The Borodin Quartet is a string quartet that was founded in 1945 in the then Soviet Union . It is one of the world's longest-lasting string quartets, having marked its 70th-anniversary season in 2015.
80-751: The quartet was one of the Soviet Union's best known in the West during the Cold War era, through recordings as well as concert performances in the United States and Europe. The quartet had a close relationship with composer Dmitri Shostakovich , who personally consulted them on each of his quartets. They also performed with the pianist Sviatoslav Richter on many occasions. They have recorded all of Shostakovich's string quartets as well as all of Beethoven 's quartets. Their other recordings include works by
160-452: A piano quintet , and two piano trios . His solo piano works include two sonatas , an early set of 24 preludes , and a later set of 24 preludes and fugues . Stage works include three completed operas and three ballets. Shostakovich also wrote several song cycles , and a substantial quantity of music for theatre and film . Shostakovich's reputation has continued to grow after his death. Scholarly interest has increased significantly since
240-708: A "soldier's duty" to ensure life went on. In another article written on 8 October, he wrote that the Seventh was a "symphony about our age, our people, our sacred war, and our victory." Shostakovich finished his Seventh Symphony on 27 December. The symphony was premiered by the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra in Kuibyshev on 29 March and soon performed in London and the United States, where several conductors vied to conduct its first American performance . It
320-461: A New York press conference where he was expected to read a prepared speech. Nicolas Nabokov , who was present in the audience, witnessed Shostakovich starting to read "in a nervous and shaky voice" before he had to break off "and the speech was continued in English by a suave radio baritone". Fully aware that Shostakovich was not free to speak his mind, Nabokov publicly asked him whether he supported
400-529: A collective farm. Fearful that he was about to be arrested, Shostakovich secured an appointment with the Chairman of the USSR State Committee on Culture, Platon Kerzhentsev , who reported to Stalin and Molotov that he had instructed the composer to "reject formalist errors and in his art attain something that could be understood by the broad masses", and that Shostakovich had admitted being in
480-832: A concert performance of his Fifth Symphony, congratulating Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra for their performance (part of a concert tour of the Soviet Union). Later that year, Bernstein and the Philharmonic recorded the symphony in Boston for Columbia Records . The year 1960 marked another turning point in Shostakovich's life: he joined the Communist Party . The government wanted to appoint him Chairman of
560-679: A dual career as concert pianist and composer, but his dry keyboard style was often criticized. Shostakovich maintained a heavy performance schedule until 1930; after 1933, he performed only his own compositions. Along with Yuri Bryushkov [ ru ] , Grigory Ginzburg , Lev Oborin , and Josif Shvarts, he was among the Soviet contestants in the inaugural I International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in 1927. Bogdanov-Berezhovsky later remembered: The self-discipline with which
640-672: A funeral march in memory of two leaders of the Kadet party murdered by Bolshevik sailors. In 1919, at age 13, Shostakovich was admitted to the Petrograd Conservatory , then headed by Alexander Glazunov , who monitored his progress closely and promoted him. Shostakovich studied piano with Leonid Nikolayev and Elena Rozanova, composition with Maximilian Steinberg , and counterpoint and fugue with Nikolay Sokolov , who became his friend. He also attended Alexander Ossovsky 's music history classes. In 1925, he enrolled in
720-689: A grandiose Ninth. On 16 January 1945, he announced to his students that he had begun work on its first movement the day before. In April, his friend Isaac Glikman heard an extensive portion of the first movement, noting that it was "majestic in scale, in pathos, in its breathtaking motion". Shortly thereafter, Shostakovich ceased work on this version of the Ninth, which remained lost until musicologist Olga Digonskaya rediscovered it in December 2003. Shostakovich began to compose his actual, unrelated Ninth Symphony in late July 1945; he completed it on 30 August. It
