Bulgarian National Radio Symphony Orchestra - Dmitri Shostakovich, Vol. 10: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 15 (2021)

With his Symphony No. 2 in B Major, Op. 14 "Dedicated to October" Dmitri Shostakovich experiments in this genre. It is the shortest of his symphonies - of one movement and a closing chorus - and it sounds in a very avant-garde way in the context of Russian music of that time. It consists of two parts: the first one, which is purely instrumental, is composed by using atonal technique. The means are subordinated to the idea - from darkness to light, from chaos to harmony. Expressed in the words of political reality - from the spontaneity of the complaining crowd to revolutionary awareness. Shostakovich even includes a factory siren in the music scores. The chorus finale is based on the pathetic propaganda text of the poet Alexander Bezymensky The composer began to write Symphony No. 12 in D Minor in memory of Lenin, entitled "The Year 1917".

We can feel in it the presence of the leader and strategist of the Great October Revolution. This opus is in continuation of the revolutionary theme in his previous Symphony No. 11 "The Year 1905". But if the composer incorporated popular revolutionary songs into its musical dramaturgy, here the thematic structure is unfolded through the transformation of small intonational motifs evoked by some of them. This is the composer's most traditional and heroic-theatrical symphony. These two works add to the series of symphonies by Dmitri Shostakovich.