Composer Fast Fact Sheet
Here’s 4 Shades of Shostakovich you maybe didn’t know about!
- ‘We need brave music’, says Shostakovich in ‘Testimony’. ‘Brave because it is truthful. That is the meaning of composing music as I see it.’ The ninth symphony is one such act of bravery.
- Shostakovich once got the giggles so badly when accompanying a comic film on the piano that he fell off his chair. He was sacked.
- Shostakovich was a neurotic, and that comes across in his music. All the clocks in his apartment had to be precisely synchronised to a unison tick-tock.
- Shostakovich claimed that, as a rule, he would write his ideas onto the manuscript in ink as a final copy straightaway, without initial drafts. ‘Not that I wish to brag’, he said.
Experience the orchestra performing Shostakovich online here.