800-511: A letter to Glikman, he wrote, "her only defect is that she is 27 years old. In all other respects she is splendid: clever, cheerful, straightforward and very likeable." According to Galina Vishnevskaya , who knew the Shostakoviches well, this marriage was a very happy one: "It was with her that Dmitri Dmitriyevich finally came to know domestic peace... Surely, she prolonged his life by several years." In November, he conducted publicly for
880-412: A mark of cowardice, the result of political pressure, and his free decision. On the one hand, the apparat was less repressive than it had been before Stalin's death. On the other, his son recalled that the event reduced Shostakovich to tears, and that he later told his wife Irina that he had been blackmailed. Lev Lebedinsky has said that the composer was suicidal. In 1960, he was appointed Chairman of
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#1732780849408960-500: A rare visit to the opera for a performance of a new work, Quiet Flows the Don , based on the novel by Mikhail Sholokhov , by the little-known composer Ivan Dzerzhinsky , who was called to Stalin's box at the end of the performance and told that his work had "considerable ideological-political value". On 26 January, Stalin revisited the opera, accompanied by Vyacheslav Molotov , Andrei Zhdanov and Anastas Mikoyan , to hear Lady Macbeth of
1040-477: A risk this was: the poem had been published in Soviet media and was not banned, but it remained controversial. After the symphony's premiere, Yevtushenko was forced to add a stanza to his poem that said that Russians and Ukrainians had died alongside the Jews at Babi Yar. Zhdanov Doctrine The Zhdanov Doctrine (also called Zhdanovism or Zhdanovshchina ; Russian : доктрина Жданова, ждановизм, ждановщина )
1120-646: A successful banker in Irkutsk and raised a large family. His son Dmitri Boleslavovich Shostakovich, the composer's father, was born in exile in Narym in 1875 and studied physics and mathematics at Saint Petersburg University , graduating in 1899. He then went to work as an engineer under Dmitri Mendeleev at the Bureau of Weights and Measures in Saint Petersburg. In 1903, he married another Siberian immigrant to
1200-589: A wide range of composers on the Melodiya , Teldec , Virgin Records , and Chandos Records labels. The original Borodin quartet's sound was characterised by an almost symphonic volume and a highly developed ability to phrase while maintaining group cohesion. Although it has seen many personnel changes in its lifespan, all quartet members have been graduates of the Moscow Conservatory . The quartet
1280-552: Is likely to write a work in memory of me, so I had better write one myself." Several of Shostakovich's colleagues, including Natalya Vovsi-Mikhoels and the cellist Valentin Berlinsky , were also aware of the Eighth Quartet's biographical intent. Peter J. Rabinowitz has also pointed to covert references to Richard Strauss's Metamorphosen in it. In 1962, Shostakovich married for the third time, to Irina Supinskaya. In
1360-487: The Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra after Steinberg and Shostakovich's friend Boleslav Yavorsky brought the symphony to his attention. On 12 May 1926, Malko led the premiere of the symphony; the audience received it enthusiastically, demanding an encore of the scherzo. Thereafter, Shostakovich regularly celebrated the date of his symphonic debut. After graduation, Shostakovich embarked on
1440-534: The Order of Lenin , from the Soviet government. Shostakovich combined a variety of different musical techniques in his works. His music is characterized by sharp contrasts, elements of the grotesque , and ambivalent tonality ; he was also heavily influenced by neoclassicism and by the late Romanticism of Gustav Mahler . His orchestral works include 15 symphonies and six concerti (two each for piano, violin, and cello). His chamber works include 15 string quartets ,
1520-630: The Pravda article was published, praised the Fifth and congratulated Shostakovich for "not having given in to the seductive temptations of his previous 'erroneous' ways." It was also at this time that Shostakovich composed the first of his string quartets . In September 1937, he began to teach composition at the Leningrad Conservatory , which provided some financial security. In 1939, before Soviet forces attempted to invade Finland ,
1600-576: The Soviet writer's union , made a speech establishing the base for socialist realism outside of the Soviet Union. This targeted three main groups - Soviet-leaning Western intellectuals that Zhdanov hoped would be brought around to Zhdanovism instead of just preaching peace, sympathetic non-Communist artists and intellectuals in liberal democracies, and artists and intellectuals in Eastern Europe and Soviet-occupied Germany who were to be forced to accept
