Fuck Yeah Classical

ihatemusic1943:

Dmitri Shostakovich: Suite from Hamlet for small orchestra (1932)

(Source: topofobia)

schubertiads:

Piano Quintet for Piano and Strings in G minor, Op. 57; IV. Intermezzo (lento)

Dmitri Shostakovich, composer

Dmitri Shostakovich, piano; Beethoven Quartet (Vassily Shirinsky, violin; Dmitri Tsyganov, violin; Vadim Borisovsky, viola; Sergei Shirinsky, cello)

Here is the first movement: I. Prelude (lento); and here is the second: II. Fugue (adagio); and here is the third: III. Scherzo (allegretto)

schubertiads:

Piano Quintet for Piano and Strings in G minor, Op. 57; II. Fugue (adagio)

Dmitri Shostakovich, composer

Dmitri Shostakovich, piano; Beethoven Quartet (Vassily Shirinsky, violin; Dmitri Tsyganov, violin; Vadim Borisovsky, viola; Sergei Shirinsky, cello)

Here is the first movement: I. Prelude (lento)

musicophilia:

Hamlet, Suite from the film score, Op.116a (assembled by Atovmyan): The Ghost

Dmitri Shostakovich

National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine,Theodore Kuchar

If one were to go by quantity alone, Shostakovich would be ranked as a leading Soviet film composer who also happened to write some pretty good symphonies and string quartets. He wrote around 50 film scores. The vast majority of them were written from 1930 to 1955, and were simply assigned to him. He had little real choice as to whether or not to accept them. Many of them, as a result, grace undeserving propagandist hackwork.

Things had changed by 1963. He no longer had to write for films, and only did so when good friends, such as director Grigori Kozintsev, asked him to participate in a worthy project. Kozintsev’s 1964 film of Hamlet, with the text translated by Boris Pasternak, is one of the fine films that suddenly started emerging from the U.S.S.R. in the 1960s.

Shostakovich had already written incidental music to a staged version of Hamlet in 1932. The suite from that score, Op. 32, is entirely different in content and character from the film music. The stage production was a bit of early Soviet experimental theater that thumbed its nose at bourgeois sensibilities by turning Hamlet into a raucous satire.

The film, however, is a respectful and highly effective version of the great Shakespeare play. The subject matter, which includes political murder, plotting, and repression, was suited to Shostakovich’s fully mature tragic symphonic style; in this case he did not have to fall back into the melodious and populist “Socialist Realist” pages he tossed off for the majority of his film scores.

The recent revival of his long-banned opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk might even have emboldened Shostakovich, who includes in this score some aspects of his style that he had given up following Stalin’s 1935 attack on that opera in a Pravda editorial. This notably includes fast, frantic, nearly shriekingly dissonant music. This makes for a highly effective contrast with the brooding quality that the film shares with the symphonic music of the period.

The score is extensive, with 34 numbers. One of the most effective uses of the music involves the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father. Kozintsev didn’t want to risk the possibility that the ghost on screen would turn out to be a poorly realized or silly special effect. So he decided not to put the ghost on screen at all. Instead, he asked Shostakovich to put the ghost in his score. When Hamlet sees the ghost, the viewers don’t see its presence, but they feel it in eerie harmonies and a subterranean gong stroke. The score has effective “source music” (i.e., quasi-period music that the on-screen characters are supposed to hear) as well as underscoring.

There are several ways to make effective concert suites from the film’s large score. The standard version, listed in Shostakovich’s catalog as the Hamlet Suite, Op. 116a, was drawn up and arranged by his associate Lev Atovmian, who did the same for many of his film projects.

For many, Hamlet is Shostakovich’s greatest and most characteristic film score.

—Joseph Stevenson, Rovi

musicophilia:

Gadfly, Suite Op.97a; Romance

Dmitri Shostakovich

National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, Theodore Kuchar 

Not the most substantive work of Shostakovich, but I find it charming and appropriate(ly titled) prior to sleeps. Right up my lush, romantic alley.

The Gadfly Suite, Op. 97a, is a music suite for orchestra arranged from the composition by Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) for the 1955 Soviet film The Gadfly based on the novel of the same name by Ethel Lilian Voynich (1864–1960).

