Tag Archives: Shostakovich
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk Returns to the Met
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 30th September 2022Yesterday evening the Met revived Graham Vick’s production of Shostakovich’s 20th century masterpiece Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. A few remarks about the production. The Met has mounted this staging in 1994, 2000, 2014, and now in this year. To its discredit the Met has yet to include the opera in its HD series. I suspect…
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Finale 25: Shostakovich: Symphony No. 11 in G Minor, Op. 103 “The Year 1905”- 4. The Tocsin
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 9th September 2020Written and first performed in 1957, Shostakovich’s Symphony #11 was ostensibly about the abortive Russian Revolution of 1905. Everything the composer wrote or said after Stalin squashed him in 1935 because the dictator was offended by Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk has to be decoded. He composed the piece in the wake of the Soviet repression…
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Shostakovich’s First Film Score
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 28th September 2019Dmitri Shostakovich wrote 25 film scores. The first of these was composed when he was 23 years old. The New Babylon is an expressionistic depiction of the Paris Commune of 1871. It was released in 1929 and was a failure. It’s plot is summarized here. The music is brilliant and presages virtually everything Shostakovich was…
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Shostakovich and Korngold in Santa Fe
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 1st August 2019Two major works by Dmitri Shostakovich and Eric Krongold were presented yesterday evening by the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. They were preceded by a bit of fluff by Alfred Schnittke – Mo-Zart for Two Violins, after Mozart’s K 416d. For the carnival season of 1783 Mozart wrote some music for his family’s use. Most…
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Shostakovich Symphony #4 – Gergiev
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 4th March 2018Shostakovich’s 4th Symphony is unlike any of his other 14 works in this genre. To begin with, it calls for about 125 musicians. The demands on the players are extraordinary. Though it has only three movements, it typically takes more than an hour to perform. It was written in 1936 and was scheduled to be…
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Shostakovich – The Gadfly
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 17th January 2018Dmitri Shostakovich’s music seems to be in the process of eclipsing that of all other 20th century composers, again proving Verdi’s dictum that the only critic that counted, in the long run, was the audience. The Russian composer was a prolific composer of film music. His most famous piece from that ouvre is the Romance…
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Shostakovich: Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk – Orchestral Excerpts
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 24th June 2017Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District is the greatest Russian opera of the 20th century and among all Russian operas is matched only by Boris Godunov. Set to a libretto by the composer and Alexander Preys, it depicts the brutality of mid 19th century Russian life and the plight of women enmeshed in a…
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Shostakovich Violin Concerto #2 and Symphony # 7
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 5th June 2016Disc 6 of Valery Gergiev’s Shostakovich cycle contains the 2nd Violin Concerto and the Leningrad Symphony (#7). It was recorded in performance in February of 2014. The soloist was Alena Baeva. The violin concerto, written and first performed in 1967, was the last concerto composed by Shostakovich. It was dedicated, as was the 1st, to…
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Shostakovich Violin Concerto #1 and Symphony #11
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 17th May 2016Disc 8 of the Shostakovich series, conducted by Valery Gergiev, mentioned in my last post contains the performance of the above music recorded at the Salle Pleyel on February 18, 2014. The soloist is the the great Russian violinist Vadim Repin. The first violin concerto (opus 77) was written in 1947-8. It was dedicated to David Oistrakh…
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Shostakovich Complete Symphonies and Concertos
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 14th May 2016Arthaus Musik has released an 8 disc DVD set of all the Shostakovich Symphonies and Concertos. Valery Gergiev, perhaps the best conductor of the Russian master now active, leads soloists and the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra and chorus in performances recorded at the Salle Pleyel in Paris. These recording were made in 2013/14. I just received…
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