Keeping Score - Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5

Shostakovich may have secreted a subversive cipher beneath the surface of his life-saving Symphony No. 5.. This is all the more shocking since another bad review from Stalin’s totalitarian forces could have meant a sentence to the Gulag or worse.

After his opera Lady Macbeth was publically condemned as immoral by Pravda, the Soviet newspaper, Shostakovich knew he had only one chance to redeem himself. When he penned this fifth symphony, the composer was literally writing for his life. The risk was so high that Shostakovich slept on the stairs outside his apartment so the secret police would not wake his family when they came from him, as he was sure they would.

This Keeping Score program, investigates the arresting symphony that would either redeem Shostakovich or doom him. Did he dare hide a kernel of musical criticism in what appears to be a paean to the Motherland? Join Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony as they explore the hidden language of this masterwork. What Shostakovich has to say might depend on what you’re brave enough to hear.

BONUS FEATURES

Full-length concert performance of Dimitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Opus 47 by the San Francisco Symphony filmed in high-definition 16:9 widescreen and 5.1 surround sound at London’s Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms concert series.