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Dear <<First Name>>,

Today’s Community Letter is dedicated almost entirely to Karajan’s relationship with Shostakovich. We have studio recordings, concerts in the USSR, memoirs and stories about these two giants of 20th century music. So – Read, watch, listen and stay healthy!

---P.R. Jenkins

 

Dmitri Shostakovich on discoverkarajan

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Shostakovich and Karajan were about the same age. Karajan admired Shostakovich and he even admitted that if he had become a composer instead of a conductor, his music would have sounded like Shostakovich’s. Although Karajan studied several symphonies by Shostakovich (for example the 5th and the monumental 8th), he only performed and recorded the very personal 10th, the one that Shostakovich started to compose immediately after Stalin’s death in March 1953.
The second movement, a short furious Scherzo, is often regarded as a “musical portrait” of Stalin. Whether this is true or not, it is certainly one the most terrifying and powerful movements in 20th century music. Listen to it here.
Karajan’s first performance of Shostakovich’s 10th was in 1959. The most special performance was certainly the Moscow concert on May 29th 1969, with Shostakovich himself in the audience. Karajan conducted three concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic (the Shostakovich symphony on the second evening only) and the demand was enormous. Shostakovich remembers:
“There was a siege of the concert hall (the Tchaikovsky conservatory), the tickets were sold out for a long time. At the entrance militia with horses (…) Maria Yudina sat on the pavement: ‘I will only get up if someone gives me a ticket.’”
Maria Yudina was the pianist who once wrote to Stalin “I will pray to the lord that he forgives your heavy sins against people and nation” – and survived.
About the concert Richard Osborne, Karajan’s biographer, writes: “The orchestra’s commitment was astonishing. Mariss Jansons recalled: ‘They played at two hundred per cent capacity. It was unbelievable.’ Shostakovich joined Karajan and the orchestra on stage afterwards, obviously moved by the performance and the reception he received.”
Listen to the legendary concert here.

Recording of the week

Karajan’s only Shostakovich studio recording, the 10th symphony recorded in 1981 with the Berlin Philharmonic, is simply a must-have for every classical music lover. Still available here.

The week in Karajan

More stuff from the Karajan Music Tech Conference! Clara Radunsky presented a highly interesting lecture about Artist management in present and future. Watch here.
 

Tips

“The noise of time”

Need a book for the summer? Julian Barnes has written a thrilling novel about Shostakovich and Stalin, about fear and self-reproach and  - of course – about music. Available here.
 
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