Dmitri Shostakovich

Dmitry Shostakovich (25 September 1906 St. Petersburg – 9 August 1975 Moscow) has been widely celebrated as one of the greatest composers of the twentieth century. His career unfolded during the Soviet era and was marked by a tension between his own artistic inclinations toward experimentation and the Communist Party’s demand for traditional sound-forms and socialist realism. He was a prolific composer who demonstrated a mastery of a diverse number of musical forms, and in his lifetime achieved great fame both inside and outside of Russia, though he never travelled outside of his homeland. His compositions, many of which were written on the “grand scale” and recall Beethoven and Mahler, encompass a remarkable emotional range, from the witty and humorous to the giddy and bizarre to the depressive and tragic – sometimes all in the same piece. Music scholars generally agree that his Symphony No. 10 is among the greatest of symphonies. His later works such as his Symphonies Nos. 14 and 15 and String Quartet No. 15 are experimental in style and are marked by moving meditations on death. Many of his compositions are part of the repertoire of orchestras worldwide, and in the present day he has become the most popular of all twentieth century Russian composers played in the West.

Selected major works

• Symphony No. 1 (1925)
• Symphony No. 2, October (1927)
• Symphony No. 3 (1929)
• Symphony No. 4 (1936)
• Symphony No. 5 (1937)
• Symphony No. 6 (1939)
• Symphony No. 7, Leningrad (1941)
• Symphony No. 8 (1943)
• Symphony No. 9 (1945)
• Symphony No. 10 (1953)
• Symphony No. 11, The Year 1905 (1957)
• Symphony No. 12, 1917 (1961)
• Symphony No. 13, Babi Yar (1962)
• Symphony No. 14 (1969)
• Symphony No. 15 (1971)

• String Quartets Nos. 1-15 (1938 – 1974)

• Piano Concerto No. 1 (1933)
• Piano Concerto No. 2 (1957)

• Violin Concerto No. 1 (1948)
• Violin Concerto No. 2 (1967)

• Cello Concerto No. 1 (1959)
• Cello Concerto No. 2 (1966)

Bibliography

Blokker, Roy, with Robert Dearling. The Music of Dmitri Shostakovich The Symphonies (London: The Tantivy Press, 1979).

Fanning, David. The Breath of the Symphonist Shostakovich’s Tenth (London: Royal Musical Association, 1988).

Fay, Laurel E. Shostakovich A Life (New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

Hildreth, N.P.E. Political Influences Upon the Music of Dmitry Shostakovich [Master’s Thesis, University of Sheffield, 1979].

MacDonald, Ian. The New Shostakovich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).

Norris, Christopher (ed.). Shostakovich: the Man and his Music (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1982).

Rabinovich, D. Dmitry Shostakovich (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1959).

Roseberry, Eric. Ideology, Style, Content, and Thematic Processes in the Symphonies, Cello Concertos, and String Quartets of Shostakovich (New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989).

Roseberry, Eric. Shostakovich His Life and Times (New York: Midas Books, 1982).

Sheinberg, Esti. Irony, Satire, Parody and the Grotesque in the Music of Shostakovich (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000).

Shostakovich, Dmitry. Shostakovich About Himself and His Times (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1980).

Shostakovich, Dmitry. Story of a Friendship The Letters of Dmitry Shostakovich to Isaak Glikman 1941-1975 (London: Faber and Faber, 2001).

Sollertinsky, Dmitri & Ludmilla. Pages from the Life of Dmitri Shostakovich (London: Robert Hale, 1980).

Volkov, Solomon. Shostakovich and Stalin (London: Little, Brown, 2004).

Volkov, Solomon. Testimony The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1979).

Wilson, Elizabeth. Shostakovich A Life Remembered (London: Faber and Faber, 1994).