Festive Overture

For many years the FESTIVE OVERTURE, Op. 96 by DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-1975) was perceived as a "poster" work. There is a well-known story of how one day in the autumn of 1954, while the composer was talking with musicologist Lev Lebedinsky at home, the conductor Vasil Nebolshin rang the doorbell with an urgent request: the composer should write a new piece for the concert dedicated to the 37^th anniversary of the October Revolution. Within ... 3 days! Lebedinsky recounts: "The speed with which he began writing this sparkling, bubbling-as-champagne work was truly astonishing. When he composed such light music, he could talk, joke and write all at the same time like Mozart. Shostakovich laughed, giggled, the work went on and on in between." The Festive overture was delivered on time. It was premiered on November 6^th, 1954 at the Bolshoi Theatre under the baton of Alexander Melik-Pashaev. In fact, the exact dating of the work is shrouded in mystery. In 1947, in an interview for the Vecheren Leningrad Daily the composer reported that he had composed an overture for the 30^th anniversary of the Great October, in which he conveyed the mood of a man who had "passed through the hard trials of the war years, defeated the enemies of the Motherland and is now rebuilding his country". Why the play was not performed at a festive celebration remains a mystery. Was the speed with which he poured the 1954 the Festive Overture onto music paper the music he had harbored in his soul seven years earlier? Or did the relief at the death of the tyrant Stalin in 1953 give rise to this buoyant orchestral work? The music is quite " intelligible" and accessible to the ordinary Soviet citizen. It is not for the first time, however, that Shostakovich hides the allegory of his sonic messages, his biting irony and sarcasm, behind deliberately employed musical platitudes. The opening solemn fanfares in the overture are a quotation from the play Birthday, composed for his 9-year-old daughter Galina in 1945. It is part of the Children's Notebook, Op. 69 and was published as part of the cycle after Shostakovich's death. Unlike the Symphonies No. 9 and No. 10, written during this period and subjected to devastating criticism, the Festive Overture received positive reviews and immediately became one of the composer's most popular works.