Apr 092007
Year: 1937
After hearing Shostakovich for the first time, I wanted to obsessively find all his music and listen to them all. This piece is one of my top two favorite Shostakovich pieces, the other being, his String Quartet #8. The piece opens with a forte minor 6th, then descending into some other dissonant intervals. This piece is so visual and tactile (perhaps a result of Shostakovich’s synesthesia) that you see and feel the sounds almost as much as you hear them. I went to hear this live from the San Franciso Symphony in late 2006, and it was purely penetrating. The orchestra, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, managed to inject the sounds into me.