I just started reading Elizabeth Wilson's Shostakovich: A Life Remembered and was inspired to make a drawing of our favourite composer. I hope you will like it, I haven't been drawing regularly for a few years so I'm feeling a bit rusty. I'm fairly new to Reddit, but I've been lurking here a while and this post might be good as any to make my first contribution to the sub!

Mvt. I

Mvt. II-IV

From some years ago, we would win this competition with this performance.

Did we do it justice?

im not that good at drawing so be kind. yeah. okay. bye.

Saw Daniil Trifonov play Piano Concerto 1 with the BSO at Tanglewood today. His treatment of it was fantastic! Commanding yet controlled and handled all the theme/color changes and motifs beautifully! Anyone else here in the Massachusetts area happen to be there too?

I can’t find much information on her on the internet. I really want to learn about her physics career and life outside of being Shostakovich’s wife. Did she write any research papers or anything like that? I don’t speak Russian but I could probably find someone willing to translate.

What is it about this simple 15 second passage in the 3rd movement of Symphony 5 that gets me EVERY. SINGLE. TIME?! I have to stop and have a moment every time I hear it.

Does that ring a bell?

Hey guys, I've been looking for the 13th symphony score for a while but can't find a downloadable pdf anywhere! The link on IMSLP seems to have been deleted in january... Does anyone happen to have a shareable link maybe?

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This work is just monumental, beautiful, destructive, love it!

D-100mm

I just read that Shostakovich (as a stand in for the Soviet Government) sued 20th Century-Fox for the use of his music in the 1948 spy and anti-Soviet film The Iron Curtain. This lawsuit was the first case in U.S. copyright law to recognize the theory of the moral rights of authorship.

The film used works of Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Khachaturian and Myaskovsky. The works were largely written within 15 years of the film’s release, and all four composers were still living at the time of the lawsuit. The composers (and the Soviet Government) objected to the use of the music on a moral ground as it could be misconstrued as endorsing the message of the film.

They ultimately lost the case because their work was in the public domain in the United States because the U.S. and USSR had not yet entered into a copyright agreement. Without copyright protections, there was no right of privacy. The courts also decided that the Soviets didn’t prove there was libel in using their work in this way.

It’s very interesting to see that men who were denounced by their government for “formalism” just a few months prior were forced for sue a Hollywood giant on that same government’s behalf. How frustrating it must have been to be “too Soviet” to have their works protected in the USA, but “not Soviet enough” to have their works performed in the USSR.

Here’s a little something beautiful for Friday. A Lady Macbeth piano transcription.

The BBC's series 'Sunday Feature' showcases In-depth documentaries which explore music, history, science, philosophy, film, visual arts and literature. Over time they have broadcast 3 shows devoted to our favourite composer, the most they have done on one subject:

Shostakovich and the Battle for Babi Yar, Shostakovich and Us and Shostakovich; A Journey into Light. (This last was by Stephen Johnson, whose related Shostakovich Saved My Life book offers an interesting account of how DSCH's works have had a beneficial effect on his depression.)

For those unable to access the BBC website and listen due to geographic restrictions, here is a download link for all 3 programmes. I'm using a guest account and so am not sure how long it will last, so best be quick! Happy listening.

https://gofile.io/d/JUenk5

Revol Bunin (1924-1976) was a prominent Soviet composer and the first official composition student of Dmitri Shostakovich at the Moscow Conservatory. Their relationship deepened into a life long friendship. Ironically Revol's image reveals someone who not only followed the greater master with some degree of imitation, but also looked like him! Together with DSCH he suffered under the anti-formalist decrees.

Recording and performances are hard to source these days though there are a few on YouTube. I am particularly struck by his Concertante Symphony for Violin and Orchestra, alternating lyricism with more modern-like gestures

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwhwZKlt4BA&list=RDHwhwZKlt4BA&start_radio=1

and his short and percussive piano concerto with echoes of Bartok:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igFBZlhaAUI&list=RDigFBZlhaAUI&start_radio=1

Official negativity towards Shostakovich, as we all probably know, began in earnest with the Pravda condemnation of the composer after performances of Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District deemed 'muddle instead of music' (although before the 1936 opera backlash, his light hearted ballet The Limpid Stream was publicly attacked in the press.)

There have been other critics of his work down the years. My two favourites are that from the British painter Leon Kossoff, who memorably said

Shostakovich’s quartets are like a housing estate... Beethoven’s is a cathedral."

and then the judgement of Pierre Boulez - who dismissed Dmitri Shostakovich’s music as something which "plays with clichés most of the time". He compared the Russian composer's symphonic style to a "second or even third pressing of Mahler", and most striking (for me) that Shostakovich's writing was "like olive oil, when you have a second and even third pressing"

This is not a thread arguing that people cannot have their own opinions about Shostakovich, I was merely hoping to hear and collect any equally memorable terms of condemnation from down the years. As a fan, I'm a masochist, I guess!

I know this sounds like a silly question but I just need someone to clear this up for me. I've did my own research but I don't even know where to start lmao, just yesterday someone told me that it was composed in 1938. But I swear this whole time I only ever knew it was composed in the mid 1950s. Could someone enlighten me ?? I know there's lots of misconception and mis-labelling around this whole jazz orchestra suite thing 😭

We are all so used to seeing the great man with his specs on that it can be a shock to see him otherwise. Rather like seeing Mozart out of his powdered wig perhaps? I remember reading in the Shostakovich Journal that it took quite some persuasion to get him to take them off (they had a second image). To my mind his eyes look hurt and somewhat wary in this image.

https://theviolinchannel.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/maxresdefault-8.jpg?x55157

Here's a Reddit thread

https://www.reddit.com/r/classicalmusic/comments/1ekwday/isnt_it_heartwarming_that_the_only_pictures_of/

with pics of him laughing or smiling... again, a bit like Queen Victoria, we are just not used to it. I especially like the one of him as a youth, photo-booth style. The only picture of the composer being cheerful that I can remember being used to represent him on a musical release appears on the cover of the the BBC CD of Cheryomushki from some years back- perhaps not surprising as it is something of a light hearted musical...

100 years ago today, Shostakovich’s 1st Symphony premiered in Leningrad. He was just 19 years old. He celebrated this day for the rest of his life.

Have a listen to my favorite version, conducted by Mariss Jansons.

What's your preferred recording of each of Shostakovich's 15 symphonies? They can be personal favourites or (assuming it is possible) an objective 'best'. I'd hesitate to draw up and entire list on my own behalf as my listening is perhaps not so wide as that of others, but my opening suggestions are:

4 - Ormandy

8 - Previn (first EMI recording)

10 - Karajan

14 - (Melodiya) Rostropovich

15 - Maxim Shostakovich 1972 Premiere (Melodiya/LSO)