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.
SO I waited on this until I could get to some real speakers. Then I listened to it on real speakers and all I hear is Youtube codec. I'll dig up a real copy of it if you recommend an orchestra/conductor. Make it go. My phone will play 96kHz FLAC and my pro tools rig has $4k worth of Genelecs so one way or another I'll listen to it for realsies.
There's a recording of the Leningrad Philharmonic with Yevgeni Mravinsky - That'd be a good one, as would Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. The Bernstein is seminal, and Leningrad is the orchestra that premiered the work in the first place. Either of those are going to be available on just about any format you're into - including the iTunes store.
I'm curious as to whether you found this to calm your mind. I saw you post this this morning and I thought to myself "...I don't know if this will have the desired effect"
I'll listen to this later (when I'm not at work).
I am intrigued, though - I know bugger-all about Shostakovich, but I've always wondered about the second line of the song I've linked below. The line is simply "Feeling Shostakovich", from Urban Getaway by the Kiwi band Elemeno P. I've always wondered what they really meant by it. I love this band, and this song :
could be a reference to a few things, but what sticks out to me is - Shostakovich made several attempts to kill himself. Maybe "feeling Shostakovich" is "feeling suicidal"?
Channeling our Hubski resident classical music enthusiast, