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Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist who became internationally known after the premiere of his First Symphony in 1926 and was regarded throughout his life as a major composer.
Aram Ilyich Khachaturian was a Soviet and Armenian composer and conductor. He is considered one of the leading Soviet composers.
Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 60, nicknamed the Leningrad, was begun in Leningrad, completed in the city of Samara in December 1941, and premiered in that city on March 5, 1942. At first dedicated to Lenin, it was eventually submitted in honor of the besieged city of Leningrad, where it was first played under dire circumstances on August 9, 1942, nearly a year into the siege by German and Finnish forces. The performance was broadcast by loudspeaker throughout the city and to the German forces in a show of resilience and defiance. The Leningrad soon became popular in both the Soviet Union and the West as a symbol of resistance to fascism and totalitarianism, thanks in part to the composer's microfilming of the score in Samara and its clandestine delivery, via Tehran and Cairo, to New York, where Arturo Toscanini led a broadcast performance and Time magazine placed Shostakovich on its cover. That popularity faded somewhat after 1945, but the work is still regarded as a major musical testament to the 27 million Soviet people who lost their lives in World War II, and it is often played at Leningrad Cemetery, where half a million victims of the 900-day Siege of Leningrad are buried.
The 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87 by Dmitri Shostakovich are a set of 24 musical pieces for solo piano, one in each of the major and minor keys of the chromatic scale. The cycle was composed in 1950 and 1951 while Shostakovich was in Moscow, and premiered by pianist Tatiana Nikolayeva in Leningrad in December 1952; it was published the same year. A complete performance takes approximately 2 hours and 32 minutes. It is one of several examples of music written in all major and/or minor keys.
Dmitri Shostakovich composed his Symphony No. 4 in C minor, Op. 43, between September 1935 and May 1936, after abandoning some preliminary sketch material. In January 1936, halfway through this period, Pravda—under direct orders from Joseph Stalin—published an editorial "Muddle Instead of Music" that denounced the composer and targeted his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Despite this attack and the political climate of the time, Shostakovich completed the symphony and planned its premiere for December 1936 in Leningrad. After rehearsals began, the orchestra's management cancelled the performance, offering a statement that Shostakovich had withdrawn the work. He may have agreed to withdraw it to relieve orchestra officials of responsibility. The symphony was premiered on 30 December 1961 by the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra led by Kirill Kondrashin.
The Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47, by Dmitri Shostakovich is a work for orchestra composed between April and July 1937. Its first performance was on November 21, 1937, in Leningrad by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under Yevgeny Mravinsky. The premiere was a "triumphal success" that appealed to both the public and official critics, receiving an ovation that lasted well over half an hour.
Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 13 in B-flat minor, Op. 113 is an hour-long work for bass soloist, men's chorus, and large orchestra in five movements, each a setting of a Yevgeny Yevtushenko poem that describes aspects of Soviet history and life. The work has been variously described as a choral symphony, song cycle, and cantata. Although the symphony is commonly referred to by the nickname Babi Yar, no such subtitle is designated in Shostakovich’s manuscript score.
The Symphony No. 15 in A major, Op. 141, composed between late 1970 and July 29, 1971, is the final symphony by Dmitri Shostakovich. It was his first purely instrumental and non-programmatic symphony since the Tenth from 1953. Shostakovich began to plan and sketch the Fifteenth in late 1970, with the intention of composing for himself a cheerful work to mark his 65th birthday the next year. After completing the sketch score in April 1971, he wrote the orchestral score in June while receiving medical treatment in the town of Kurgan. The symphony was completed the following month at his summer dacha in Repino. This was followed by a prolonged period of creative inactivity which did not end until the composition of the Fourteenth Quartet in 1973.
Maxim Dmitriyevich Shostakovich is a Soviet, Russian and American conductor and pianist. He is the second child of the composer Dmitri Shostakovich and Nina Varzar. Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1978).
Solomon Moiseyevich Volkov is a Russian journalist and musicologist. He is best known for Testimony, which was published in 1979 following his emigration from the Soviet Union in 1976. He claimed that the book was the memoir of Dmitri Shostakovich, as related to him by the composer.
The String Quartet No. 15 in E-flat minor, Op. 144 by Dmitri Shostakovich is the composer's last. It was his first quartet since the Sixth which did not bear a dedication.
Gennady Nikolayevich Rozhdestvensky, CBE was a Soviet and Russian conductor.
Mieczysław Weinberg was a Polish-born Soviet composer and pianist.
Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 2 in A major, Op. 68, was composed in 1944 in just nineteen days in Ivanovo, 300 kilometres north-east of Moscow. It was premiered by the Beethoven Quartet and is dedicated to the composer Vissarion Shebalin. When Shostakovich began writing his Second String Quartet he had already completed eight of his fifteen symphonies. He was also half-way through his life. Another thirteen quartets remained to be composed, however, and they would come in rapid succession.
Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 9 in E-flat major, Op. 117, was composed in 1964 and premiered by the Beethoven Quartet. The Ninth Quartet was dedicated to his third wife, Irina Antonovna Shostakovich, a young editor he married in 1962.
Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 12 in D-flat major, Op. 133, was composed in 1968. It is dedicated to Dmitri Tsyganov, the first violinist of the Beethoven Quartet, which premiered the work in Moscow on June 14.
The Piano Sonata No. 2 in B minor, Op. 61 by Dmitri Shostakovich, the last of his piano sonatas, was composed in early 1943. It was his first piano composition since the 24 Preludes, Op. 34 from 1933 and his second attempt at composing a piano sonata in the key of B-minor. John Jonas Gruen said that there was "nothing obscure or technically impenetrable" about this sonata, but that "something disquieting—something faintly obsessive—emerges from its deceptively simple structure."
The Leningrad première of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 took place on 9 August 1942 during the Second World War, while the city of Leningrad was under siege by Nazi German forces.
October, Op. 131, is a symphonic poem composed by Dmitri Shostakovich to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution in 1967. He was spurred to compose the work after reencountering his score for the Vasilyev brothers' 1937 film Volochayev Days, reusing its "Partisan Song" in October. Although Shostakovich completed the work quickly, the process of writing it fatigued him physically because of his deteriorating motor functions.
Loyalty, Op. 136 is a cycle of eight ballads for men's chorus a capella composed by Dmitri Shostakovich based upon texts by Yevgeny Dolmatovsky. It was composed in commemoration of the centennial of Vladimir Lenin's birth in 1970.
References
- ↑ "Display of selected composer records from the catalogue of the Netherlands Radio Music Library". Archived from the original on 2011-07-24. Retrieved 2020-01-25.
- ↑ "RosFilm.net". Archived from the original on 2011-07-24. Retrieved 2009-12-21.
- ↑ Shostakovich, Dimitri; Solomon Volkov (2002-06-12). Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich. Limelight Editions. pp. 261–262. ISBN 978-0-87910-998-1.
- ↑ "MySQL Fatal Error". iverioni.com.ge. Retrieved 2023-01-26.
- ↑ Boenke, H. Alais (1988). Flute Music by Women Composers: An Annotated Catalog. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-0-313-26019-3.
- ↑ Cohen, Aaron I. (1987). International Encyclopedia of Women Composers. Books & Music (USA). ISBN 978-0-9617485-2-4.
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