7th Symphony Concert: Vienna, City of My Dreams

“Chaos instead of Music” was the fateful headline under which Dmitri Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk was torn apart in the Soviet “Pravda” in 1936. In the Soviet Union, such a state-sanctioned denunciation was never just an artistic dispute but posed an existential threat to the composer.

The fact that the premiere of Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony was unanimously celebrated by both the public and state representatives the following year was akin to a rehabilitation after the preceding scandal. For Shostakovich, the solemn praise from the Soviet party leadership was presumably just another dose of the same poison.

There is indeed the question of what exactly the party leadership meant to hear in the grimly desperate marches and the grotesquely distorted “Per aspera ad astra” dramaturgy. Mstislav Rostropovich described the jubilant finale as a “triumph for idiots.” Shostakovich himself commented on the speculations about possible interpretations of his music with his characteristic laconic style: “Just listen to my music, everything is said in it.”

Tickets from 26.00 €