1680-514: The cantata Song of the Forests , which praised Stalin as the "great gardener". Stalin's death in 1953 was the biggest step toward Shostakovich's rehabilitation as a creative artist, which was marked by his Tenth Symphony . It features a number of musical quotations and codes (notably the DSCH and Elmira motifs, Elmira Nazirova being a pianist and composer who had studied under Shostakovich in
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#17327808494081760-883: The American premiere the next year in Philadelphia and also made the work's first recording. In 1927, Shostakovich wrote his Second Symphony (subtitled To October ), a patriotic piece with a pro-Soviet choral finale. Owing to its modernism, it did not meet with the same enthusiasm as his First. This year also marked the beginning of Shostakovich's close friendship with musicologist and theatre critic Ivan Sollertinsky , whom he had first met in 1921 through their mutual friends Lev Arnshtam and Lydia Zhukova. Shostakovich later said that Sollertinsky "taught [him] to understand and love such great masters as Brahms , Mahler , and Bruckner " and that he instilled in him "an interest in music ... from Bach to Offenbach ." While writing
1840-663: The Mtsensk District . He and his entourage left without speaking to anyone. Shostakovich had been forewarned by a friend that he should postpone a planned concert tour in Arkhangelsk in order to be present at that particular performance. Eyewitness accounts testify that Shostakovich was "white as a sheet" when he went to take his bow after the third act. The next day, Shostakovich left for Arkhangelsk, where he heard on 28 January that Pravda had published an editorial titled " Muddle Instead of Music ", complaining that
1920-635: The Party Secretary of Leningrad Andrei Zhdanov commissioned a celebratory piece from Shostakovich, the Suite on Finnish Themes , to be performed as the marching bands of the Red Army paraded through Helsinki. The Winter War was a bitter experience for the Red Army, the parade never happened, and Shostakovich never laid claim to the authorship of this work. It was not performed until 2001. After
2000-657: The RSFSR Union of Composers, but to hold that position he was required to obtain Party membership. It was understood that Nikita Khrushchev , the First Secretary of the Communist Party from 1953 to 1964, was looking for support from the intelligentsia's leading ranks in an effort to create a better relationship with the Soviet Union's artists. This event has variously been interpreted as a show of commitment,
2080-639: The RSFSR Union of Composers; from 1962 until his death, he also served as a delegate in the Supreme Soviet of the USSR . By joining the party, Shostakovich also committed himself to finally writing the homage to Lenin that he had promised before. His Twelfth Symphony , which portrays the Bolshevik Revolution and was completed in 1961, was dedicated to Lenin and called "The Year 1917". Shostakovich's musical response to these personal crises
2160-564: The Second Symphony, Shostakovich also began work on his satirical opera The Nose , based on the story by Nikolai Gogol . In June 1929, against the composer's wishes, the opera was given a concert performance; it was ferociously attacked by the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM). Its stage premiere on 18 January 1930 opened to generally poor reviews and widespread incomprehension among musicians. In
2240-571: The audience. He persisted into the final round of the competition but ultimately earned only a diploma, no prize; Oborin was declared the winner. Shostakovich was upset about the result but for a time resolved to continue a career as performer. While recovering from his appendectomy in April 1927, Shostakovich said he was beginning to reassess those plans: When I was well, I practiced the piano every day. I wanted to carry on like that until autumn and then decide. If I saw that I had not improved, I would quit
2320-419: The authorities alike, including those who had earlier accused him of formalism, claimed that he had learned from his mistakes and become a true Soviet artist. In a newspaper article published under Shostakovich's name, the Fifth was characterized as "A Soviet artist's creative response to just criticism." The composer Dmitry Kabalevsky , who had been among those who disassociated themselves from Shostakovich when
2400-499: The authorities by Berlinsky, who admitted being a Communist Party member. Berlinsky, for his part, dismissed the book as “full of half truths”. Dubinsky formed the Borodin Trio in 1976. Dmitri Shostakovich Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich (25 September [ O.S. 12 September] 1906 – 9 August 1975) was a Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist who became internationally known after
