Shostakovich's Fifth

The previously announced soprano Cornelia Beskow has, due to illnes, been obliged to cancel. She is replaced by prize-winning Norwegian soprano Marita Sølberg. Among her recent engagements one could mention Royal Opera Covent Garden, Los Angeles Opera and Wiener Staatsoper. The programme remains unchained and we will hear Marita Sølberg in Chausson’s dreamy Poème de l’amour et de la mer.

Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 was a great success at its world premiere in 1937. Its history is well known: Josef Stalin attended a performance of Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (which was later revised and renamed Katerina Izmailova) at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. He was appalled, and an article titled “Chaos rather than music” was published in the newspaper Pravda. This was the beginning of a witch-hunt for Shostakovich, who feared for his life. He thus withdrew his already composed Fourth Symphony and the Fifth Symphony was presented with the comment “An artist’s response to just criticism”.

What is truly concealed in his Fifth Symphony has been a topic of discussion ever since, because no one really knows his innermost thoughts and feelings. The music is grandly heroic, but also imbued with melancholy, sarcasm, and cryptic irony.

The title of American Jennifer Higdon’s Loco refers to the word ‘locomotive’. The music was commissioned for the Ravinia Festival, North America’s oldest outdoor festival, to pay tribute to and feature the region’s historic railway.

KonserthusetPlay – Shostakovich Symphony No.5!
Watch a concert video with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and Chief Conductor Sakari Oramo in the composer’s most famous and beloved symphony. Watch on KonserthusetPlay