Symphony No. 14, Op. 135 by Shostakovich, Minn (2022/2022), Surmast Direttur Teodor Currentzis, Zaryadye Hall, Moscow, Russia

The new musicAeterna orchestra and soloist program focuses on the late symphonic and chamber works of Dmitri Shostakovich. All three works performed by the composer wrote during the long days of hospital imprisonment. He focused on thinking about life and death, renouncing bodily ailments. An in-depth and mournful study of the meaning and limits of human existence, a violent protest against non-existence is the central theme of the Seven Poems of Alexander Blok, the Thirteenth Quartet, and, in particular, the Fourteenth Symphony. A major vocal and symphonic cycle dedicated to the various guises of death is an unprecedented phenomenon in the music of the 20th century. The poems of Lorca, Apollinaire, Rilke and Kuchelbecker, chosen by Dmitri Shostakovich for the Fourteenth Symphony, are bright, contrasting scenes full of specific signs of place and time: an Andalusian tavern, a French prison cell, Pushkin's Petersburg ... Spanish malaguena, grotesque march, dramatic dialogue, sarcastic recitative coexist with lyric-philosophical monologues, and serial technique with elegies reminiscent of the Russian romance element. An extremely unusual cycle in eleven parts was written for soprano, bass and small string orchestra with an enhanced percussion group. Shostakovich created the score in just over a month in the winter of 1969, when he was undergoing unsuccessful treatment in the hospital, Shostakovich turned to Blok's poetry in the autumn of 1966, when he was hospitalized with a broken leg. He chose seven of the poet's early poems filled with spiritual anxiety and forebodings of impending cataclysms. The composer gave two of them his own names - "The Storm" and "Music". The soprano in this chamber-vocal cycle is not the leading voice, but one of the equal members of the ensemble. Violin, cello and piano form duets and trios with the voice, and only in the last number all the performers participate. The cycle of songs was completed at the very beginning of 1967 and is dedicated to Galina Vishnevskaya. At the premiere in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, the composer wanted to play the piano part himself, but because of the plaster cast that had not been removed, he transferred the role of the pianist to his devoted friend, composer Mieczysław Weinberg: The Thirteenth Quartet was also repeated in its entirety at the Leningrad premiere. His Shostakovich began to write while in an orthopedic clinic in Kurgan in 1969, and finished in August 1970. The one-part quartet is dedicated to the violist of the Quartet. Beethoven to Vadim Borisovsky and written as if for a solo viola and a string trio. The soloist's monologue is interrupted by a tense dance macabre with dodecaphonic themes and bow strikes on the decks. Returning in the finale, he does not bring enlightenment and breaks off with a scream on an extremely high note.