Our Shostakovich birthday celebration this year will focus, fittingly enough, on music largely of youth, including the composer's early masterwork—the Symphony No. 1 in F minor, Op. 10—written between 1924 and 1925 as the composer's graduation piece at the Leningrad Conservatory, upon whose premiere (by the Leningrad Philharmonic under the baton of Nicolai Malko on May 12, 1926), the 19-year-old composer's piece became an instant international sensation and launched his career as a major global voice.
Other highlights will include the composer's Concerto No. 1 in C Minor for Piano (with Trumpet and Strings), purportedly inspired by and deriving its playful spirit from the composer's moonlighting while a student at the Conservatory as the pianist accompanying silent films in movie houses of then-Leningrad of the 1920s.
We'll also hear the composer's first foray into the form that would define much of his later years, the string quartet—a short, neo-classical work that stands out in sunny and lighthearted contrast to the darker, more tragic weight of his later quartets and major symphonies from that era, written quickly and lightly following the birth of his son Maxim and amid the intense pressure surrounding his Fifth Symphony. In it Shostakovich said he had "visualized childhood scenes, somewhat naïve and bright moods associated with spring."
Rounding out our tribute will be music by the composer Shostakovich professed to be his own personal favorite (and whose mantle he sought to carry into the 20th Century), Modest Mussorgsky.
You can hear Foley Schuler's musical selections—and stories behind the music—every weekday afternoon from 1 until 4 on Blue Lake Public Radio.
