Lecture
Lectures
Shostakovich and his Sixth Symphony: the Enigma Remains
Pre-concert talk on Shostakovich's "Symphony No 6" for New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Lecture dates: 1 July 2006 • Auckland Town Hall and 8 July 2006 • Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington, New Zealand
This year we celebrate the one-hundredth anniversary of Dmitri Shostakovich’s birth. Thirty-one years after the composer’s death in 1975, he still remains one of the most enigmatic and controversial figures of twentieth-century art music. While music audiences around the world have accepted and loved his music, musicologists and art-music critics are at a loss as to how to classify his works, or rather, in what context to put them – should they be appreciated purely for their musical merit, or in relation to the specific historic-political climate in which they were created.
