My Favourite Composer - An audio-visual entertainment by Trevor Parkins

Playlist and rough notes:

Second Jazz Suite: Waltz No. 2
Music used by Stanley Kubrick in his film 'Eyes Wide Shut'

Symphony No. 10: 2nd Movement
Performed by the National Childrens Orchestra of Great Britain (maximum age 13 years)

Shostakovich's musical signature DSCH used in several compositions.
The most mournful music.
String Quartet No.8: Opening

Why Shostakovich?
Unique sounds especially in his violin concerto
Prolific composer - film, ballet, opera, 15 string quartets, 15 symphonies and much, much more.
Variety of styles - sadness, fun, patriotism, lyricism, excitement.
A Russian history lesson in music.

Early 30's, the five-year plan to boost industry and agriculture.
Necessary to create works on contemporary themes.
Ballet 'The Bolt' about life in a soviet factory.
Disguntled employee bent on sabotage.
Life in the factory - gymnastics, robots, beaurocrats snooping, drayman in drunken stupor.
Ballet 'The Bolt': Intermezzo


Wrote score to many films including The Gadfly, story of a spy who had numerous intrigues both political and with women.
The Gadfly Suite: Romance
Perfomed by Nicola Benedetti at The Last night of the Proms 2012

Opera 'Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk'.  About a woman who murdered her father-in-law.
Subject treated sympathetically by Shostakovich.  Opera instantly popular with 200 performances in Leningrad and Moscow.  In 1936 three running simultaneously in Moscow alone one of which was attended by Stalin who stormed out saying it was 'Muddle not Music'.  Shostakovich denounced for anti-soviet views and subsequently lived in a state of terror.  In constant fear of arrest he slept with a packed suitcase fearing a knock on the door.  While contemplating suicide wrote his 8th String Quartet (see above).

Symphony No. 7 (Leningrad): March
Originally intended as a portrait of the city but, completed in 1941 during the siege of Leningrad, it was taken over by the authorities as a propoganda tool.

Music became a rallying call for perseverance and victory in the face of overwhelming difficulties.
The Germans had surrounded the city.  First there was no water.  Then the food ran out.  Finally there was no more fuel for heating.  Hitler did not want to take the city while there were still people.

The emaciated survivors of the orchestra assembled for a performance which was broadcast on loudspeakers all over the city and to the Germans.  Over 1.5 million perished in the city.

In 1905 100,000 unarmed people marched to the Winter Palace with a petition for the Tsar.
Many in prison were poltical prisoners.
The Imperial Guard opened fire with rifles and the cavalry charged with sabres.  The attack was ferocious and unmerciful.  Then suddenly they are all gone and there is silence.  The snow covered square is littered with dead and dying bodies.
Shostakovich knows the revolution was ultimately successful and ends with a triumphal finale.  All the bells in the city are ringing.
Symphony No. 11 (The Year 1905)

Piano Concerto No. 2
Central slow movement is often played on its own.  It makes much more sense if the tranquil second movement is preceded by the high energy first movement which sets it up and is then followed by the vigorous finale.

Quotation:
'Nowhere, except in Russia, have art and music been so firmly bound to the political and social situation.
Nowhere, except in Russia, has art been such a substitute for real life.
Nowhere, except in Russia, has the real life of a great country with enormous intellectual potential been so empty and hopeless.'

Symphony No. 6: Finale
Vienna Philharmonic orchestra conducted by Leonard Bernstein
Has been described as the rip-roaring 'Moscow Circus'.

Duty Officers were Alan Chifney, John Bromwich