It is this fourth symphony from 1936 that Joseph Stalin ordered not to be performed. Just as clearly it marks a rallying point of courage, start of a recovery in artistic fortunes, still rising this summer of 2018 - four decades into a composer’s immortality. The fourth of Dmitri Shostakovich’s 15 symphonies marks a low point in a tortured life. In the Soviet Union, it is a personal duel between composer and tyrant of Stalin himself bullying Shostakovich on the telephone, and of the shy, twitchy-nervous but indomitable composer writing unmistakably in musical notation when Stalin was gone: “ you’re dead, and I am alive.” This is a story of where music comes from, what it means, and who owns it. With Stravinsky and Prokofiev in the trio of Russia’s 20th century immortals, Shostakovich was the one who stayed on the home ground of his music, and paid the price. The Shostakovich story - man and music in the apocalypse of world war and Cold War - seems to get more frightfully irresistible with every remembrance, every new CD in the Boston Symphony’s Grammy winning series. This show originally aired on August 9, 2018.
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