Symphony No. 11

The Symphony No. 11 in G minor (Opus 103; subtitled The Year 1905) by Dmitri Shostakovich was written in 1957 and premiered by the USSR Symphony Orchestra under Natan Rakhlin on 30 October 1957. The symphony was conceived as a popular piece and proved an instant success in Russia—his largest, in fact, since the Leningrad Symphony just over a decade earlier. The work's popular success, plus Shostakovich's being awarded a Lenin Prize for it in Apri... more

The Symphony No. 11 in G minor (Opus 103; subtitled The Year 1905) by Dmitri Shostakovich was written in 1957 and premiered by the USSR Symphony Orchestra under Natan Rakhlin on 30 October 1957. The symphony was conceived as a popular piece and proved an instant success in Russia—his largest, in fact, since the Leningrad Symphony just over a decade earlier. The work's popular success, plus Shostakovich's being awarded a Lenin Prize for it in April 1958, marked the composer's formal rehabilitation from the Zhdanov Doctrine of 1948. A month after the composer had received the Lenin Prize, a Central Committee resolution "correcting the errors" of the 1948 decree restored all those affected by it to official favor, blaming their treatment on "J.V. Stalin's subjective attitude to certain works of art and the very adverse influence exercised on Stalin by Molotov, Malenkov and Beria."The subtitle of the symphony refers to the events of the Russian Revolution of 1905. The symphony has four... less