2480-439: The background to all this remained Shostakovich's first, open marriage to Nina Varzar until her death in 1954. He taught Ustvolskaya from 1939 to 1941 and then from 1947 to 1948. The nature of their relationship is far from clear: Mstislav Rostropovich described it as "tender". Ustvolskaya rejected a proposal of marriage from him after Nina's death. Shostakovich's daughter, Galina, recalled her father consulting her and Maxim about
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2560-579: The basis of maximum revenue. This irked the performers and Western concert organisers. After 20 years with the same lineup, difficult times followed in the 1970s: Dubinsky defected to the West, and second violinist Yaroslav Alexandrov retired due to ill health. Having recruited replacements, Berlinsky insisted that the ensemble spend two years out of public attention until the Borodin sound had been fully recreated. In his 1989 book Stormy Applause, Dubinsky chronicled disharmony, power struggles and betrayal to
2640-412: The baton. ... He neither stopped the orchestra, nor made any remarks; he focused his entire attention on aspects of tempi and dynamics, which were very clearly displayed in his gestures. The contrasts between the "Adagio molto" of the introduction and "Allegro con brio" first theme were quite striking, as were those between the percussive accents of the chords (woodwinds, French horns, pizzicato strings) and
2720-503: The capital, Sofiya Vasilievna Kokoulina, one of six children born to a Siberian Russian. Their son, Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, displayed musical talent after he began piano lessons with his mother at the age of nine. On several occasions, he displayed a remarkable ability to remember what his mother had played at the previous lesson, and would get "caught in the act" of playing the previous lesson's music while pretending to read different music placed in front of him. In 1918, he wrote
2800-501: The character of a piece and the elements of musical imagery embedded in it. And the players enjoyed it. On 20 March 1925, Shostakovich's music was played in Moscow for the first time, in a program which also included works by his friend Vissarion Shebalin . To the composer's disappointment, the critics and public there received his music coolly. During his visit to Moscow, Mikhail Kvadri introduced him to Mikhail Tukhachevsky , who helped
2880-588: The compilers of the book from which Shostakovich took his texts. The restrictions on Shostakovich's music and living arrangements were eased in 1949, when Stalin decided that the Soviets needed to send artistic representatives to the Cultural and Scientific Congress for World Peace in New York City, and that Shostakovich should be among them. For Shostakovich, it was a humiliating experience, culminating in
2960-496: The composer find accommodation and work there, and sent a driver to take him to a concert in "a very stylish automobile". Shostakovich's musical breakthrough was the First Symphony , written as his graduation piece at the age of 19. Initially, Shostakovich aspired only to perform it privately with the conservatory orchestra and prepared to conduct the scherzo himself. By late 1925, Malko agreed to conduct its premiere with
3040-418: The conducting classes of Nikolai Malko , where he conducted the conservatory orchestra in a private performance of Beethoven 's First Symphony . According to the recollections of the composer's classmate, Valerian Bogdanov-Berezhovsky [ ru ] : Shostakovich stood at the podium, played with his hair and jacket cuffs, looked around at the hushed teenagers with instruments at the ready and raised
3120-600: The country. Shostakovich's most famous wartime contribution was the Seventh Symphony . The composer wrote the first three movements in Leningrad while it was under siege ; he completed the work in Kuybyshev (now Samara ), where he and his family had been evacuated. According to a radio address he made on 17 September 1941, he continued work on the symphony in order to show his fellow citizens that everyone had
3200-518: The couple proved ill-matched, and divorced five years later. In 1954, Shostakovich wrote the Festive Overture, opus 96 ; it was used as the theme music for the 1980 Summer Olympics . (His "Theme from the film Pirogov , Opus 76a: Finale" was played as the cauldron was lit at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece.) In 1959, Shostakovich appeared on stage in Moscow at the end of
