Rachmaninov, Shostakovich

After leaving Russia, Sergei Rachmaninoff wrote just six more compositions. To provide for his family, he had to give far more concerts instead of composing. In addition, his Fourth Piano Concerto, the first work he wrote in ex- ile, did not achieve success as expected. He fi- nally met with good fortune when he and his family settled on the shore of Lake Lucerne in Switzerland, where he composed his Rhapso- dy on a Theme of Paganini in almost a single breath. The Rhapsody is one of my favourite compositions because it contains an inexhaust- ible wealth of compositional and instrumental technique and as well as ravishing music. The work quickly shows not only whether you can play the piano, but also, above all, what kind of musician you are. - Behzod Abduraimov 

Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11 was inspired by the events of 1905 in Saint Petersburg. The tsar was supposed to have received a peaceful demonstration of poor workers led by a priest, but his guards cruelly massacred them instead. Before “Bloody Sunday”, as 9 January 1905 came to be called, one worker wrote his fam- ily a touching farewell letter that still remains a moving testimony to the event. Bloody Sun- day was followed by spontaneous protests all over Russia, but these were suppressed with- out exception. Dmitri Shostakovich wrote the symphony after the 1956 revolution in Hungary. The individual movements have both titles and an extra-musical programme. In the frigid first part, you feel the tension, then in the second movement the people are set in motion. There follows a fugue describing the massacre, then there is a requiem for the dead. Shostakovich in- serted a secret message into the final movement. Its title, “Tocsin”, means “alarm bell”. The sym- phony ends with the whole orchestra playing a single note in unison while the bells alternate between a major and a minor third – G, B nat- ural, G, B flat. The sound of the bells, which were supposed to celebrate victory, end on a minor instead of a major third, depicting the victory of evil. - Semyon Bychkov