Dmitri's Dacha

[Roasted Swan]

Beloved of primary schools everywhere, I'm sure.

In similar vein

[LKB]

Could I point interested readers towards this (NOT a joke or spoof I promise!!)

https://www.sheetmusicplus.com/en/product/1812-overture-for-recorder-quartet-19923079.html

1812 arranged for Recorder Quartet.  Fill that gaping hole that has been in your musical-appreciation-life [NB:  the link is to buy the sheet music - yours for $8.95 - NOT listen to the awe inspiring result]

l approve of the concept, but l simply must have the original key of E-Flat Major. 

[relm1]

I am intrigued by Boosey's set of "Newly revised edition" of Shostakovich's symphonies but they give no details of what the revisions are.  Anyone have more insight in to this?  Sure would make a nice 50th anniversary gift for this fan.

https://www.boosey.com/shop/ucat/102624?track=DSCHuniv

[relm1]

I am curious, is there a list of all the external musical references within Symphony No. 15?  We all know about William Tell and Gotterdammerung but am curious about the others and self references to Shostakovich too.  I thought I heard his Symphony No. 13 in here too.

[LKB]

I am curious, is there a list of all the external musical references within Symphony No. 15?  We all know about William Tell and Gotterdammerung but am curious about the others and self references to Shostakovich too.  I thought I heard his Symphony No. 13 in here too.

If the job tonight is as wonderfully boring as usual, this might give me something to do, if l can remember.

[relm1]

If the job tonight is as wonderfully boring as usual, this might give me something to do, if l can remember.

  Here's hoping for your boring evening workload.

[krummholz]

There have got to be dozens, as late Shostakovich is full of self-quotations. I'll just mention one: the clickety-clack percussion ending of the 4th Symphony's second movement turns up at the end of the 15th, though with a very different effect.

[LKB]

Well, I remembered. 

Here's the performance I chose:

https://youtu.be/N0iZGMXpquQ?si=rrdLLX9cKnXfLp56

Now, a major caveat should be stated.

While I've memorized Shostakovich's Symphonies 5,6,8,11, 13 and 14, I have never heard the others except for no. 1, which I played and immediately forgot in 1977 or '78, and no. 15 tonight, for the very first time.

So I've undoubtedly missed some of the quotes, due to not ever having heard the quoted music.

That being said, here's what I did catch, making my notes on Notepad so I could copy/paste:

01:55: William Tell in E Major, Rossini's original key, though he never had it in the brass as here.

05:19: Beginning of Mahler 5 combined with Wagner Siegfried forging scene. Interesting choice for quoting. ( Unless it's merely a happy accident. )

18:20: Climax feels " unearned ".  Probably should listen again, rushing to judgement on one hearing is frequently a mistake.

29:45 Götterdämmerung ( 1st trombone is NOT cutting it here, nervous maybe? )... interspersed with a brief quote from the third movement of Shosti 11, to good effect.

30:51 VIBRATO from the HORN? Really? Maybe it's in the score, or at Haitink's request... Otherwise, appropriate correction must surely be administered. Make him watch Birdemic: Shock and Terror.

[Brian]

Just saw the piece live in concert last night by coincidence...I was astonished by the way that, in the finale, he was able to make a coherent new melody by Frankensteining together quotes from the Ring, Tristan, and a Glinka song.

[relm1]

Well, I remembered. 

Here's the performance I chose:

https://youtu.be/N0iZGMXpquQ?si=rrdLLX9cKnXfLp56

Now, a major caveat should be stated.

While I've memorized Shostakovich's Symphonies 5,6,8,11, 13 and 14, I have never heard the others except for no. 1, which I played and immediately forgot in 1977 or '78, and no. 15 tonight, for the very first time.

So I've undoubtedly missed some of the quotes, due to not ever having heard the quoted music.

That being said, here's what I did catch, making my notes on Notepad so I could copy/paste:

01:55: William Tell in E Major, Rossini's original key, though he never had it in the brass as here.

05:19: Beginning of Mahler 5 combined with Wagner Siegfried forging scene. Interesting choice for quoting. ( Unless it's merely a happy accident. )

18:20: Climax feels " unearned ".  Probably should listen again, rushing to judgement on one hearing is frequently a mistake.

29:45 Götterdämmerung ( 1st trombone is NOT cutting it here, nervous maybe? )... interspersed with a brief quote from the third movement of Shosti 11, to good effect.

30:51 VIBRATO from the HORN? Really? Maybe it's in the score, or at Haitink's request... Otherwise, appropriate correction must surely be administered. Make him watch Birdemic: Shock and Terror.

Very fine list!  Something I've been thinking about, why did he use Wagner's Gotterdammerung?  Wouldn't something like Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov's death scene have made more sense because it would be very Russian, he arranged in the 1940's and could have had a similar ominous fragment affect.  The way he is using Gotterdammerung doesn't feel like a quote but rather a memory (a quote fogged through decades of time passing...it's not quite right but clear what he's thinking about).  This symphony is like a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a riddle.