3280-443: The general success of Socialist construction, of the correct policy of the Party", and as an opera that "could have been written only by a Soviet composer brought up in the best tradition of Soviet culture". Shostakovich married his first wife, Nina Varzar, in 1932. Difficulties led to a divorce in 1935, but the couple soon remarried when Nina became pregnant with their first child, Galina . On 17 January 1936, Joseph Stalin paid
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3360-563: The landing by the lift, so that at least his family wouldn't be disturbed." The decree's consequences for composers were harsh. Shostakovich was among those dismissed from the Conservatory altogether. For him, the loss of money was perhaps the heaviest blow. Others still in the Conservatory experienced an atmosphere thick with suspicion. No one wanted his work to be understood as formalist, so many resorted to accusing their colleagues of writing or performing anti-proletarian music. During
3440-401: The late 1920s and early 1930s, Shostakovich worked at TRAM , a proletarian youth theatre. Although he did little work in this post, it shielded him from ideological attack. Much of this period was spent writing his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk , which was first performed in 1934. It was initially immediately successful, on both popular and official levels. It was described as "the result of
3520-535: The late 20th century, including considerable debate about the relationship between his music and his attitudes toward the Soviet government. Born into a Russian family that lived on Podolskaya Street in Saint Petersburg , Russian Empire , Shostakovich was the second of three children of Dmitri Boleslavovich Shostakovich and Sofiya Vasilievna Kokoulina. Shostakovich's immediate forebears came from Siberia , but his paternal grandfather, Bolesław Szostakowicz,
3600-402: The momentarily extended piano in the introduction following them. In the character given to the pattern of the first theme, I recall, there was both vigorous striving and lightness; in the bass part there was an emphasized pliancy of tenderly threaded articulation. ... Moments of these sorts ... were discoveries of an improvised order, born from an intuitively refined understanding of
3680-523: The next few years, Shostakovich composed three categories of work: film music to pay the rent, official works aimed at securing official rehabilitation , and serious works "for the desk drawer". The last included the Violin Concerto No. 1 and the song cycle From Jewish Folk Poetry . The cycle was written at a time when the postwar anti-Semitic campaign was already under way, with widespread arrests, including that of Dobrushin and Yiditsky,
3760-572: The only time in his life, leading a couple of his own works in Gorky ; otherwise he declined to conduct, citing nerves and ill health. That year saw Shostakovich again turn to the subject of anti-Semitism in his Thirteenth Symphony (subtitled Babi Yar ). The symphony sets a number of poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko , the first of which commemorates a massacre of Ukrainian Jews during the Second World War. Opinions are divided as to how great
3840-458: The opera was a "deliberately dissonant, muddled stream of sounds ...[that] quacks, hoots, pants and gasps." Shostakovich continued his performance tour as scheduled, with no disruptions. From Arkhangelsk, he instructed Isaac Glikman to subscribe to a clipping service . The editorial was the signal for a nationwide campaign, during which even Soviet music critics who had praised the opera were forced to recant in print, saying they "failed to detect
3920-566: The outbreak of war between the Soviet Union and Germany in 1941, Shostakovich initially remained in Leningrad. He tried to enlist in the military but was turned away because of his poor eyesight. To compensate, he became a volunteer for the Leningrad Conservatory's firefighter brigade and delivered a radio broadcast to the Soviet people. listen The photograph for which he posed was published in newspapers throughout
4000-507: The party line in their creative works. Under this policy, artists who failed to comply with the government's wishes risked persecution. The policy remained in effect until the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. The 1946 resolution of the Central Committee was directed against two literary magazines, Zvezda and Leningrad [ ru ] , which had published supposedly apolitical, " bourgeois ", individualistic works of
4080-484: The possibility of Ustvolskaya becoming their stepmother. Ustvolskaya's friend Viktor Suslin said that she had been "deeply disappointed by [Shostakovich's] conspicuous silence" when her music faced criticism after her graduation from the Leningrad Conservatory. The relationship with Nazirova seems to have been one-sided, expressed largely in his letters to her, and can be dated to around 1953 to 1956. He married his second wife, Komsomol activist Margarita Kainova, in 1956;
