The Symphony No. 8 in C minor (Opus 65) by Dmitri Shostakovich was written in the summer of 1943, and first performed on November 4 of that year by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under Yevgeny Mravinsky, to whom the work is dedicated.
The expansive emotional expressions of the work along with monumental musical designs pushed his musical language to a climax. Although it is not as popular as symphonies numbers 5, 7, 10, or 15, but recent sc...
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The Symphony No. 8 in C minor (Opus 65) by Dmitri Shostakovich was written in the summer of 1943, and first performed on November 4 of that year by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under Yevgeny Mravinsky, to whom the work is dedicated.
The expansive emotional expressions of the work along with monumental musical designs pushed his musical language to a climax. Although it is not as popular as symphonies numbers 5, 7, 10, or 15, but recent scholars and experts have credited it highly on its intellectual depth. The symphony is vaguely in the tradition of C minor "tragedy to triumph" symphonies begun with Beethoven's Fifth and including Bruckner's Eighth and Mahler's Second; although, there is considerable dispute over just how optimistic the ending is, since it ends very quietly. Shostakovich's friend Isaak Glikman called the symphony "his most tragic work".
The work is only slightly shorter than the composer's monumental Seventh Symphony, and consists of five movements:
The first...
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