In 1927, the 21-year-old Russian composer, Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) and a friend of his, the conductor Nicolai Malko (1883-1961) were sitting around listening to music. One of the songs they heard was a recording of the Vincent Youmans tune, "Tea for Two." Malko bet Shostakovich 100 roubles that he couldn't write an arrangement of the song, from memory, in less than an hour. Shostakovich went into the next room and - 45 minutes later - emerged with the arrangement you're now hearing. Needless to say, he collected his 100 roubles from Malko. An interesting early novelty item from one of the 20th century's greatest composers.
_Tea for Two_ was my father's favorite song. I would have loved to have played this for him, but I only just found out about it, and he's gone. ::sigh::
That's because it's a cover version of a classic composed by Vincent Youmans. But I heard Shostakovich created this arrangement in less than hour, which is very impressive by itself
@@mi-roka-sai6155 yep I know about the original Tea for Two, and also the story behind this arrangement. It's really funny. One day this man writes about a war crime and the next day it's Tea for Two.
There are the unfamiliar composers, but there also has tunes which we do not know the name of the composer. This is the case of this arrangement for orchestra of Tea for two (song from the musical No No Nanette) composed by Shostakovich in 45 minutes ... Not bad, right? unfamiliar
By my count, the basic theme of this work was repeated 12 times, with first cycle at 0:00, then repeating at 0:29, 0:44, 0:56, 1:22, 1:35, 1:48, 2:12, 2:19, 2:25, 2:36, 2:49, and the coda repeat at 3:01 lasting 25 seconds more to the finale. Prokofiev's and Shostakovich's life spans overlapped, I think Shostakovich was the greater of the two, and Tea for Two helps make the case.
Michael Hamill - music isn’t a boxing match. Who cares who you think is “greater”? You shouldn’t waste your time deciding who is “down for the count” and who is “champ”.
Shostakovich didn't invent Tea for Two, though. He wrote an orchestration for it. It's nice and sweet, but he didn't come up with the themes and it's not his magnum opus either haha
Mind you, this is the same guy who wrote that morbidly obsessed, dread-inducing 15th string quartet. What can I say; human psychology is complicated ʅ（◞‿◟）ʃ
What? First of all, chopin and scriabin both reached mozart. Noone else did. Second, to compare this incompetent fool to the genius mozart is the greatest insult I have ever seen, what utter disrespect!
@@acev337 ??? I was going to ask what kind of brain damage would be required to come to such a ridiculous conclusion, then I remembered that you believe that not only shostakovich is close in skill to mozart, but close enough to match him.
Well I love Shostakovich, and this is amusing, but if you want to hear really creative "arrangements" of Tea for Two, I recommend listening to some of Art Tatum's versions. And he didn't need 45 minutes to orchestrate an arrangement, he improvised at the piano.
Uh... I don't really know if improvising at a piano is the same as making up an entire orchestral arrangement in your head in 45 minutes. Also, wouldn't Shostakovich be improvising like... every instrument, at that point?
@@Burntshmallow That's true; the skills of mentally arranging and notating amusing orchestral variations are different from the skills of improvising and playing a unique virtuoso harmonically complex piece that pretty much nobody else in the world could even play let alone conceive of... This is a mere novelty number, while Tatum did one masterpiece after another on this tune. (for example: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-9kMEPYU1Xwg.html) But I also fault myself for making a competitive comparison -- the Shostakovich is quite enjoyable on its own terms.
@@jsbrules I feel still that, looking at Shostakovitch's berth of work, it's a bit uncharitable to dismiss his own respective genius. They just aren't comparable. Art Tatum never composed a symphony mocking the USSR under the watchful eye of Stalin and never had any of his family members disappear in the night. Shostakovich did. But that doesn't make him better than Tatum. And Tatum's virtuosic improvisations don't make him any "better" than Shostakovich -- who I might add was *also* a virtuosic pianist. You can hear his playing on youtube. One played Jazz, the other played Classical. Both made up their own music. Now, I will say I think that Shostakovich probably had a greater mind for harmonic complexity. Look at his ability to write this: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-3lydTIHUvTk.html He still came up with melodies on the spot, he just wrote them down instead of playing them. And his understanding of music was quite pronounced, enough to write advanced counterpoint in a fugue form. I still like Tatum (Though I think Oscar Peterson was more rounded). But they're not related artists. So it isn't very useful to compare them. Now, if you want to compare Tatum and Fats, or Tatum and Costa, then you have something to say. Or Shostakovich and Steven Hough: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-pih_W62LOVc.html Even then, though, it's still wildly different.
@@Burntshmallow I was not dismissing Shostakovich's genius! I wasn't comparing Shostakovich to Tatum as artists overall, I am just saying that Tatum's Teas for Two are better than this light party-trick-on-a-dare! I absolutely love Shostakovich!
i think the backstory of the arrangement is what makes it so popular, being made in under an hour by memory. i mean aside from that the orchestration is pretty great, obviously not a madterpiece though
