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Dimitri Shostakovich Quintet for Piano and Strings in G Minor
The life and compositional career of Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich parallel, in many ways, the rise and fall of his native country, the Soviet Union. Both were born in the early decades of the twentieth century in St. Petersburg, and both died, about seventy years later, in Moscow. Like the history of the Soviet Union, the personal history of Shostakovich is filled with disinformation and doublespeak. Publicly, the composer explained his work as a tribute to Soviet ideology and the Soviet people. In private, however, he detailed the real impetus behind his music: his experiences during the Terror of Stalin, the Nazi destruction of his country, postwar reconstruction, and the arms race. No composer’s music seems to mirror world events and the experiences of his own life more fully than does that of Shostakovich.

If Shostakovich were here with us now, the first thing he’d tell us was that he was no hero; in the Soviet Union, “heroes” died young. Shostakovich was a survivor and a witness, his music a testament to what he saw and felt, in a world that we can hardly imagine. Shostakovich’s work leaves us a record unique in the repertoire. We can only admire this small, frail, nervous man, who showed such humanity, imagination, and strength of purpose.
(source credit: Professor Robert Greenberg, San Francisco Conservatory of Music)

 
they met



played together


dated and then realized they made better band mates than bedmates l


they split up


and Still are bandmates
 
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