[Maestro267]

There have got to be dozens, as late Shostakovich is full of self-quotations. I'll just mention one: the clickety-clack percussion ending of the 4th Symphony's second movement turns up at the end of the 15th, though with a very different effect.

On top of that, the timpani motif is based on the invasion theme from the first movement of the 7th Symphony, and the long-held chord in strings is an obvious callback to the long-held chord in strings that ends the 4th Symphony's finale.

[relm1]

It's really interesting when a composer's final symphony doesn't just bookend their symphonies but offers a retrospective of their entire output so succinctly while still being a very fine work on its own.

[lordlance]

Curious of people's thoughts on Muti's Fifth:



I am not terribly familiar with the piece so I may just not not be the target audience but the moderato is boring to me. Especially at 16 minutes.

EDIT: Having finished listening to the piece, I can tell Muti can't deliver the goods for the coda and the recording quality is sub-par as is often the case with EMI sadly (Sawallisch being a big casualty.)

I suppose most of the piece being downtempo (even after skipping the Largo) is probably why it can't interest me. One gets tired of waiting for things to pick up.

I heard Stokowski's live performance off the recent BBC Legends remaster yesterday. Can't say that made me excited either.

[Daverz]

Curious of people's thoughts on Muti's Fifth:

I tend to think very highly of Muti's EMI recordings, but I don't believe I've ever heard this Shostakovich 5.

I am not terribly familiar with the piece so I may just not not be the target audience but the moderato is boring to me. Especially at 16 minutes.

EDIT: Having finished listening to the piece, I can tell Muti can't deliver the goods for the coda and the recording quality is sub-par as is often the case with EMI sadly (Sawallisch being a big casualty.)

I suppose most of the piece being downtempo (even after skipping the Largo) is probably why it can't interest me. One gets tired of waiting for things to pick up.

I heard Stokowski's live performance off the recent BBC Legends remaster yesterday. Can't say that made me excited either.

I suggest trying the first Bernstein. 

Hurwitz has a good survey of recordings of this symphony.

[Karl Henning]

I had clean forgotten that I wrote this review.

[relm1]

I came across this article from New York Times in April 13, 1981.  Made me curious about Dmitri Junior.  What ever happened to him?  The Shostakovich piano concerto no. 2 seems to be his only recording and no further news about him.  Curious what else he did musically if anything?

New York Times April 13, 1981
The son and grandson of the late Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich are seeking political asylum in West Germany, the Interior Ministry reported today.

They turned themselves over to the police after performing with the Soviet Radio Symphony Orchestra in the municipal theater in Furth, just outside Nuremberg in Bavaria.

The late composer's son, Maksim, 42 years old, was the conductor of the orchestra, and his 19-year-old son, Dmitri, was its pianist. The ministry said that the two musicians were under the protection of federal authorities, but gave no other details.

They had played selections from Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich last night before asking for asylum. A reception that was to have been given for the orchestra after the concert was abruptly canceled with the explanation that the orchestra was leaving ahead of schedule. Debut as Conductor in '66

Maksim Shostakovich made his debut as a conductor in 1966. He won fifth place in a national competition for young conductors and made his first important public appearance at the premiere in 1967 of his father's symphonic work ''October.'' He appeared the same year with the Soviet State Symphony in Nuremberg, the city in which he turned himself over to authorities on Saturday.

In 1978 the conductor was named chief conductor of the Symphony Orchestra of Central Soviet Radio and Television. He was a popular figure in music in the Soviet Union and was frequently seen on national television.

His father, regarded as the Soviet Union's greatest modern composer, had occasional problems with the Soviet Communist Party, falling in and out of official favor in the 1930's and again in the late 1940's, but also winning many Lenin and Stalin prizes and orders of merit.

Dmitri Shostakovich's 7th Symphony, ''The Leningrad,'' was given its premiere in that city in World War II and has become a sort of anthem in the Soviet Union. Book Was Assailed by Son

Maksim openly criticized a book published in the West after his father's death in 1975 that was described as the composer's memoirs. In the account, Dmitri Shostakovich was characterized as being very critical of the Soviet Union. His son said the book was compiled by people who did not know his father well and offered rumor and secondhand accounts as original information.

At the time, Maksim said in an interview that news of the book's publication in the West was ''like learning about your own death from the newspaper - highly exaggerated.''

However, a month later, when asked by the Soviet authorities to denounce the book, Maksim issued a statement that said, ''There is no doubt that the black days of the personality cult he suffered through so painfully also found expression in his tragic canvases.'' But, the statement went on, his father's music ''rises above the descriptions of Stalin's character to a generalization of his attitude toward tyranny in all its forms.''

Such phrases as ''black days'' and ''tyranny'' in the same breath with ''Stalin'' were apparently too much for the Soviet press and Maksim's statement was not published in Moscow. Canceled Two Concerts in '71

In January 1971 Maksim canceled two concerts he was to have conducted with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra because of the presence of a Soviet defector in the cello section. The cellist, Vsevolod Lezhnev, had been a member of the Moscow State Orchestra and acquaintance of Mr. Shostakovich. He defected two years earlier.

