Symphonien Nr.1 & 3

For the fifth part of his Dmitri Shostakovich symphony cycle, John Storgårds turns to some of the composer's earliest orchestral works. The orchestral scherzo was at the time a favored assignment from composition teachers: the relatively simple form nonetheless requires of the student that he create contrasting material for the outer and middle sections and that he shape the transitions effectively. It is hardly surprising that this form plays a major role in the early works of Shostakovich, but also of Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók and many others. The two examples included here demonstrate the skill and style of the young composer, even though his compositional voice is not yet entirely his own. Both works, however, show connections with the later First Symphony, which was composed as a final examination in composition at the Petrograd Conservatory. Shostakovich worked on it for two years and the symphony that eventually emerged was an immediate success and made him a prodigy among Soviet composers. The Third Symphony, composed four years later, bears witness not only to Shostakovich's rapid development as a composer, but also to the equally rapid changes in the world in which he lived. In December 1926 he passed the newly introduced examination in Marxist ideology and was able to extend his admission as a doctoral student at the Leningrad Conservatory until early 1930. He submitted the symphony with the explanation that it expressed "the festive mood of peaceful reconstruction". In this early phase of Stalin's first five-year plan, it was already clear that he had realized that political propaganda would be crucial for his creative survival.