Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Throughout Shostakovich’s lifetime the most familiar recordings of his symphonies were made by Soviet ...

Simply sign up to the Life & Arts myFT Digest -- delivered directly to your inbox. Each successive hearing of the Shostakovich Fourth Symphony, on CD or (all too rarely) in the concert hall, prompts a ...

On Jan. 28, 1936, Dmitri Shostakovich woke up to read a sternly worded condemnation of his music in the official Soviet newspaper, Pravda. Never mind that the work in question (his opera “Lady Macbeth ...

Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos. 1, 5 and 7 (“Leningrad”); Prelude in E-flat minor Philadelphia Orchestra, NBC Symphony Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski, conductor (Pearl, 2-CD set). It was Leopold Stokowski ...

In this immensely powerful wartime symphony, Shostakovich looks beyond the anguish of violence, in search of hope and renewal. During the summer of 1943, Shostakovich worked on his Eighth Symphony at ...

The importance of Dmitry Shostakovich as an influence in the history of classical music is hard to understate. Marking the 100th anniversary of the composer's birth, Performance Today begins a week of ...

Over the final four weeks of the 2024–25 Symphony Hall season (Apr. 6–May 3), Andris Nelsons caps his tenth anniversary season at Symphony Hall by revisiting the music of Dmitri Shostakovich that has ...

To continue reading this content, please enable JavaScript in your browser settings and refresh this page. Preview this article 1 min Guest conductor Marin Alsop's ...

One of the composer’s most perplexing creations, performed with works by Stravinsky and Vrebalov, is rendered with uncommon depth and power. The Boston Symphony Orchestra and music director Andris ...

Stephen Johnson explores Shostakovich's Symphony No. 4, written at the height of the antagonism towards the composer's music, from Stalin himself. Show more Shostakovich was in the middle of writing ...