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#17327808494084160-612: The premiere of his First Symphony in 1926 and thereafter was regarded as a major composer. Shostakovich achieved early fame in the Soviet Union , but had a complex relationship with its government. His 1934 opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk was initially a success but later condemned by the Soviet government , putting his career at risk. In 1948 his work was denounced under the Zhdanov Doctrine , with professional consequences lasting several years. Even after his censure
4240-494: The publication of the Central Committee's Decree "On V. Muradeli's opera The Great Friendship ", which targeted all Soviet composers and demanded that they write only "proletarian" music, or music for the masses. The accused composers, including Shostakovich, were summoned to make public apologies in front of the committee. Most of Shostakovich's works were banned, and his family had privileges withdrawn. Yuri Lyubimov says that at this time "he waited for his arrest at night out on
4320-469: The satirist Mikhail Zoshchenko and the poet Anna Akhmatova . Earlier, some critics and literary historians were denounced for suggesting that Russian classics had been influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Molière , Lord Byron or Charles Dickens . Part of Zhdanovism was a campaign against " cosmopolitanism ", which meant that foreign models were not to be unthinkingly emulated, and native Russian accomplishments were emphasized. A further decree on music
4400-559: The shortcomings of Lady Macbeth as pointed out by Pravda ". There was resistance from those who admired Shostakovich, including Sollertinsky, who turned up at a composers' meeting in Leningrad called to denounce the opera and praised it instead. Two other speakers supported him. When Shostakovich returned to Leningrad, he had a telephone call from the commander of the Leningrad Military District, who had been asked by Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky to make sure that he
4480-501: The symphony and planned a premiere at the end of 1936. Rehearsals began that December, but according to Isaac Glikman, who had attended the rehearsals with the composer, the manager of the Leningrad Philharmonic persuaded Shostakovich to withdraw the symphony. Shostakovich did not repudiate the work and retained its designation as his Fourth Symphony. (A reduction for two pianos was performed and published in 1946, and
4560-438: The then recent denunciation of Stravinsky 's music in the Soviet Union. A great admirer of Stravinsky who had been influenced by his music, Shostakovich had no alternative but to answer in the affirmative. Nabokov did not hesitate to write that this demonstrated that Shostakovich was "not a free man, but an obedient tool of his government." Shostakovich never forgave Nabokov for this public humiliation. That same year, he composed
4640-622: The tragic tone of the Eighth Symphony , which in the Western press had briefly acquired the nickname " Stalingrad Symphony". The symphony was received tepidly in the Soviet Union and the West. Olin Downes expressed his disappointment in the piece, but Carlos Chávez , who had conducted the symphony's Mexican premiere, praised it highly. Shostakovich had expressed as early as 1943 his intention to cap his wartime trilogy of symphonies with
4720-487: The whole business. To be a pianist who is worse than Szpinalski , Etkin , Ginzburg, and Bryushkov (it is commonly thought that I am worse than them) is not worth it. After the competition, Shostakovich and Oborin spent a week in Berlin. There he met the conductor Bruno Walter , who was so impressed by Shostakovich's First Symphony that he conducted its first performance outside Russia later that year. Leopold Stokowski led
4800-712: The work was finally premiered in 1961.) In the months between the withdrawal of the Fourth Symphony and the completion of the Fifth on 20 July 1937, the only concert work Shostakovich composed was the Four Romances on Texts by Pushkin . Fifth Symphony and return to favor The composer's response to his denunciation was the Fifth Symphony of 1937, which was musically more conservative than his recent works. Premiered on 21 November 1937 in Leningrad, it
4880-483: The world. As one of the most revered groups during the Communist era, the quartet performed at the funerals of both Joseph Stalin and Sergei Prokofiev , who died on the same day in 1953. In 1955 the quartet was renamed after Alexander Borodin , one of the founders of Russian chamber music . In the Soviet era their concert engagements and repertoire were directed by the state concert organisation Gosconcert on
