Shostakovich – Symphonies Nos. 1 and 6

In 2006, as it celebrates the 250th Birthday of Amadeus Mozart, the world seems to have forgotten that other world famous composers also celebrate important jubilees this year. One of these is the Russian composer Dmitry Shostakovich, born 100 years ago in St. Petersburg; a true musical anarchist who, at the age of 13, studied piano at the Petrograd Conservatory (under Leonid Nikolajew) and composition (under Maximilian Steinberg). For many years his creative artistic freedom was threatened and endangered by the soviet deskbound bureaucrats He fell under their calculating glare twice, once in 1936 and again in1948. The result was a remarkably ambiguous attitude of the composer. In the then current system he developed a sort of dual personality (although in reality Shostakovich never actually suffered under such a clinical problem). On the one hand the composer outwardly functioned and obeyed the socialist system but inwardly he undertook a personal emigration. He only confided this true attitude to his music. And because the party functionaries understood little from music, his choice was a good one.