2:59 translated: My 7th Symphony was inspired by the terrible events of 1941. Our fight against facism, are coming victory over the enemy, my hometown of Leningrad, I dedicate this work. Now I will play an excerpt from the first part of the 7th Symphony.
@@songbird2383 There was no standard frame rate back then. Many old films are played back and digitized at 24 FPS despite having been filmed at a lower frame rate. This also leads to a faster playback of the audio track, which also makes it higher pitched.
@@rafreyes5140 If I remember correctly, the communist party of Russia doesn't exactly like him and most of his pieces because they kinda criticize the government of the country. Shostakovich lives under tge fear that he may soon be arrested by the KGB. Some sources said that he sleeps on the stairs outside his apartment so just in case the KGB finally arrests him, his family especially his children won't see him getting picked off never to be seen again.
@@raphaelclado8153 i feel bad for him that he has to go through all those threats, stress and anxieties.. his music makes me feel some kind of relief through escapism..thanks for sharing 🤍🤍
My guess would be, they were getting ready to film him playing one of his pieces and these are some luckily survived outtakes before they started (they probably started filming to check that the camera works properly and everything is in order or something like that). So while the camera crew was getting ready and doing their test run of the equipment, he just sat there smoking and chilling.
Stravinsky and Prokofiev ducked out and went to Paris, but Shostakovich stayed and courageously faced up to the horrors of Stalinist Russia. One of the greatest artists in history.
but Sergei Sergeevich then returned to his homeland and died there. I think that Sergei Prokofiev is one of the best Soviet composers! Greetings from Russia 🇷🇺
On piano it sounds like silent film music, kind of humorous. In full orchestral sound, however, it sounds terrifying and aggressive and kind of crazy. I love it
It's a small miracle he grew old. Most of his colleges were put in camps i.e. killed. Sjostakovitsj was famous in the west. Probably that's why Stalin thought it was a bad idea to put him away. Imagine to have to live in the fear of being arrested any day, just because you can't help being a genius!
You wrote: "Imagine [living] in fear of being arrested any day, just because you can't help being a genius!" That's NOT why he feared he might be arrested. it was because he was not writing pretty/patriotic music like Tchaikovsky or Mussorgsky. Stalin had very conservative tastes in music and could not understand or appreciate the new direction Shostakovich wanted to take. Nor could he understand any music that was not rooted in 19th century tonality.
Composers all lived well, including returned Prokofiev. It's ridiculous to think they were not content. These people were admired, venerated, cherished.
@@Johannes_Brahms65 it's widely available in books, etc. Even in this documentary it's evident. It is regrettable that this myth about the Soviet composers misery is perpetuated by the propaganda sources. Composers were never prosecuted, perhaps because their art is not easily translated in ideas. Writers, poets - that's a different matter. But not composers. Prokofiev also enjoyed a very privileged life, even though his wife was sent to GULAG. He married a younger well-connected girl instead. Anyway, Khachaturian, Khrennikov, Dunaevsky, etc. all lived very well in the USSR.
@@annashlimovich I read and heard differently. There's a documentary about Sviatoslav Richter here on youtube. He was there at the time. He explains certain things there. Sjostakovitsj was quite happy until Stalin came to listen to his very successful opera Lady Macbeth. After that he always kept a suitcase ready, with toothbrush, pyama's etc. Prokofjev and Katchkarturian collaborated. Emil Gilels worked with the kgb so he wasn't bothered. And oh yeah, there's a war going on in Ukraine, did you happen to know that? (Sorry to be nasty, nothing personal. Just giving air to my own frustration. There's free press in my country).
Love the clip at 1:10. He's playing an interlude from his opera "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" (1934). This was filmed before Stalin banned the opera in 1936 and declared Shostakovich an "Enemy of the People". Amazing that this footage survived.
He never was declared an enemy of the people. Enemies of the people were considered huge criminals and were supposed to be executed. Stalin just said his oppinion that he didn't understud Lady Macbet and musical society made an article blaming Shostakovich for his experiments. That caused some troubles for him, his workes were poorly played for couple of years. But then Stalin decided to send Shostakovich to America for a representative cultural trip and Shostakovich said to him how can I represent USSR if I'm not played. Stalin was amused because he still considered Shostakovich the composer number 1 and made him played again and made him the main representative during that trip, where besides Shostakovich met Stravinsky if I'm not mistaken. Maybe I am not very correct in some details, but in general the history was that. That bullshit about Stalin hating Shostakovich is absolutely lies! The pressure on Shostakovich was mainly because he was the leading person not just as a composer but as a govermental cultural functioner also. And that's tough, that's the real responsability in such country like USSR which is politicaly very harsh. And Shostakovich depicted that preassure in his music. Could he be arrested or canceled? Yes, of course! That's why his music is so much controvertial.