The “Romance” section from the suite is known to Western TV audiences as the theme music for the BBC/PBS miniseries Reilly, Ace of Spies, about Russian adventurer Sidney Reilly. (wiki)

musicophilia:

The Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, Op. 67; IV. Allegretto

Dmitri Shostakovich

Edward Auer, piano 
Christiaan Bor, violin 
Paul Rosenthal, violin
Godfried Hoogeveen, cello
Nathaniel Rosen, cello

Obviously, this is a piano trio. And obviously, I have too many performers listed. But this CD, which also contains the Piano Quintet in G minor (op. 57), does not differentiate which violinist and which cellist is performing for the trio. So instead of guessing incorrectly, I am just listing them all. I am also 99% certain I have posted this before, but I can’t seem to find it (my lack of use of proper tags would be the culprit in this case), so I’m posting it again. I heard it on the radio on my drive back into town and was reminded how much I love this piano trio.

Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 2, Op. 67, is remarkable for a number of reasons. It was written in 1944, just after his Symphony No. 8, with which it shares its overall structure; it is a lamentation for both Shostakovich’s close friend, musicologist Ivan Sollertinsky, and the victims of the Holocaust, the news of which horror did not reach the U.S.S.R. until the liberation of the camps began; and it is his first work to employ a “Jewish theme,” a musical tribute that used the scales and rhythms of Jewish folk music as Shostakovich knew it. Shostakovich began composing the trio in December 1943. He had only completed sketches, which he was able to share with Sollertinsky before Sollertinsky’s death in February 1944. Shostakovich performed the piano part in the premiere, on November 14, 1944, in Leningrad, with violinist Dmitri Tsyganov and cellist Sergei Shirinsky, both members of the Beethoven String Quartet. The first movement begins with an Andante canon, the melody played first by the cello in harmonics, which makes it the top voice, then the violin, which becomes the lower string voice, followed by the piano in the lowest register. This then breaks into a slightly faster Moderato, where the same melody is developed into a second one, and the use of canon continues. This movement is followed by a scherzo, but one with bitter humor in the key of F sharp major. It is a fast, waltz-like whirl of a movement. The B flat minor Largo third movement opens with large block chords from the piano. This chorale theme becomes the ostinato bass of a passacaglia, repeated a total of six times, while the violin and cello are again in canon with a sombre, lamenting melody full of anguished, minor second dissonances between the two parts. This moves immediately into the final Allegretto, again in E minor. Here the Jewish figurations — the Dorian mode with an augmented fourth and the iambic rhythms — are used in a macabre dance that is contrasted against a stern march and five-beat climbs up and down the scale. The strings frequently play pizzicato to add to the sharpness of the dance. The movement ends as the dance gives way to the chorale of the Largo, but this time ending in the more comforting key of E major. —Patsy Morita, Rovi (via)

ihatemusic1943:

Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 60 “Leningrad” (1941)

Dmitri Shostakovich

• the “Invasion Theme” from the first movement

Kirill Kondrashin; Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra
Recorded in 1975

ihatemusic1943:

Overture on Russian and Khirghiz Folk Themes, Op. 115 (1963)

Dmitri Shostakovich

Theodore Kuchar; National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine
Recorded: June 1-8, 2005

nostalgiya:

“Prelude and Fugue No.7 in A major - Fugue”
Dmitri Shostakovich
Tatiana Nikolayeva (piano)

The three-voice fugue begins with a statement of the main theme, or subject, in the soprano voice. While fugal subjects usually use stepwise motion, this subject uses only the notes of the A major triad. This subject is then stated a fourth below in the alto, as would be expected in a Baroque fugue. After a brief interplay between the soprano and alto, the bass is introduced with a statement of the subject, completing the exposition. The modulatory section begins in the minor key; a brief return to the tonic key provides a breath of calm before an increasingly frenzied series of modulations. These lead to a climax in A major, signaled by a dominant pedal, but this lasts just four bars before the music plunges into C major. The music then settles down, gently leading to the recapitulation, where a single statement of the subject in the tonic key brings the piece to a close. (via)

ihatemusic1943:

Symphony No. 5 in D Minor, Op. 47 (1937)

Dmitri Shostakovich

• II. Allegretto

Kirill Kondrashin; Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra
Recorded in 1964