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#17327808494084960-605: The wrong and had asked for a meeting with Stalin, which was not granted. The Pravda campaign against Shostakovich caused his commissions and concert appearances, and performances of his music, to decline markedly. His monthly earnings dropped from an average of as much as 12,000 rubles to as little as 2,000. 1936 marked the beginning of the Great Terror , in which many of Shostakovich's friends and relatives were imprisoned or killed. These included Tukhachevsky, executed 12 June 1937; his brother-in-law Vsevolod Frederiks , who
5040-571: The year before his dismissal from the Moscow Conservatory), the meaning of which is still debated, while the savage second movement, according to Testimony , is intended as a musical portrait of Stalin. The Tenth ranks alongside the Fifth and Seventh as one of Shostakovich's most popular works. 1953 also saw a stream of premieres of the "desk drawer" works. During the 1940s and 1950s, Shostakovich had close relationships with two of his pupils, Galina Ustvolskaya and Elmira Nazirova. In
5120-789: The young Shostakovich prepared for the 1927 [Chopin] Competition was astonishing. For three weeks, he locked himself away at home, practicing for hours at a time, having postponed his composing, and given up trips to the theatre and visits with friends. Even more startling was the result of this seclusion. Of course, prior to this time, he had played superbly and occasioned Glazunov's now famous glowing reports. But during those days, his pianism, sharply idiosyncratic and rhythmically impulsive, multi-timbered yet graphically defined, emerged in its concentrated form. Natan Perelman [ ru ] , who heard Shostakovich play his Chopin programs before he went to Warsaw, said that his "anti-sentimental" playing, which eschewed rubato and extreme dynamic contrasts,
5200-557: Was rescinded in 1956 , performances of his music were occasionally subject to state interventions, as with his Thirteenth Symphony (1962). Nevertheless, Shostakovich was a member of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR (1947) and the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union (from 1962 until his death), as well as chairman of the RSFSR Union of Composers (1960–1968). Over the course of his career, he earned several important awards , including
5280-429: Was subsequently performed in Leningrad while the city was still under siege . The city's remaining orchestra only had 14 musicians left, which led conductor Karl Eliasberg to reinforce it by recruiting anyone who could play an instrument. The Shostakovich family moved to Moscow in spring 1943, by which time the Red Army was on the offensive. As a result, Soviet authorities and the international public were puzzled by
5360-409: Was a Soviet cultural doctrine developed by Central Committee secretary Andrei Zhdanov in 1946. The main principle of the Zhdanov Doctrine was often summarized by the phrase "The only conflict that is possible in Soviet culture is the conflict between good and best". Zhdanovism soon became a Soviet cultural policy, meaning that Soviet artists, writers and intelligentsia in general had to conform to
5440-428: Was a phenomenal success. The Fifth brought many to tears and welling emotions. Later, Shostakovich's purported memoir, Testimony , stated: "I'll never believe that a man who understood nothing could feel the Fifth Symphony. Of course they understood, they understood what was happening around them and they understood what the Fifth was about." The success put Shostakovich in good standing once again. Music critics and
5520-429: Was again denounced for formalism in the Zhdanov decree . Andrei Zhdanov, Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR , accused the composers (including Sergei Prokofiev and Aram Khachaturian ) of writing inappropriate and formalist music. This was part of an ongoing anti-formalism campaign intended to root out all Western compositional influence as well as any perceived "non-Russian" output. The conference resulted in
5600-435: Was all right. When the writer Isaac Babel was under arrest four years later, he told his interrogators that "it was common ground for us to proclaim the genius of the slighted Shostakovich." On 6 February, Shostakovich was again attacked in Pravda , this time for his light comic ballet The Limpid Stream , which was denounced because "it jangles and expresses nothing" and did not give an accurate picture of peasant life on
