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The film adopts the revisionist view of Shostakovich put forward by Solomon Volkov in his book Testimony (which is quoted extensively in the film without attribution). [1] This view holds that Shostakovich was strongly opposed to the leadership of Josef Stalin, and that he included anti-government messages in his compositions under the Soviet ...
Testimony is a 1988 British independent musical drama film directed by Tony Palmer and starring Ben Kingsley, Sherry Baines and Robert Stephens.The film is based on the memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) as dictated in the book Testimony (edited by Solomon Volkov, ISBN 0-87910-021-4) and filmed in Panavision.
Dmitri Shostakovich composed his Symphony No. 4 in C minor, Op. 43, between September 1935 and May 1936, after abandoning some preliminary sketch material.In January 1936, halfway through this period, Pravda—under direct orders from Joseph Stalin [1] —published an editorial "Muddle Instead of Music" that denounced the composer and targeted his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.
Shostakovich later wrote to his friend Ivan Sollertinsky that he witnessed Stalin cringing at loud parts of the score and laughing at sexual moments. Displeased, Stalin left after the end of the third act. A frightened Shostakovich was reportedly "white as a sheet" when he bowed for the audience. [9]
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich [a] [b] (25 September [O.S. 12 September] 1906 – 9 August 1975) was a Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist [1] who became internationally known after the premiere of his First Symphony in 1926 and thereafter was regarded as a major composer.
DSCH is a musical motif used by the composer Dmitri Shostakovich to represent himself. It is a musical cryptogram in the manner of the BACH motif, consisting of the notes D, E-flat, C, B natural, or in German musical notation D, Es, C, H (pronounced as "De-Es-Ce-Ha"), thus standing for the composer's initials in German transliteration: D. Sch. (Dmitri Schostakowitsch).
The 1942 concert was also commemorated in the 1997 film The War Symphonies: Shostakovich Against Stalin. [55] There is a small museum dedicated to the event at School No. 235 in St. Petersburg, which includes a statue of Shostakovich and artefacts from the performance. [56]
The Execution of Stepan Razin (Russian «Казнь Степана Разина») (Op. 119) is a cantata composed by Dimitri Shostakovich to a libretto by Yevgeny Yevtushenko in 1964. The subject is the execution of Stepan Razin, a Cossack leader who headed a major uprising (1670–71) against the nobility and tsarist bureaucracy in southern ...