Symphony No.12

The music of DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH, one of the towering composers of the twentieth century, reflects the complexity of his personal fate during an era shaped by the political regime of the former Soviet Union and by major global upheavals. Though permitted to live and work in his homeland, he was repeatedly subjected to the pressures and reprisals of the authorities. His music was celebrated and awarded the highest state honors, yet at other moments condemned as “formalistic and harmful,” placing even his physical survival at risk. In Symphony No. 12, “1917,” Op. 112, in D minor, written in 1960—three years after Symphony No. 11, “1905”—Shostakovich once again turns to revolutionary themes, dedicating the work to the October Revolution and Vladimir I. Lenin. The composer had openly expressed his intention to create a “Leninist” symphony as early as the autumn of 1938. In an article for Literaturnaya Gazeta, he described an initial concept for a four‑movement work featuring choir, soloists, and a narrator reciting poems, primarily by Mayakovsky. Instead, he ultimately completed his non‑programmatic Sixth Symphony. Shostakovich later recalled that the idea for such a symphony had first come to him in his youth, in 1924, during the days of national mourning following Lenin’s death; equally vivid were his childhood memories of the early revolutionary fervor—he was eleven years old in 1917. In June 1959, Shostakovich once again voiced his desire to return to the “Lenin” theme, and during the summer of 1960 he worked intensively on the symphony, completing it on August 22^nd . A week later, he was compelled to apply for membership in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Both his joining the CPSU and the creation of this work exemplify the complex and often contradictory course of his artistic life. After his dismissal from the Moscow Conservatory “for low professional standards” in the autumn of 1948—following Zhdanov’s Politburo decree of February 10^th , which condemned the music of several leading composers, including Shostakovich (listed first), Prokofiev, Khachaturian, and others, as formalistic and alien to the Soviet people—he fell out of favor for the second time (the first being in 1936). His works were banned from performance and publication. The compositions from this extremely difficult period were heard publicly for the first time only in 1953, after Stalin’s death on March 5^th . The years that followed, until the end of his life—he died at the age of sixty‑eight on August 9^th , 1975—were marked by intense creative activity and frequent public appearances, as well as significant recognition. Yet they were also shaped by complicated personal choices and artistic responses to the pressures of his time. The symphony may be seen as a continuation of its predecessor, yet it is at the same time markedly different. Its four movements form a sequence of musical images and reflections, each bearing a programmatic title but containing no direct quotations. The first three movements correspond to episodes from 1917 that held particular significance in the officially sanctioned biography of Lenin: the opening movement, “Revolutionary Petrograd,” evokes the events of April 1917 and Lenin’s return to the capital; the slow second movement, “Razliv,” depicts the period in July–August when Lenin hid from the Provisional Government’s detectives near Lake Razliv in the Sestroretsk district and wrote The State and Revolution; the third movement, “Aurora” (Allegro), refers to the salvo from the cruiser Aurora which, according to the official Soviet narrative, signaled the storming of the Winter Palace. The finale, “The Dawn of Humanity,” serves as a summation, carrying the symphonic argument beyond the boundaries of the historical plot itself. Despite the composer’s expectations, the work was received coolly both by the official authorities at home and by critics in the West. It is often regarded as one of Shostakovich’s less distinctive and original compositions and is performed comparatively rarely. Yet behind its political façade and overtly laudatory tone, biographers and scholars suggest that the music may conceal a veiled satire of the Soviet regime, encoded in specific intonations and melodic gestures—an artistic strategy through which the composer resisted the prevailing creative constraints. It is no coincidence that at the same time he composed his Eighth String Quartet, Op. 110, in C minor, “In memory of the victims of fascism and war,” a work widely considered autobiographical and containing quotations from his earlier compositions as well as his musical monogram (D–S–C–H). The symphony received its premiere on October 1^st , 1961, in two cities simultaneously: in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under Yevgeny Mravinsky, and in Kuibyshev by the Symphony Orchestra conducted by Abram Stasevich. Its first Moscow performance followed two weeks later, given by the USSR State Symphony Orchestra. The Bulgarian premiere took place on October 18^th , 1961, with the Bulgarian National Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Konstantin Iliev—likely the work’s first performance abroad.