Eight years later, at the time of the cancellation of the Moscow State Orchestra's five-week tour of the United States in September 1979, Mr. Shostakovich was mentioned as a possible conductor on the tour. There was speculation at the time that the abrupt cancellation of the tour was motivated by fears of defections from the orchestra.

[Daverz]

I came across this article from New York Times in April 13, 1981.  Made me curious about Dmitri Junior.  What ever happened to him?  The Shostakovich piano concerto no. 2 seems to be his only recording and no further news about him.  Curious what else he did musically if anything?

New York Times April 13, 1981
The son and grandson of the late Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich are seeking political asylum in West Germany, the Interior Ministry reported today.

They turned themselves over to the police after performing with the Soviet Radio Symphony Orchestra in the municipal theater in Furth, just outside Nuremberg in Bavaria.

The late composer's son, Maksim, 42 years old, was the conductor of the orchestra, and his 19-year-old son, Dmitri, was its pianist. The ministry said that the two musicians were under the protection of federal authorities, but gave no other details.

They had played selections from Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich last night before asking for asylum. A reception that was to have been given for the orchestra after the concert was abruptly canceled with the explanation that the orchestra was leaving ahead of schedule. Debut as Conductor in '66

Maksim Shostakovich made his debut as a conductor in 1966. He won fifth place in a national competition for young conductors and made his first important public appearance at the premiere in 1967 of his father's symphonic work ''October.'' He appeared the same year with the Soviet State Symphony in Nuremberg, the city in which he turned himself over to authorities on Saturday.

In 1978 the conductor was named chief conductor of the Symphony Orchestra of Central Soviet Radio and Television. He was a popular figure in music in the Soviet Union and was frequently seen on national television.

His father, regarded as the Soviet Union's greatest modern composer, had occasional problems with the Soviet Communist Party, falling in and out of official favor in the 1930's and again in the late 1940's, but also winning many Lenin and Stalin prizes and orders of merit.

Dmitri Shostakovich's 7th Symphony, ''The Leningrad,'' was given its premiere in that city in World War II and has become a sort of anthem in the Soviet Union. Book Was Assailed by Son

Maksim openly criticized a book published in the West after his father's death in 1975 that was described as the composer's memoirs. In the account, Dmitri Shostakovich was characterized as being very critical of the Soviet Union. His son said the book was compiled by people who did not know his father well and offered rumor and secondhand accounts as original information.

At the time, Maksim said in an interview that news of the book's publication in the West was ''like learning about your own death from the newspaper - highly exaggerated.''

However, a month later, when asked by the Soviet authorities to denounce the book, Maksim issued a statement that said, ''There is no doubt that the black days of the personality cult he suffered through so painfully also found expression in his tragic canvases.'' But, the statement went on, his father's music ''rises above the descriptions of Stalin's character to a generalization of his attitude toward tyranny in all its forms.''

Such phrases as ''black days'' and ''tyranny'' in the same breath with ''Stalin'' were apparently too much for the Soviet press and Maksim's statement was not published in Moscow. Canceled Two Concerts in '71

In January 1971 Maksim canceled two concerts he was to have conducted with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra because of the presence of a Soviet defector in the cello section. The cellist, Vsevolod Lezhnev, had been a member of the Moscow State Orchestra and acquaintance of Mr. Shostakovich. He defected two years earlier.

Eight years later, at the time of the cancellation of the Moscow State Orchestra's five-week tour of the United States in September 1979, Mr. Shostakovich was mentioned as a possible conductor on the tour. There was speculation at the time that the abrupt cancellation of the tour was motivated by fears of defections from the orchestra.

The Wikipedia article doesn't say much more.  He made 2 cycles of his father's symphonies, one for Supraphon and one for Collins Classics. 

As of 2012, he was living in St. Petersburg:

https://www.classicfm.com/composers/shostakovich/guides/father-figure-maxim-shostakovich-speaks/

I can't find any info on if he has a current gig, or even what his last one might have been.  He'd be about 86 now.

[Brian]

The Wikipedia article doesn't say much more.  He made 2 cycles of his father's symphonies, one for Supraphon and one for Collins Classics. 

As of 2012, he was living in St. Petersburg:

https://www.classicfm.com/composers/shostakovich/guides/father-figure-maxim-shostakovich-speaks/

I can't find any info on if he has a current gig, or even what his last one might have been.  He'd be about 86 now.

I think relm means grandson Dmitry Jr.

[Daverz]

I think relm means grandson Dmitry Jr.

Oops, so he did. 

[DaveF]

I came across this article from New York Times in April 13, 1981.  Made me curious about Dmitri Junior.  What ever happened to him?  The Shostakovich piano concerto no. 2 seems to be his only recording and no further news about him.  Curious what else he did musically if anything?

I started getting interested in him after reading your post, so tried searching for дмитрий максимович шостакович, which does turn up a few more hits.  This: https://kino.mail.ru/news/41455-vnuk-shostakovicha-predstavil-v-vitebske-fotosjuitu/ suggests that he works, or worked, as a photographer.  I especially like the picture of him - not much doubt that that's our man!  But yes, searches tend to take you round in circles with links either to the piano concerto recording or to the article you posted.