Shostakovich was quite the pianist and this is great archival footage showing just how good he was, joining his fellow Russians, Prokofiev, Stravinsky---and Rachmaninoff, who was, of course, the best of all of them. If only we had this kind of footage of Rach playing. One can only hope there's something lying around somewhere just waiting to be discovered.
Russian school of piano playing has always been one of the strongest in the world. Most Russian composers were excellent world class pianists in their own right and rarely even considered themselves very good at playing the instrument (because they were studying with people who were considered much better at it).
And so ends one of the greatest pieces of music ever written, probably my favourite (along with the 5th symphony). The man was a genius with a musical language like no other. How do those harmonies work? They shouldn't but they do. He had an amazing talent for tearing up the rules of tonal harmony yet somehow making it all sound so coherant, a sort of illusory tonality. One in a million.
Shostakovich was born in September, 1906. If the video dates from 1940, he would have been about 34 years old, and he hardly looks any older than that. Whenever I see this clip, I try to picture him when he was still a conservatory student trying to make a little money in hard times by playing the piano for silent films at movie houses.
Shostakovich I listened to him for 7 years every day. I also dedicated one of my compositions to him and made a portrait of him that appears in the video on RU-vid.
Amazing example of a composer playing one of his compositions better than other pianists. What technique! His tempo is faster than any other performance I've heard. Shostie, you are amazing!!!!
Interestingly, I read an article that recounted a 3-way interview with Martha Argerich, Stephen Kovacevich and a reporter from Gramophone. At the end of the interview, Argerich insists the three listen to a recording of Shostakovich's performance of the final movement of his first concerto and she remarks how the cadenza is unbelievable --- so she definitely gets it. I think both are incredible but I think Argerich's rubato actually makes it hit harder for me...
@@stevej71393 Censorship was a real issue, especially during the Stalin era were hurting the feelings of the party could easily cost you your life. However, the education system there must have done a pretty good job at discovering and assisting new talents.
@@uzefulvideos3440 No, it was the opposite. Education system didn't encourage or assist talents but instead pushed people into the jobs they didn't want but the government needed. "Artist" was not even considered to be a job. When Prokofiev died, only a few people showed up to his funeral, many famous artists were killed or sent to GULAG. That's why most of them had to flee Soviet Union in order to survive. I wonder how many potential composers we lost because of this butcher's regime.
E così finisce uno dei più grandi brani musicali mai scritti, probabilmente il mio preferito . Quest'uomo era un genio con un linguaggio musicale come nessun altro.
Now a day you only see pianist perform great master work you don't find any pianist can compose their works and also perform shostakovich not only a great pianist and a great composer perform his works.
Wonderful composer--I don't know how he managed to write music--and good stuff it is-- living under a constant cloud of fear--but he did--an inspiration for courageous citizens everywhere.
Да врёте вы всё. Если все художники жили тогда под страхом - в СССР не было бы такой культуры! Сейчас по-вашему в РФ нет страха - дерьмократия сплошная - а никакого творчества нет совсем - только дешёвые поделки за бабло из жизни правящих крупных и мелких уголовников.
Unfortunately the only live footage of Rachmaninoff we have is of him in social settings. We have audio recordings galore but no video of him playing like this one of Shostakovich. Too bad. It would have been fascinating to see him walking out on stage bowing and then sitting down and playing.
Same. I do hope that there's some unknown live footage (with sound) somewhere of Rachmaninoff playing, just waiting to be discovered, so we can finally see AND hear him play.
Do you say "fear"? But don't you see a humor in this music? No? Indeed? Meantime Shostakovich has a brilliant sense of humor! Simply western public is not capable to understand this... ;)
I see that nobody has noticed that this video is speeded up a 25% aprox, look at the movements of the orchestra players, they are not natural and the music in not understandable. I know this piece note by note. If you like you can see my performace in my channel.
Common misconception. Very few composers were good performers of their own music and Shostakovich most certainly wasn’t one. And this is not even counting composers who wrote music for instruments they couldn’t play themselves.
Very great document. Why can't we see the arm moving during the glissandi? Does somebody have an idea? Maybe a post recording by the composer? it might have been necessary to get a sound so crisp for the time. Unless this fabulous technique prevents us from seeing these movements.
@@Itapirkanmaa2 I think so. Therefore, the sound recording is not that of the concert; however, the rest is extremely synchronous. We don't know a lot about this fabulous recording
At least one of the downvotes for this video must surely have come from a Steinway salesman. Dmitri is performing on a dreaded "piano-shaped object" built in Berlin.
Robert Switzer, who is this arrogant fool --one "Richard Mohr," a nobody, compared to Dmitrii? Yet, whoever he may be, he must be so much more than you, since you use his pompous mockery as shelter for your own timid, implied agreement to them. History has already proven you and your Mohr mentor wrong: neither real audiences (the ones who actually pay for their concerts --unlike you) nor real musicians (the ones who actually can play an instrument well --unlike you) neither of these, I say, care to hear or play any serial music. I said "ANY", ite est: none, no serial music. You are stuck in the dogmatic aestheticism of the 1960s --pity that your brain got calcified so long ago ...
