"If they cut off both hands, I will compose music anyway holding the pen in my teeth"
- Dmitri Shostakovich
It was 9 August 1975 - 50 years ago - when one of the 20th century's giants of music died. He was Dmitri Shostakovich, the great Soviet composer and pianist who left his indelible mark on Russian and international culture.
Born
in Saint Petersburg (later Leningrad) in 1906, Shostakovich was a child of the 1917 Great
October Socialist Revolution from which he was deeply inspired.
Throughout his life, he set his talent in the service of the people who
were building the socialist society. For that he received numerous
awards and decorations, both in the Soviet Union and abroad.
Shostakovich was a member of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR (1947) and the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union (from 1962 until his death), as well as chairman of the RSFSR Union of Composers (1960–1968).
He was the first musician who was awarded the Hero of the Socialist Labor
honorary title, while he received the Order of Lenin three times (1946,
1956, 1966).
Dmitri Shostakovich's orchestral works include 15 symphonies and six concerti (two each for piano, violin, and cello). His chamber works include 15 string quartets, a piano quintet, and two piano trios. His solo piano works include two sonatas, an early set of 24 preludes, and a later set of 24 preludes and fugues. Stage works include three completed operas and three ballets. Shostakovich also wrote several song cycles, and a substantial quantity of music for theatre and film.
He is rightly regarded as one of the Soviet
Union's most significant composers who successfully combined the music
legacy of Europe's prominent composers (Beethoven, Bach, Mussorgsky)
with Russia's folk tradition.
