Shostakovich Symphony No. 11, "The Year 1905"

When the great pianist and composer Frederic Chopin decided to write a piano sonata in 1837, fashions had turned against the genre itself. Perhaps it was a feeling that Beethoven had essentially "finished" the genre, or perhaps it was a sense that a non-Germanic composer couldn't ...  Show more

As I've often said, I love doing Patreon-sponsored episodes in part because they allow me to discover music I might never have encountered otherwise. Today's episode is one of those, because the truth is that before I made it, I had heard of Finzi, but that was about it. I knew n ...  Show more

When the urge to compose finally struck again, Rachmaninoff took a little theme by Nicolo Paganini and turned it into a tour de force for the piano and orchestra, called Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. In this final episode of the Great Composers series on Rachmaninoff, we also ...  Show more

The latest in our series of composer podcasts focusses on Dmitri Shostakovich. Edward Seckerson joins Gramophone Editor Martin Cullingford to share his insights with us into one of the greatest of 20th-century musical figures, with a particular focus on his extraordinary symphoni ...  Show more

SynopsisBy a coincidence, the last two symphonies of Soviet composer Sergei Prokofiev premiered on today’s date: his Symphony No. 6 premiered in Leningrad in 1947, and his final, Symphony No. 7, in Moscow, in 1952.The Symphony No. 6 is tragic in tone, and Prokofiev confided that ...  Show more

Interpreting Stalin's fledgling revolutionary career through his later status as a brutal labor dictator obscures an early whole-hearted admiration for the works of Kautsky and Lenin. By Lawrence Parker.
Read By Luke Pickrell
Intro Music: ворожное озеро Гроза vwqp ...