Was Shostakovich the greatest 20th century composer?

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The story of Shostakovich’s life and music is a struggle between Communist ideology and one man’s commentary on its madness and brutality. His 15 symphonies, 15 string quartets, operas and concertos are in some ways a sobering chronicle of life under Stalin – and yet the irony is that the patriotic Shostakovich believed from an early age in the duty of an artist to serve the state. This dichotomy runs through his music, and critics have speculated a good deal on the codes and messages threaded throughout even his most innocuous work that reveal his true feelings towards the Russian state, even if the music conformed to Soviet ideals. And so Shostakovich was allowed to work almost without hindrance, able to function in plain view thanks to his wish to be accessible but not regressive. A fine balance to strike.

Shostakovich become famous before his 21st birthday thanks to his startling First Symphony, a piece he wrote for his graduation. Although not stylistically groundbreaking, the symphony is full of the mockery and irony that would mark much of his future work – but while Symphonies Nos 2 and 3 were proud accompaniments to the success of Russian industrialisation, his opera The Nose, about a St Petersburg official’s nose that takes on a life of its own, has more than a hint of parody about it, and the Fifth Symphony, hailed by the authorities as ‘optimistic’ and full of the ‘joy of living’ is less triumphant, more hysterical. Shostakovich’s obedience to the party line seems to have been little more than a veneer. But still, in 1948, Shostakovich fell foul again of the government, was dismissed from his teaching post and concentrated on film music until Stalin died in 1953.

From then on, we see Shostakovich’s most biting work as well as the premieres of pieces written during Stalinist repression that might have got him into serious hot water, including the bitter Tenth Symphony with its scherzo painting a shattering portrait of Stalin. Finished in 1951, however, Shostakovich only dared premiere it nine months after the Communist leader’s death.

In his later years, Shostakovich made much of his musical connections, including the cellist Rostropovich for whom he wrote both his cello concertos, and the composer Benjamin Britten – both admired each other’s work. If you find Shostakovich’s music difficult to pin down, it’s because he wrote in such a variety of styles and moods – tragic and dark one moment, hysterical the next, lusciously Romantic when the mood takes him and exquisitely intimate. There is, perhaps, no other 20th-century composer who encompasses so much.

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