Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47 (1937)
His rehabilitation after the 1936 denunciation, described as a Soviet artist's response to just criticism
Music
Dmitri Shostakovich
1906–1975 · Russian (Soviet)
Modernism / Soviet music
Dmitri Shostakovich was the foremost Soviet composer, whose 15 symphonies and 15 string quartets are central to 20th-century music. He lived under constant political pressure, twice denounced by the authorities, and his music moves between public grandeur, bitter irony and private anguish.
How to spot them
- ▸Grinding, relentless marches that build to brutal climaxes, often with a hollow or ambiguous sense of triumph (Symphony No. 5 finale)
- ▸The "invasion theme" in the Leningrad Symphony: a simple, banal tune repeated over a snare drum, growing monstrous, rather like Boléro
- ▸Sarcastic, circus-like woodwind and brass, grotesque waltzes and galops, alongside bleak, sparse slow movements
- ▸His musical signature DSCH — the notes D, E-flat, C, B — obsessively repeated in String Quartet No. 8 and Symphony No. 10
Key works — listen
Symphony No. 7 in C major, "Leningrad", Op. 60 (1941)
Performed in besieged Leningrad in August 1942; a symbol of resistance to Nazi Germany
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Op. 29 (1934)
Opera attacked in Pravda's 1936 editorial "Muddle Instead of Music"
String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110 (1960)
Written in Dresden, dedicated to the victims of fascism and war, saturated with the DSCH motif
Waltz No. 2, from Suite for Variety Orchestra (arranged after 1956)
Lilting, melancholy waltz in a suite arranged by Levon Atovmyan; used in Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut and often misnamed "Jazz Suite No. 2"
Piano Concerto No. 2 in F major, Op. 102 (1957)
Written for his son Maxim; its Andante features in Disney's Fantasia 2000
Quick-fire facts
- •His First Symphony (1925) was his graduation piece from the Leningrad Conservatory
- •Pravda's unsigned editorial "Muddle Instead of Music" attacked Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk in January 1936, shortly after Stalin saw the opera
- •He was denounced again for "formalism" in the 1948 Zhdanov decree
- •He wrote 15 symphonies and 15 string quartets
- •He appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1942 wearing a fire-fighter's helmet
- •The Leningrad Symphony was first performed in Kuibyshev in March 1942; the besieged Leningrad performance was conducted by Karl Eliasberg on 9 August 1942
- •His Symphony No. 13, "Babi Yar", sets poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko
- •The Romance from The Gadfly Suite was used as the theme for the TV series Reilly, Ace of Spies
Drill it — 9 cards
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Sources
- Alex Ross — The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Dmitri Shostakovich
- Grove Music Online (Oxford University Press) — Shostakovich, Dmitry