"I scribe a page with a sigh
whistle it, I hear myself with an indifferent ear
I torment with it those who surround me
After it, to the printing and the neglection!

This preface could be written not only in my works complete edition, but also in the complete edition of many other composer's complete works, such as soviets or foreigners. Finally, here is the signature: Dimitri Shostakovich, national artist of the Soviet Union, detainer of many honorable titles such as prime secretary of the Composers Union of the Soviet Union. Also title-holder of many and influent engagements and obligations."

 

Dimitri Shostakovich was born in St Petersburg in 25 of September 1906.
He died in Moscow , in 9 of August 1975. Child of the engineer and chemist Boleslavovich and of the pianist Sofia Vasilievna

In 1915, noting Dimitri's interest for music, Sofia decided to teach him. Dimitri sitting for the first time by a piano asked her a peace to play. His mother put on the transcription of the andante of a symphony of Hayden. Slowly but with assurance, Dimitri played the play to his mother’ s astonishment. Two days later he could interpret with agility the “album for children” of Tchaikovsky

The First World War hit the climax. In czarist Russia the worker’ s manifestations multiplied. There could be remembered the slaughtering in the square of the Winter Palace (the Bloody Sunday, from which Dimitri would dedicate a symphony). There could be heard rumors of the return of Vladimir Ilich Ulianov, Lenin to Russia. At 17 of April 1917 Dimitri finds himself amongst the thousands of people that went to the St’ Petersburg station to receive Lenin. Shostakovich felt himself as a son of the Revolution

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After listening to Shostakovich, Alexander Glazunov, director of the Petrograd conservatory, accepted him in his establishment affirming: "The Conservatory is honored to accept a student whom talent is at a Mozart's level".

He had piano lessons with Nicolaiev and composition with Steinberg (the favorite student of Rimsky-Korsakov. His hear allow him to recognize the smallest detail of a partiture with a simple look. He played any work for piano at first sight.

After his father’s death in 1922, Dimitri obtains a scholar ship from the Borodin Foundation. Needing to get a job he accepted a pianist contract on a cinema.

By that time the cultural opening politics of Anatol Lunatch began to be profitable. For the first time Russia opened its frontiers to Europe, from which there came, without stopping, French, Italian and German influences. From paint to literature, from music to cinema. in 1925 two new names, one from cinema another from music, assume as an artist standard of the Soviet Union. Eisenstein directs "The Potekin Ironclad" and Shostakovich composes the first symphony.

In 1925 finishes his studies at the conservatory introducing the first symphony, which opening enthusiasmed the artistic means of the nation. His innovating personality affirmed in an early stage with his two first symphonies and with his insolit opera "The Nose" (1928). Shostakovich falls in love with Berg's, Bartok's, Krenek's and the Group of Six's works, that were widely diffused in USSR during the NEP (New Economic Politics). At this same stage he began to write music for films ("The New Babylon") and worked during some time in the theatre with Meyerhold.

But time was of change at the USSR, with Lenin's death and the rise of Stalin the NEP was given as ended.

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In 1932 Shostakovich married the young Experimental Physicist Nina Varzar. In the end of that year he finished his second opera "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" which opened in 1934 in Moscow and Leningrad with such success that it remained in poster for about two years.

Because of this success, Stalin himself was present at the première at the Bolshoi. The day after, Pravda published the editorial "Chaos instead of music", that was written by the man of steel, Stalin himself: " … this author has to know that music has to evoke the great traditional opera and that symphonic music has to be clear, explicit, simple and direct"."Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" ceased to be, in a few days, a masterpiece to be reprievable.

In 1936 Dimitri writes to a friend "I‘m grieved, I don't know what I can or must to do. I concentrate myself only in finishing the symphony I have started".

In 1937 Mravinsky opened at Leningrad the fifth symphony with the subtitle "Answer of a soviet artist to fair critiques".
This was the first manifestation of double record that passed to be noted in Shostakovich' music, the external voice, noisy and grandiloquent and the internal one, intimate, austere and profound.
In that same year he was nominated Professor of the Conservatory of Leningrad and after 1943 of Moscow's.

In 1936 and 1938 his children were born, Galina and Maxime.

In 1941 the troops of III Reich surrounded Leningrad. Shostakovich tried to become a member of the civil defense, but was turned down because of health motives. But, he was accepted fireman.

In this context it was born his Seventh Symphony "Leningrad", which consecrated him definitively as the biggest soviet symphonist. The opening concert, in Kuibichev, by the Bolshoi Orchestra, was transmitted in the middle of an unprecedented expectation throughout all the USSR, UK and USA.

The work transformed in the musical flag of the invaded nation. Several conductors the primacy of the first american interpretation.
The microfilm with the partiture and the orchestral material arrived at New York by Teheran-Cairo-Sahara-Canaries route, being interpreted by Toscanini.

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During his life he received the biggest rewards and distinctions, he occupied the most important posts (Secretary of the Union of Composers, Deputy of the Supreme Soviet), alternated with hard reprehensions, mainly when of the "anti–formalist" campaign driven by Khrennikov in 1948.

Inveigh, ambition and cowardness unleashed, as many years ago with Lady Macbeth, a stormy session of insults, defamations, rapidly making Shostakovich being the centre of the attacks (Khachaturian and Chebaline defended Dimitri arduously)!
But not only Shostakovich was accused of " … formalist and not popular orientation" (words of Krennikov); the same happened with Prokofiev, Khachaturian, Miaskovsky, Chebaline, Kabalevsky and Popov.
The answer of the musicians was diverse. In some cases the auto critic: Prokofiev and Khachaturian, in others the silence: Chebaline, and in other cases the mixture of the two positions (Shostakovich).

In 1950 Dimitri went to Warsaw and Leipzig. In Leipzig he attended the commemorative act of the bicentenary of Bach's death, which would be the inspirer motif of is 24 preludes and fugues.

In 1953 Yevgeny Mravinsky inaugurated the tenth symphony of Shostakovich, emblem of the "defrost" (death of Stalin).

In 1956 Nikita Khrushchev rehabilitates the musicians condemned in 1948.

Between 1954 and 1955 die Nina and Sofia, Dimitri's wife and mother.

In 1955 David Oistrakh and Mravinsky inaugurate in Moscow the concert for violin and Shostakovich slates the cycle of Hebrew songs.

At the end of 1965 he was undertaken, in Budapest, by an heart attack. The recover was slow. One step at a time, Shostakovich created a world dominated by the idea of death and extinction, linking more and more to his admired Mussorgsky.

From this context there were born creations such as the fourteenth symphony or the last five quartets. In 1966 Rostropovich inaugurated his second Cello Suite.
In the following year Dimitri composed to David Oistrakh his second Violin Concert.

In 1971 he wrote his last symphony, the fifteenth. A few time later he suffered a second heart attack.

In 1974 he composed the fifteenth quartet.
During the rehearsals of the work, one violoncellist of the Beethoven Quartet died.

A few time later he received the visit of Rostropovich having in his possession an allowance of Brejnev to leave Russia.
The two friends knew they would not see each other ever again.
Shostakovich asked him to interpret "Lady Macbeth" one day just as he had written it, a desire that Rostropovich fulfilled in 1978.

On October (1974) Oistrakh dies during a digression through Holland. Shostakovich became definitively alone.

Between May and June of 1975, after a short tour through France, where he was nominated Member of the Academy of Arts, he composed a sonata for violet and piano, his last work.
At the end of June he was again hospitalized. In the hospital's bed he corrected this sonata.

On 9 August of 1975 he terminated his long fight against death.

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