Hubski,
I need to talk to you about music. Specifically, one particular piece of music.
That piece of music is Schostakovich's 5th Symphony.
I like a lot of music, from all sorts of styles, and I've played a lot of music from a lot of eras and styles. There has never been a piece of music that has affected me so incredibly much as this one. It's in my mind now because I will be playing it for the second time in the next concert cycle at my school.
To understand my love affair with this piece, we need to go back to when I started to learn the Bass. I started very late for a classical musician. I was 19 (well, 18 that september, 19 that november) when I started to learn the Upright bass. I'd been an electric bassist in a rock band since high school, and I'd never played a string instrument in my life. I applied to school because the drummer in my band was going to school for classical guitar, and I didn't really know what to do with my life. I borrowed my high school's double bass (singular. there was no orchestral program at my school), got a violinist friend to show me how to hold a bow, and went to my audition. I hacked out a version of the melody to "In the Hall of the Mountain King", and the man who would be my teacher said "... well, you and the other guy showed up, so You're in." They took a lot of people on potential.
That year, while i was learning from scratch, I saw my teacher (a Violist) play Shostakovich's String Quartet no 8, and I was struck by not just the heartbreaking qualities, but also the ferocity, anger, and melancholy. I'd never heard anything like this music. I lay in bed hours after the concert trying to process how I felt.
My second year at school, My teacher invited me to play in the local community orchestra. The second concert I played with them had this piece, another work I'd never heard before by a composer who I'd never heard of until the year before. The part landed on my stand, and my first though was "I'm in WAY over my head here." The bass part in the first movement alone covers almost the entire range of the instrument. Then you turn the page and there's still 30 minutes of music to play.
I practiced my ass off, and did my best. I fell flat on my face in the concert. Several times. I faked most of the notes, and half the notes I didn't fake I got wrong. I was hooked. "I could do this the rest of my life", I told myself.
This is the piece that set me on the journey to where I am right now, a Graduate student pursuing my Master's degree in Music, looking for an Artist's Diploma program for next year, thinking of a Doctorate.
As you'll hear the announcer explain in the beginning of the video below, this Symphony came at a pivotal time for Shostakovich. It was an all-or-nothing situation for him in some ways ( A situation which came to a head around the time when he wrote String Quartet no 8, actually). This piece rages and laughs, but it only laughs because if it doesn't laugh, it will cry. There are many references in it (even its C minor to C Major format is a reference to Beethoven's famous 5th Symphony).
I could really go on and on forever about this piece - it means so much to me. I know we're all busy people here on the thoughtful web, but if you took some time to listen, this is a piece that I NEED to share with you.