@@ЕвгенийЛобанов-ф3с If I'm not mistaken, Stalin walked out halfway through the premiere, and oversaw the writing of the newspaper article. Any art that was too abstract or vague could be conveying anti-regime messages, and so many abstract artists were arrested. I think the only reason this didn't happen to Shostakovich was because Stalin knew he was a great composer and when he did play along, he could provide great propeganda value.
I once spent a day with Sir Peter Pears (after Britten's death) and we chatted briefly about Dimitri Shostakovich, who they both knew well. I'm honoured to have met someone who met Shostakovich! (I saw recently, that his apartment in St Petersburg was for sale! Imagine living there!) My favourite work is the 5th Symphony, by the way.
I've just finished reading Volkov's "Testimony", Shostakovich's memoirs; some doubt its authenticity but it is consistent with other things I've read about Shostakovich. The ending is very bleak, but I am not at all surprised. Shostakovich was crushed by Stalinism. Shostakovich himself seems to feel that, as death approached, he was broken. From my comfortable Western perspective, his life was an utter triumph. In just over a week, I'll hear his third string quartet live, and I can't wait.
People always say he was too simple, but he was forced to be by the harsh regime. His chamber works, which were under much less scrutiny, were much more complex as well as some of his works in late the Lenin, early Stalin regimes, before the greater powers began censorsing his great works.
does anyone know anything more about the cigarettes? both here and on a Richter documentary he appears to be lighting the filter! any one know the story behind this? lol
He's smoking soviet cigarettes called Belomorkanal (White Sea Canal) which actually had more filter than tobacco ... meant to be smoked with thick gloves in Siberian winter, I suppose. You can still buy those cigarettes in Russia today. I have two packages :-)
@@larvaconvivialis wow! thanks, you learn something new every day. Bruce Willis had one like that in Fifth Element but I thought it was a joke, for the cigarette to be "ultra mild" in the futuristic setting!
It's a huge exaggeration. He lived in fear during parts of his life, all of them during Stalin's reign. And there is a HUGE difference between Stalin's reign of Soviet Union and what came after 1953. Yes, Soviet Union still being Soviet Union, he certainly had some troubles and concerns about possible censorship of some of his works and that he might not be able to travel to other countries if the Party and KGB deemed him unreliable, but it was not the true fear (for his life and of GULAG) it used to be before 1953, more like concerns and annoyances and something he had to keep in mind. BTW being an internationally celebrated composer and officially recognized as pride and glory of Soviet music, he also was in a privileged position, when for example he could insist on performance of his 13th symphony "Babi Yar" and make it happen, despite all the higher up party bosses wanting him to shelve the piece. Imagine what would have happened if this situation was during Stalin rule? The Party doesn't want you to perform the piece and you still do it - I'm afraid that would have been the last we heard of Shostakovich and the whole orchestra and the theater director and all of their families. But thankfully the times were much different after Stalin's death.
Certainly smoked enough, afraid KGB bang on door in middle of night, so he actually slept outside the door of his apartment with a fully packed bag. Thank you dear great leader Stalin for that normal life that made him a nervous wreck.
He drdicated this simphony his motherland City Leningrad AT time of ww2 in easten Front AT 1941,for oll People Who was Fought with NaZi, and take victoty
"My 7th symphony comes as an echo of the threatening events of the year 1941. I dedicate this composition to our war on fascism, to our upcoming victory over that enemy, to my home city of Leningrad. Now I'm going to play an extract from the first part of the 7th symphony."
He doesn't, he appears to be smoking a Belomorkanal cigarette. The darker colored portion is filled with tobacco and the lighter colored part is a cardboard tube. It is one of strongest/harshest cigarettes I've ever smoked. Like smoking tobacco from a field that was hastily harvested, dried on top of RBMK reactor, and then shredded by hand in a hap-hazard way. Highly recommend, I don't think you'll get addicted because the uncomfortable feeling of death permeates your being and the dizziness makes your feel like a conifer tree pushed by the blast of a Siberian wind. I order these on ebay from time-to-time when I feel depressed.
Are these performances of excerpts from the Seventh Symphony and the Second Piano Trio, or are they perparatory improvisations?? A pity there are no subtitles.
Extremely neurotic; agreeable; obsessed with mortality; maybe not so conscientious (most if not all of what he composed was straight from the first 'draft'); yet still very productive; open (career in art); interest in Gypsy and Jewish themes for their positive spin on tragic events. I think I'm his dreaded reincarnation, unfortunately.
