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The Symphony No. 9 in E-flat major, Op. 70, was composed by Dmitri Shostakovich in 1945. It was premiered on 3 November 1945 in Leningrad by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under Yevgeny Mravinsky.
The Ninth Symphony was originally intended to be a celebration of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. Shostakovich declared in October 1943 that the symphony would be a large composition for orchestra, soloists, and chorus.
Shostakovich told his students on 16 January 1945 that he had begun work on a new symphony the day before. A week later, he told them that he had reached the middle of the development section, and the work was going to open with a big tutti. Isaak Glikman heard around ten minutes of the music Shostakovich had written for the first movement in late April. Soon thereafter, Shostakovich stopped working on the symphony. He resumed work on 26 July 1945 and finished on 30 August 1945. The resulting symphony was unrelated to the one he had originally planned.
Shostakovich and Sviatoslav Richter played the Ninth Symphony in a four-hand arrangement for musicians and cultural officials in early September 1945. The premiere, conducted by Yevgeny Mravinsky, took place on 3 November 1945 in the opening concert of the 25th season of the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, sharing the program with Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5. The concert was broadcast live on the radio.
The Moscow premiere took place on 20 November 1945. A possible draft for the first movement of the original version of the Ninth Symphony, published as Symphonic Fragment, was conducted by Gennady Rozhdestvensky on 20 November 2006. [1] A Naxos CD containing a recording of the Symphonic Fragment was released in 2009. [2] [3] [4]
Shostakovich remarked that "musicians will like to play it, and critics will delight in blasting it". The initial reaction of his peers to the new symphony was generally favourable: [5]
Transparent. Much light and air. Marvellous tutti, fine themes (the main theme of the first movement – Mozart!). Almost literally Mozart. But, of course, everything very individual, Shostakovichian... A marvellous symphony. The finale is splendid in its joie de vivre, gaiety, brilliance, and pungency!!
Soviet critics censured the symphony for its "ideological weakness" and its failure to "reflect the true spirit of the people of the Soviet Union". On 20 September 1946, a highly critical article by musicologist Izrail Nestyev was published: [6]
What remains to be proposed is that the Ninth Symphony is a kind of respite, a light and amusing interlude between Shostakovich's significant creations, a temporary rejection of great, serious problems for the sake of playful, filigree-trimmed trifles. But is it the right time for a great artist to go on vacation, to take a break from contemporary problems?
— Izrail Vladimirovich Nestyev, "Remarks on the Work of D. Shostakovich: Some Thoughts Occasioned by His Ninth Symphony"
The symphony was also coolly received in the West: "The Russian composer should not have expressed his feelings about the defeat of Nazism in such a childish manner" ( New York World-Telegram , 27 July 1946).
The Ninth Symphony was nominated for the Stalin Prize in 1946, but did not win. By order of Glavrepertkom, the central censorship board, the work was banned on 14 February 1948 in his second denunciation together with some other works by the composer. [7] It was removed from the list in the summer of 1955 when the symphony was performed and broadcast.
The symphony is scored for:
The work has five movements, the last three played without interruption:
A typical performance lasts for around 26 minutes, which makes this symphony one of Shostakovich's shortest.
Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110, was written in three days.
Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Mravinsky was a Soviet and Russian conductor, pianist, and music pedagogue; he was a professor at Leningrad State Conservatory.
Vadim Nikolayevich Salmanov was a Soviet composer and pedagogue.
Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 60, nicknamed the Leningrad Symphony, 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 forces.
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. 6 in B minor, Op. 54 by Dmitri Shostakovich was written in 1939, and first performed in Leningrad on November 5, 1939 by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under Yevgeny Mravinsky.
The Symphony No. 8 in C minor, Op. 65, by Dmitri Shostakovich was written in the summer of 1943, and first performed on 4 November of that year by the USSR Symphony Orchestra under Yevgeny Mravinsky, to whom the work is dedicated. It briefly was nicknamed the "Stalingrad Symphony" following the first performance outside the Soviet Union in 1944.
The Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op. 93, by Dmitri Shostakovich was premiered by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under Yevgeny Mravinsky on 17 December 1953. It is not clear when it was written. According to the composer, the symphony was composed between July and October 1953, but Tatiana Nikolayeva stated that it was completed in 1951. Sketches for some of the material date from 1946.
Symphony No. 12 in D minor, Op. 112, subtitled The Year 1917, was composed by Dmitri Shostakovich in 1961. He dedicated it to the memory of Vladimir Lenin. Although the performance on October 1, 1961, by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Yevgeny Mravinsky was billed as the official premiere, the actual first performance took place two hours earlier that same day in Kuybyshev by the Kuybyshev State Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Abram Stasevich.
The Symphony No. 13 in B-flat minor, Op. 113 for bass soloist, bass chorus, and large orchestra was composed by Dmitri Shostakovich in 1962. It consists of five movements, each a setting of a Yevgeny Yevtushenko poem that describes aspects of Soviet history and life. Although the symphony is commonly referred to by the nickname Babi Yar, no such subtitle is designated in Shostakovich's manuscript score.
The Cello Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major, Op. 107, was composed in 1959 by Dmitri Shostakovich. Shostakovich wrote the work for his friend Mstislav Rostropovich, who committed it to memory in four days. He premiered it on October 4, 1959, at the Large Hall of the Leningrad Conservatory with the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Yevgeny Mravinsky. The first recording was made in two days following the premiere by Rostropovich and the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Aleksandr Gauk.
The Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 77, was originally composed by Dmitri Shostakovich in 1947–48. He was still working on the piece at the time of the Zhdanov Doctrine, and it could not be performed in the period following the composer's denunciation. In the time between the work's initial completion and the first performance, the composer, sometimes with the collaboration of its dedicatee, David Oistrakh, worked on several revisions. The concerto was finally premiered by the Leningrad Philharmonic under Yevgeny Mravinsky on 29 October 1955. It was well-received, Oistrakh remarking on the "depth of its artistic content" and describing the violin part as a "pithy 'Shakespearian' role."
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. He is a recipient of an honorary title Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1978).
The Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra is a symphony orchestra based in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Their home venue is the Saint Petersburg Philharmonia.
Ladislav Slovák was a Slovak conductor.
The Symphony No. 6 in E-flat minor, Op. 111, by Sergei Prokofiev was completed and premiered in 1947. Sketches for the symphony exist as early as from June 1945; Prokofiev had reportedly begun work on it prior to composing his Fifth Symphony. He later remarked that the Sixth memorialized the victims of the Great Patriotic War.
Symphony No. 1 by Soviet-Russian composer Gavriil Nikolayevich Popov is a composition that was banned from performance in the USSR. Popov had completed a sketch of the first movement by August 1929 and was preparing its last (third) movement by February 1930. The work, still in draft form, won a prize sponsored by the Bolshoi Theatre and the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda in September 1932. It received its premiere by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under conductor Fritz Stiedry on March 22, 1935.
Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 had its Leningrad première on 9 August 1942 during the Second World War, while the city was under siege by the Nazi German forces.
The Symphony No. 3 in B minor by the Ukrainian composer Borys Lyatoshynsky was completed in 1951, with the final movement themed "Peace will conquer war." The symphony was first performed in Kyiv on 23 October 1951, by the Kyiv Philharmonic, conducted by Natan Rakhlin. Criticised by the Soviet authorities on ideological grounds, the composer was forced to rework the symphony, and to remove the subtitle of the finale. The first performance of the revised version took place in Leningrad in 1955.
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.
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