Dmitri Shostakovich

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) was a Russian composer who worked in many different styles and forms. While he is primarily known for his symphonies and string quartets, he also composed several operas, orchestral suites, concertos, and much piano music. Along with that of Sergei Prokofiev, Shostakovich's music is almost universally considered by critics and listeners to be among the most compelling to come out of the Soviet Union.

Shostakovich's compositional legacy is complicated by the demands of the repressive political environment in which he lived. He was required to occasionally write obsequious and banal works which satisfied the doctrines of Soviet Realism. Additionally, in the USSR, every new work had to be vetted by a committee of members from the Communist Party's Composer's Union, which tried to ensure that no ideological rules were being broken. For reasons that perhaps will never be understood (and apparently against his will), Shostakovich also joined the Communist Party himself in 1960.

Wartime years

During the siege of Leningrad, Shostakovich lived in the city and wrote his seventh symphony in C major (subtitled "Leningrad"). The work is notable for an extended march section in the first movement, building up an intentionally banal tune in a manner reminiscent of Ravel's "Bolero". The symphony was premiered in Leningrad in 1942, and flown out of Russia in microfilm score, and was premiered in the USA under the baton of Toscanini very shortly afterwards. The symphony, which ends with a triumphant conclusion, described by the composer as "victory - a beautiful life in the future" , was a significant propaganda coup.

However, the composer's next two symphonies were not well received by the authorities - the Eighth symphony in C minor also depicted the war, and ended in a pessimistic, exhausted fashion. The Ninth symphony was completed just after the war. The authorities expected a massive paean of triumph at the end of the war, on the scale of Beethoven's Ninth symphony. What Shostakovich delivered was a small scale, lightweight work with considerable humor and irony. This led to the composer being severely criticised as "formalist" in the notorious "Zhdanov decree" of 1948.

His large scale work for piano, the 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op 87, (1951) was also criticized at the Composer's union for being too abstract and "formalist".

Latter years

In his later years, Shostakovich's music became increasingly personal, and often involving the theme of death. Notably, the Fourteenth Symphony (1968) is a series of eleven songs on the theme of death. In contrast to many classical works dealing with death, the Fourteenth symphony does not seek to offer religious consolation. The late String Quartets, notably the Thirteenth (Op 138) and the Fifteenth (Op 144) are similarly bleak and death-obsessed. Shostakovich's final work is a sonata for viola and piano (Op 147) which was completed a few days before his death from lung cancer in 1975.