ABSOLUTELY MASSIVE // Dmitri Shostakovich - Symphony No. 11 in G minor // Composer Reaction 

So … I *highly* recommend you listen to the entire thing and uninterrupted too. So the event depicted is what happened in January 1905 at the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. The story goes that hundreds of people present their grievances to the Czar. They were meant by the guards and unfortunately it ended in violence. The whole thing is a brilliant work of program music, which characterises a lot of Shostakovich’s symphonies. It’s been described as a film score without a film. For me personally, this was a very impressionable work and I can’t help but hear how it influenced my own work =] Half-step is American and semitone is British =] There’s more but I’ll hold off for now 😉

6:54 that "counter-rhythm" you mentioned is derived from a very important recurring theme in the symphony which first appears in the first movement. You have to listen to the whole thing uninterrupted because the intended effect is for the music to play out as if you were witnessing the events it depicts

The most moving ending to a Shostakovich symphony is that of his fourth. After one hour of VERY LOUD music, it ends in an almost guilty quiet moment.

I'd suggest any movement of Shostakovich's 8th symphony for a reaction. 1st and 3rd especially, but the whole thing is a masive picture of brutal force, melancholy and sarcasm mixing together.

The 10th is my favourite, particularly Dudamel's version. It always feels like Dmitri is taking me by the hand & saying "come follow me, we're going on a journey ..."

1:53 Those are rotary-valve trumpets. The ones you're probably used to seeing are piston-valve trumpets. Rotary valves are typical on French horns, though many professional trumpet players may choose the rotary valves as their preference. 12:00 Not a clarinet, but a type of oboe. It's the English horn (or Cor Anglais). Like the oboe, it is a double reed instrument. It has mostly the same fingerings as the oboe but transposed in the alto range.

Ooh so happy you did this one, it’s my favorite piece of Shostakovich! It’s more metal than most metal!

That was so good. That was so black metal. Two things I love in black metal are atmosphere, and menace. And this had both. I really do love classical music but I can never remember the songs by name or composer.

What a coincidence! I'm just hearing his String Quartet nº 8... his most heavy metal work 🤘

I think what you are feeling while listening to Shostakovich (or any other music, really) is the most important thing. Imho, Shostakovich's music transcends in its impact any specific theme or even time. It's universal in the truest sense of the word. Sometimes it's strongly sarcastic, sometimes it's grandiose with earth-shattering climaxes, at times it is extremely painful, dark and tragic... There's a palette of human emotions and it has long surpassed the supposed historical/social etc. context. It's magic, just as you said.

That conductor is a beast! He was really bringing the reality of that piece into the present. I mean his face at the end was pure primal focus lol. Also, you could really hear the hammer of the hammer & sickle in the ending portion. At first I thought it was off beat/time, but it was hitting on downbeats, just on unexpected beats. Also, is it fair to say that percussion in a symphony setting such as this provides embellishment/detail/accent and not anything like time/metronome/ tempo?

My favourite work of Shostakovitch is the Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 57. Very dissonant, very emotive!

You should check out his 10th Symphony 2nd movement. Its only like 4 minutes long, very incredible. Dudamel version is one of the best.

Some parts put me in mind of Orff. Lovely!

Shostakovich has a beautiful Waltz featured in Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. Waltz Number 2.

His 11th symphony is brutal. I adore the first two movements. Are you aware of what the symphony was written about?

That beautiful solo was played on an English horn - kinda similar to an oboe.

Haven't watched yet, but I will note this is a very odd recommendation for Shostakovich. He's never been a favorite composer of mine (I find him very hit-and-miss), but I do acknowledge his status as one of the best "traditional" classical composers of the 20th century. His symphonies especially are revered as carrying on the legacy of Beethoven, Bruckner, and Mahler of trying to cram "the whole world" into them; but among his symphonies the 11th is usually considered mid-bottom tier. One problem is that Shosta was always beset by political troubles. Being a Russian composer during the communist era he was often pressured to write popular music that would have a more patriotic/national glorification bent, and he was often threatened or blacklisted by authorities when he tried to compose music more personally interesting to him. Within that context, the 11th and 12th symphonies were very much aimed at that "popular patriotic/national glorification" ideal, and they succeeded on that front, with the 11th even winning him the Lenin Prize. It was subtitled "The Year 1905" and was about the Soviet Revolution. By Shosta's standards it's extremely programmatic (in which the musical ideas are lead by the concept rather than by purely musical logic) and rather simple. Like a lot of Shosta it's good at making a lot of big, flashy noise, but compared to his best (of his symphonies I really like the 1st, 4th, 5th, 10th, and 14th) I think it's rather shallow. Shosta also wrote 15 string quartets that I think, on the whole, are more consistently good than his symphonies, though I don't think his best SQs are as good as his best symphonies. I also rather like his cello concertos, 2nd Piano Trio, and his 24 Preludes and Fugues for piano. Most of the rest of his out put I could take-or-leave, and he was extremely prolific beyond that.

Love all his symphonic works, found a box set conducted by his son. I love all the 5th and 9th symphonies and the second movement of the 10th symphony.

I’d say it’s standard to have four different horn parts played by four horn players.

Shostakovich was such a punk! Constantly throwing the horrible reality of Soviet rule back in Stalin's face. And further insulting his intelligence by loosely guising it as patriotism.