Dmitri Schostakowitsch

Supported in his early years by Alexander Glazunov, Dmitri Shostakovich received a thorough education in Petrograd, studying piano with Leonid Nikolayev and composition with Maximilian Steinberg. After graduating in 1925, he joined the Association for Contemporary Music and quickly developed international connections, meeting figures such as Alban Berg, Arthur Honegger, and Darius Milhaud in person.

After initial successes and a brief experimental phase, the opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District became a decisive turning point. A harsh, Stalin linked denunciation published in Pravda in January 1936 led to the opera being withdrawn after a successful run. About twenty five years later Shostakovich issued a revised, softened version under the title Katerina Ismailova. Having also withdrawn his modernist Fourth Symphony, he composed the more accessible Fifth Symphony, which in 1937 brought him a professorship at the Leningrad Conservatory.

The Seventh Symphony became a symbol of resistance during the Siege of Leningrad. Evacuated to Kuibyshev during the war, Shostakovich moved to Moscow after 1945 and was appointed professor of composition at the conservatory there. Official criticism, directed particularly at Symphonies Nos. 8 and 9 for failing to deliver the desired triumphant celebration of victory, culminated in the 1948 Central Committee decree that condemned his music, along with that of other composers, as “formalist” and “alien to the people.” For a time he lost his teaching posts.

After Stalin’s death he gradually regained recognition within the Soviet Union, aided by frequent performances and honours abroad, and he was increasingly allowed to travel. From 1957 to 1968 he served as secretary of the Composers’ Union of the USSR, in 1960 he joined the Communist Party, and in 1962 he was elected to the Supreme Soviet. His final years were marked by serious illness.

Alongside Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Prokofiev, Shostakovich is widely regarded as one of the most important Russian composers of the twentieth century. He wrote in almost every genre, from silent film scores to fifteen symphonies and fifteen string quartets, as well as major chamber and piano works. His orchestral writing is often compared to Gustav Mahler in its emotional range and precision, combining biting irony, deep tragedy, and strong formal clarity. His relationship to the Soviet system remained outwardly ambiguous, shaped by both compliance and resistance, a tension that runs through his life and his music.