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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.
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, it claims, failed to provide such work for an "appreciative audience". The piece calls Lady Macbeth "coarse, primitive and vulgar", a "cacophony" of "nervous, convulsive, and spasmodic music" that is little more than a "wilderness of musical chaos". Turning now to the composer himself, it admits that Shostakovich had talent but ...
Despite early success on popular and official levels, Lady Macbeth became the vehicle for a general denunciation of Shostakovich's music by the CPSU in early 1936: after being condemned in an anonymous article (sometimes attributed to Joseph Stalin but actually authored by David Zaslavsky [1]) in Pravda, titled "Muddle Instead of Music", it was banned in the Soviet Union for almost thirty ...
In 1948 Shostakovich, along with many other composers, was again denounced for formalism in the Zhdanov decree. Simplistic and overtly accessible compositions was exactly what the Party demanded. Shostakovich was not the only one writing "safe" pieces at this time.
Particularly, the premiere of Symphony No. 13 "Babi Yar" (1962), which had provoked enormous disapproval among the Soviet leadership of the Communist Party (the symphony's song text denounces the Soviet anti-Semitism of the time), was probably the main reason why Shostakovich had not considered publishing his satirical cantata. [4]
In late August, Shostakovich was among the signatories of an open letter published in the media, entitled "He Disgraces the Calling of Citizen", that denounced Andrei Sakharov. This drew an angry response from Lydia Chukovskaya—whose nephew was married to Shostakovich's daughter, Galina—that was disseminated in samizdat and in Western media ...
Shostakovich and Sviatoslav Richter played the Ninth Symphony in a four-hand arrangement for musicians and cultural officials in early September 1945. The premiere, conducted by Yevgeny Mravinsky, took place on 3 November 1945 in the opening concert of the 25th season of the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, sharing the program with Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5.