Dimitri Shostakovich

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But it would be cool! you putn a coin in to pay for stuff, break your computer open and take the coin out, and then put it back in to pay for more stuff!

You're weird.

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I can't stand listening to these long symphonies. I get distracted and all. Is there a short clip of the good parts I can listen to?

There speaks the MTV generation! Any music that lasts longer than exactly 2 minutes 45 seconds is 'too long' and 'boring'.

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There speaks the MTV generation! Any music that lasts longer than exactly 2 minutes 45 seconds is 'too long' and 'boring'.

exacly. I'm sure I have ADD or something. I'm POSITIVE! but no ones found it yet.

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There speaks the MTV generation! Any music that lasts longer than exactly 2 minutes 45 seconds is 'too long' and 'boring'. Roll eyes

So true, that goes to my sig.

Any piece that is under 10 minutes is too short and often whimsical! Best parts?! Are you crazy!?! To take music out of it's notational context is to destroy it.
Come to speak of it, i've had the same problem with trying to introduce people to Shostakovich and his wonderful world, someone said "I don't have an hour to listen to a piece of music", yet he continued to listen to Queen Greatest hits, and proceed through EVERY Album in the compilation. That irked me.
Anyway, most modern music is about someone breaking up with their "ex", like Lemar's marvellous song "it's time to grow (my wife)". Always sung in a pretencious...American accent.

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The outro of his Symphony 5 is absoultly breathtaking.

What's an 'outro'? The opposite of an 'intro'?

Personally, I find the ending of his 5th too pompous and overblown. He's trying too hard to be optimistic and heroic. I prefer the ending of his 7th, the 'Leningrad', which is genuinely optimistic in an unforced way.

It seems to come into it's own, with the reference back to the main theme of the first movement. It was war-time, it deserves to be just that, the perfect call to arms! However, I think the preceeding movement is a hundred times as potent for stirring up deeply patriotic feeling.

Never listen to the evil Classic Fm, it is 5 hours of adverts to 1 hour music. The only music they play is what HMV have in stock and is on offer and if not that the free cds they get in the Sunday papers, Listen to radio 3.

I absolutely LOVE his Valse #2 from his Jazz Suite.

His film music is also an important and neglected part of his oeuvre. Has anyone heard his music to 'The Gadfly'? It's pure genius!

Kurt Sanderling (not the best of conductors!), in his infinite wisdom, has come to the conclusion that symph 8, movt. 3 is "the crushing of the individual" (by the Soviet state); what utter complete rubbish!
He gives absolutely no thought to the actual context of the symphony. Using his logic, it could be said that the overture HMS Pinafore is an attack on prostitution, and missing the point of the satirical piece on a whole!

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?Shostakovich vs. Harry Potter: That TWERP Harry Potter not only stole Shostakovich's glasses and broke them, but the media likes him much better. The cheek of it!?

hahaha!!! Long live random websites!

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There have been cases of symphonies ending quietly rather than with a loud, raucous flourish. Vaughan Williams' 'London' symphony ends quietly, and he ended his 6th with a slow movement. In fact, it's so quiet you can barely hear it. Wink And Shostakovich's own 13th, 14th and 15th symphonies end rather quietly as well.

Another fantastic quiet end is Mahler's 9th Symphony...it seems to fade away to almost nothing at all.

Anyone here heard of Arvo Pärt? He's an Estonian composer who also suffered under Communism to some degree. His piece Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten is one of the most moving pieces of music I have ever heard.
So don't just sit there - DOWNLOAD IT NOW!!

And let's not forget the ending of Mahler's 'Das Lied von der Erde'. The music slowly fading away into the distance as the singer intones the word 'Ewig... ewig...' 'Forever... forever...'

I've seen this fantastic book around, which is basically a massive list of all 'classical' (I dislike using this word as it only really refers to a small part of the music - but then again what else could I use?) composers and their works. You know how there are hundreds of versions of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, done by many different people, all of different quality - this book basically reviews these versions and picks out the best. Very useful!

And I think I'll download that Mahler piece right now.

Has anybody ever felt as though the atmosphere of Shostakovich's 11th was somewhat....borrowed or emulated from Vaughan Williams's 2nd?

I listened to the London Symphony 2 months ago, and felt myself as if I was in the winter palace square surrounded by the destitute. Of course, the references to "o czar our father" and other hymns of the age of 1905 are not mentioned in Vaughan Williams!!

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Has anybody ever felt as though the atmosphere of Shostakovich's 11th was somewhat....borrowed or emulated from Vaughan Williams's 2nd?

Not really. The atmosphere V.W. was trying to evoke (very successfully) in his 2nd was one of mystical languid daydreaming. Especially in the final movement, with Old Father Thames drifting by, like time flowing into the ocean of eternity... the Thames passes... London passes....

Shostakovich, on the other hand, wanted to evoke an atmosphere of hushed tension, the stillness before a storm breaks. And he succeeded brilliantly; there is something sinister about the first movement of his 11th, despite its hushed quiet. You get the feeling that something very nasty is about to happen, and, of course, it does.

So, no, I don't really see the connection.

Has anyone ever herd Galop from Moscow Cheremushky? It has comically been dubbed the "Kremlin theme."