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90-484: Schnittke's early music shows the strong influence of Dmitri Shostakovich . He developed a polystylistic technique in works such as the epic Symphony No. 1 (1969–1972) and his first concerto grosso (1977). In the 1980s, Schnittke's music began to become more widely known abroad with the publication of his second (1980) and third (1983) string quartets and the String Trio (1985); the ballet Peer Gynt (1985–1987);

180-497: A Ninth Symphony ; its score was almost unreadable because he had written it with great difficulty with his left hand due to his strokes. The Ninth Symphony was first performed on 19 June 1998 in Moscow in a version deciphered – but also 'arranged' – by Gennady Rozhdestvensky , who conducted the premiere. After hearing a tape of the performance, Schnittke indicated he wanted it withdrawn. After he died, though, others worked to decipher

270-452: 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

360-771: 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

450-461: 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

540-529: 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

630-832: 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

720-679: 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

810-672: 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

900-689: 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

990-511: 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

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1080-536: 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

1170-412: 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

1260-503: A more withdrawn, bleak style, quite accessible to the lay listener. The Fourth Quartet (1989) and Sixth (1992), Seventh (1993) and Eighth (1994) symphonies are good examples of this. Some Schnittke scholars, such as Gerard McBurney , have argued that it is the late works that will ultimately be the most influential parts of Schnittke's output. After a stroke in 1994 left him almost completely paralysed, Schnittke largely ceased to compose. He did complete some short works in 1997 and also

1350-434: A new style which has been called " polystylism ", where he juxtaposed and combined music of various styles past and present. He once wrote, "The goal of my life is to unify serious music and light music, even if I break my neck in doing so." His first concert work to use the polystylistic technique was the second violin sonata , Quasi una sonata (1967–1968). He experimented with techniques in his film work, as shown by much of

1440-500: 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

1530-469: 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. Novodevichy Cemetery Novodevichy Cemetery ( Russian : Новодевичье кладбище , romanized :  Novodevichye kladbishche )

1620-646: 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

1710-402: A version of the symphony. See Schmelz 2013 for an extensive bibliography 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 the premiere of his First Symphony in 1926 and thereafter was regarded as

1800-524: Is a cemetery in Moscow . It lies next to the southern wall of the 16th-century Novodevichy Convent , which is the city's third most popular tourist site. The cemetery was designed by Ivan Mashkov and inaugurated in 1898. Its importance dates from the 1930s, when the necropolises of the medieval Muscovite monasteries ( Simonov , Danilov , Donskoy ) were scheduled for demolition. Only the Donskoy survived

1890-552: 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

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1980-556: The Joseph Stalin era relatively intact. The remains of many famous Russians buried in other abbeys, such as Nikolai Gogol and Sergey Aksakov , were disinterred and reburied at the Novodevichy. A 19th-century necropolis within the walls of the Novodevichy convent, which contained the graves of about 2000 Russian noblemen and university professors, also underwent reconstruction. The vast majority of graves were destroyed. It

2070-487: 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

2160-534: 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 ,

2250-630: 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 ,

2340-527: The Russian SFSR . He began his musical education in 1946 in Vienna, where his father had been posted. It was in Vienna, Schnittke's biographer Alexander Ivashkin writes, where "he fell in love with music which is part of life, part of history and culture, part of the past which is still alive." "I felt every moment there," the composer wrote, "to be a link of the historical chain: all was multi-dimensional;

2430-514: 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

2520-488: The third (1981), fourth (1984), and fifth (1988) symphonies; and the viola concerto (1985) and first cello concerto (1985–1986). As his health deteriorated, Schnittke's music started to abandon much of the extroversion of his polystylism and retreated into a more withdrawn, bleak style. Schnittke's father, Harry Maximilian Schnittke  [ ru ] (1914–1975), was Jewish and born in Frankfurt . He moved to

2610-491: The 1980s, Schnittke's music began to become more widely known abroad, thanks in part to the work of émigré Soviet artists such as the violinists Gidon Kremer and Mark Lubotsky , the cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich , but also by the conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky . Despite constant illness, he produced a large amount of music, including important works such as the Second (1980) and Third (1983) String Quartets and

2700-883: 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

2790-663: 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

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2880-635: 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

2970-718: 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,

3060-639: 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

3150-564: 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

3240-644: The Soviet Union in 1927 and worked as a journalist and translator from the Russian language into German. His mother, Maria Iosifovna Schnittke (née Vogel, 1910–1972), was a Volga German born in Russia. Schnittke's paternal grandmother, Tea Abramovna Katz (1889–1970), was a philologist , translator, and editor of German-language literature. Alfred Schnittke was born in Engels in the Volga German ASSR of

3330-733: The Soviet bureaucracy. His First Symphony was effectively banned by the Composers' Union . After he abstained from a Composers' Union vote in 1980, he was banned from travelling outside the USSR. On 21 July 1985, Schnittke suffered a stroke that left him in a coma . He was declared clinically dead on several occasions, but recovered and continued to compose. In 1990, Schnittke left the Soviet Union and settled in Hamburg , Germany. His health remained poor, however. He suffered several more strokes before his death on 3 August 1998, in Hamburg, at

