he was employed to accompany. Composed at the age of 18, Shostakovich’s First Symphony was written to fulfill the graduation requirements of the Leningrad Conservatory (earning him the equivalent of a college music degree), and would take the international music world by storm the following year. Everything old was rejected, the individual was becoming depersonalised. 2, Op. 8 in Cm, op. Symphony No. Symphony No.   In the Sixth Symphony, Shostakovich wanted to express an illogical and contradictory world and so chose a form that is both those things. It is not obvious whether this embarrassment was musical or political, but in Shostakovich’s case, the two were normally connected. It’s a reminder that this work was commissioned, or as the case may be, demanded, from the composer by Shuglin, and the interesting circumstances he was in, wanting to compose something new, and being saddled with this patriotic idea. Doubts and problems. 14 no. Bolshevik (1920), by Boris Kustodiev.. Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his Symphony No. Shostakovich Symphony No.5 London Symphony Orchestra & Maxim Shostakovich Shostakovich: Symphony No. The composer’s next major work was his Symphony No. Cellist/conductor Mstislav Rostropovich, who knew Shostakovich well, took a more universal approach when he said the Eleventh is “a symphony written in blood, a truly tragic work. If we think about it more like a Strauss tone poem than a Shostakovich symphony, maybe it’ll seem more convincing. 9 thoughts on “ Seeking Shostakovich: Listening to the Tenth Symphony (Part 2 of 2) ” T. March 31, 2014 at 3:19 AM It is so refreshing and lovely to read about you wanting joy for Shostakovich, because of your experience with his music. Symphony No. This symphony, when I first heard it, perplexed me, to say the least. Dmitri Shostakovich, Mstislav Rostropovich, London Symphony Orchestra - Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos. Instead, the final lines are chanted rather than sung: This is the slogan and this is the name of living generations: The classicism is most apparent in the first movement, which follows 18th-century sonata form right down to repeating the exposition (the only Shostakovich Symphony that does). 2. This is followed by the most forced of perorations maybe ever written in music history. Shostakovich Symphony no. Change ), Shostakovich Symphony no. After the 1917 Revolution, Shostakovich’s bourgeois family background proved a distinct disadvantage in the new social order that ensued. 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