writings
Secrets: On Shostakovich Symphony No. 4
In the autumn of 1935, the still young but already much fêted Shostakovich had every reason to start composing his Fourth Symphony with supreme confidence. His recent opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk had been a sensational success and he was without doubt the musical golden child of the Soviet Union. But within a few months the euphoric bubble burst when Stalin went to see the opera himself, and immediately penned the infamous article in the newspaper Pravda that described the precocious musician as a composer of ‘muddle instead of music’ and an enemy of the state. Shostakovich’s life was turned upside down.
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