The opening's dotted rhythm persists as a lyrical first theme is played by the first violins. The exposition opens with a "strenuous" string figure in canon of rising and falling minor sixths that quickly narrow to minor thirds. The first movement, in D minor, is in sonata form. 1.4 Fourth movement: Allegro non troppoįorm First movement: Moderato.Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra Vasily Petrenko (conductor). Apparently, at the work’s premiere, many members of the audience wept during the sublime third movement. across four movements, Shostakovich tackles all manner of human emotions. Today, it remains his best-known symphony. Following its premiere in the autumn of 1937, the work’s popularity grew rapidly. Thankfully, the new piece was a great success, both artistically and politically. He valued his own integrity, and was not about to compose a saccharine work simply to appease the government. At the same time, though, Shostakovich was no lapdog. Fear gripped the composer: his next work, the Symphony No.5, would simply have to meet with approval. That’s exactly what happened when, in 1936, Stalin’s authorities decreed Shostakovich’s music for the opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, to be inappropriate. For Shostakovich and his contemporaries, writing music took place in the shadow of judgement that could lead to severe punishment, should they be deemed to have stepped out of line. The government was both deeply suspicious of, and threatened by, artistic freedom and creativity. To truly understand the music of Shostakovich, we have first to comprehend something of the political climate in which this great composer wrote the majority of his music.įor most of his life, Shostakovich studied, worked and composed within the oppressive confines of Josef Stalin’s particularly toxic brand of communism.
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