Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich is one of the most famous Russian composers in history. He was, like many great artists, a harmony of contradictions. A musical genius, Shostakovich had a passionate personality yet is perhaps best known for his sweeping, solemn classical compositions. He is most closely associated with St. Petersburg, which became known as Leningrad (from 1924 to 1991), where he was born on Sept. 25, 1906 and where he would not only survive a 900-day Nazi siege during World War II but would also create a composition in lasting memory of it.
Shostakovich is well-known for his at times tempestuous relationship with Soviet authorities. An extremely versatile composer, he flirted with avant-garde and edgy musical productions in his early career but started hammering out solemn scores following a Soviet crackdown on modern art and music and public denunciations in Communist newspapers. Listeners can get a sense of Shostakovich’s captivating combination of solemnity and spunk listening to Waltz. No. 2 of his 1938 Suite for Jazz Orchestra No. 2, which remains popular many years after his death.
On Aug. 20 Andrei Zhdanov ominously announced: “The enemy is at the gates.”
During World War II, Shostakovich was present in his embattled home city of Leningrad as Adolf Hitler’s and his Finnish ally’s troops attempted to seize it in the war’s longest siege. Before German troops had even invaded Soviet soil, the Nazis had already developed a “starvation plan” to destroy Russians and eradicate the inhabitants of Leningrad. On May 2, 1941, Nazi ministers of Economic Command Staff East wrote in a memorandum: “The war can only continue to be waged if the entire Wehrmacht is fed from Russia … if what is necessary is extracted from the land, tens of millions of