5680-423: Was born during this period in 1936; his son Maxim was born two years later. Withdrawal of the Fourth Symphony The publication of the Pravda editorials coincided with the composition of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony . The work continued a shift in his style, influenced by the music of Mahler , and gave him problems as he attempted to reform his style. Despite the Pravda articles, he continued to compose
5760-623: Was eventually released but died before he returned home; his close friend Nikolai Zhilyayev , a musicologist who had taught Tukhachevsky, was executed; his mother-in-law, the astronomer Sofiya Mikhaylovna Varzar, who was sent to a camp in Karaganda and later released; his friend the Marxist writer Galina Serebryakova , who spent 20 years in the gulag ; his uncle Maxim Kostrykin (died); and his colleagues Boris Kornilov (executed) and Adrian Piotrovsky (executed). Shostakovich's daughter Galina
5840-581: Was followed in April by a special congress of the Composers' Union , where many of those attacked were forced publicly to repent. The campaign was satirized in the Anti-Formalist Rayok by Shostakovich. The composers condemned were formally rehabilitated by a further decree issued on 28 May 1958. In Wrocław , a congress met in mid-1948. Accompanying Soviet consolidation of power in Eastern Europe, Zhdanov's chosen man Fadeyev , president of
5920-909: Was formed as the Moscow Conservatoire Quartet with Mstislav Rostropovich on cello, Rostislav Dubinsky and Vladimir Rabei [ Wikidata ] on first and second violins, and Yuri Nikolaevsky on viola, all studying with professor Mikhail Terian [ Wikidata ] , the viola player of the Komitas Quartet (chamber ensemble class). Rostropovich withdrew after a few weeks in favour of Valentin Berlinsky . Vladimir Rabei and Yuri Nikolaevsky were soon succeeded by Nina Barshai and Rudolf Barshai . The quartet first met Shostakovich in 1946 and became an interpreter of his compositions. In due course they became known for their performances of all of Shostakovich's quartets (eventually numbering 15) at concert halls around
6000-605: Was issued on 20 February 1948, "On Muradeli's Opera The Great Friendship" and marked the beginning of the so-called "anti-formalism campaign". (The term " formalism " referred to art for art's sake which did not serve a larger social purpose.) Nominally aimed at Vano Muradeli 's opera The Great Friendship , it signaled a sustained campaign of criticism and persecution against many of the Soviet Union 's foremost composers, notably Dmitri Shostakovich , Sergei Prokofiev , Aram Khachaturian and Dmitri Klebanov for allegedly writing "hermetic" music and misusing dissonance. The decree
6080-545: Was of Polish Roman Catholic descent, tracing his family roots to the region of the town of Vileyka in today's Belarus . A Polish revolutionary in the January Uprising of 1863–64, Szostakowicz was exiled to Narym in 1866 in the crackdown that followed Dmitry Karakozov 's assassination attempt on Tsar Alexander II . When his term of exile ended, Szostakowicz decided to remain in Siberia. He eventually became
6160-491: Was shorter and lighter in texture than its predecessors. Gavriil Popov wrote that it was "splendid in its joie de vivre, gaiety, brilliance, and pungency!" By 1946 it was the subject of official criticism. Israel Nestyev asked whether it was the right time for "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." The New York World-Telegram of 27 July 1946
6240-434: Was similarly dismissive: "The Russian composer should not have expressed his feelings about the defeat of Nazism in such a childish manner". Shostakovich continued to compose chamber music, notably his Second Piano Trio , dedicated to the memory of Sollertinsky, with a Jewish-inspired finale. In 1947, Shostakovich was made a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR . In 1948, Shostakovich, along with many other composers,
6320-617: Was the Eighth String Quartet , composed in only three days. He subtitled the piece "To the victims of fascism and war", ostensibly in memory of the Dresden fire bombing that took place in 1945. Yet like the Tenth Symphony, the quartet incorporates quotations from several of his past works and his musical monogram . Shostakovich confessed to his friend Isaac Glikman, "I started thinking that if some day I die, nobody
6400-430: Was unlike anything he had ever heard. Arnold Alschwang [ ru ] called Shostakovich's playing "profound and lacking any salon-like mannerisms." Shostakovich was stricken with appendicitis on the opening day of the competition, but his condition improved by the time of his first performance on 27 January 1927. (He had his appendix removed on 25 April.) According to Shostakovich, his playing found favor with
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