Dmitri Shostakovich

• Born: September 25, 1906, Saint Petersburg, Russia
• Died: August 9, 1975 in Moscow

Symphony No. 5 in D Minor, Op. 47

• Composed: 1937
  
• Premiere: November 21, 1937, Evgeny Mravinsky conducting the Leningrad Philharmonic 
• Duration: approx. 10 minutes

On January 28, 1936, an editorial in Pravda, the daily paper of the Soviet Communist Party, brutally attacked Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, denouncing it as “muddle instead of music.” This condemnation could easily have resulted in the composer’s deportation to Siberia, but in the end, he was spared and granted a comeback. Less than a year later, his Fifth Symphony premiered with resounding success in Leningrad on November 21, 1937.

The symphony is definitely a work of reconciliation; although it doesn’t shy away from portraying tragedy, it still reaches a hard-won victory at the end.

The last movement’s opening march tune is suddenly interrupted, and a slower, more introspective section begins with a haunting horn solo. After this quiet intermezzo, the march tune returns, but played at half its original tempo. Merely a shadow of its former self, the melody is elaborated contrapuntally until it suddenly alights on a bright D-major chord in full orchestral splendor, which then remains unchanged until the end.

—Peter Laki