3420-561: The Soviet leaders, Nikita Khrushchev and Mikhail Gorbachev would be buried there. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Kremlin Wall is no longer used for burials and the Novodevichy Cemetery is used for only the most symbolically significant burials. In 1997, former premier Nikolai Tikhonov was buried in the cemetery at state expense (since he didn't have any money of his own). In April 2007, within one week both

3510-712: The String Trio (1985); the Faust Cantata (1983), which he later incorporated in his opera Historia von D. Johann Fausten ; the ballet Peer Gynt (1985–1987); the Third (1981), Fourth (1984) and Fifth (1988) Symphonies (the last of which is also known as the Fourth Concerto Grosso), the Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra (1979) and the Viola (1985) and First Cello (1985–1986) Concertos. This period

3600-506: The age of 63. He was buried, with state honors, at Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow. Schnittke's early music shows the strong influence of Dmitri Shostakovich , but after the visit of the Italian composer Luigi Nono to the USSR, he took up the serial technique in works such as Music for Piano and Chamber Orchestra (1964). However, Schnittke soon became dissatisfied with what he termed the "puberty rites of serial self-denial." He created

3690-571: 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

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3780-419: 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

3870-439: 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

3960-412: 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

4050-503: 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

4140-448: 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

4230-588: 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

4320-496: 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

4410-418: 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

4500-600: 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

4590-518: 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

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4680-689: The first President of the Russian Federation Boris Yeltsin and cellist Mstislav Rostropovich were buried there. Today, the cemetery holds the tombs of Russian authors, musicians, playwrights, and poets, as well as famous actors, political leaders, and scientists. More than 27,000 are buried at Novodevichy. There is scant space for more burials. A new national cemetery is under construction in Mytishchi north of Moscow. Notable burials include Dmitry Shostakovich , Sergei Prokofiev and Anton Chekhov . The cemetery has

4770-443: 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

4860-563: 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

4950-401: 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

5040-535: 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,

5130-402: 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

5220-523: 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,

5310-572: 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

5400-458: 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

5490-566: 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

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5580-452: The past represented a world of ever-present ghosts, and I was not a barbarian without any connections, but the conscious bearer of the task in my life." Schnittke's experience in Vienna "gave him a certain spiritual experience and discipline for his future professional activities. It was Mozart and Schubert , not Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff , whom he kept in mind as a reference point in terms of taste, manner and style. This reference point

5670-484: 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;

5760-494: 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

5850-406: The score. Nikolai Korndorf died before he could complete the task, which was continued and completed by Alexander Raskatov . In Raskatov's version, the three orchestral movements of Schnittke's symphony may be followed by a choral fourth, which is Raskatov's own Nunc Dimittis (in memoriam Alfred Schnittke) . This version was premiered in Dresden , Germany, on June 16, 2007. Andrei Boreyko also has

5940-478: 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

6030-574: The sonata appearing first in his score for the 1968 animation short The Glass Harmonica . He wrote the music for Aleksandr Askoldov 's Commissar , combining and juxtaposing European, ethnic Russian and Jewish musical patterns. He continued to develop the polystylistic technique in works such as the epic First Symphony (1969–1972) and First Concerto Grosso (1977). Other works were more stylistically unified, such as his Piano Quintet (1972–1976, later orchestrated and retitled as In Memoriam… ), written in memory of his mother, who had died in 1972. In

6120-427: 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

6210-438: 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

6300-450: 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

6390-434: 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

6480-712: 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

6570-605: 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

6660-571: 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

6750-789: 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,

6840-557: 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

6930-429: 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

7020-492: 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

7110-483: 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

7200-435: 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

7290-702: Was also marked by a turn in Schnittke and his music to Christian themes, exemplified in his deeply spiritual unaccompanied choral works, the Concerto for Mixed Chorus (1984–1985) and the Penitential Psalms (1988), and alluded to in various others works, including the Fourth Symphony and the Faust Cantata. As his health deteriorated from the late 1980s, Schnittke started to abandon much of the extroversion of his earlier polystylism and retreated into

7380-558: Was at that time that the remains of Anton Chekhov were moved outside the monastery walls. His grave served as the kernel of the so-called "cherry orchard" – a section of the cemetery which contains the graves of Constantin Stanislavski and the leading actors of his company. During the Soviet Union , burial in the Novodevichy Cemetery was second in prestige only to burial in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis . Among

7470-494: 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

7560-855: Was essentially Classical ... but never too blatant." In 1948, the family moved to Moscow. In 1961 Schnittke completed his graduate work in composition at the Moscow Conservatory and taught there from 1962 to 1972. Evgeny Golubev was one of his composition teachers. Thereafter, he earned his living chiefly by composing film scores , producing nearly 70 scores in 30 years. After his mother's death in 1972, he began to compose his Piano Quintet in her memory. During its composition, he began to seek solace in Catholicism ; he converted on 18 June 1983. He possessed deeply held beliefs in predestination and mysticism which influenced his music. Schnittke and his music were often viewed suspiciously by

7650-623: 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

7740-545: 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

7830-491: 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

7920-434: 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,

8010-617: 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

8100-430: 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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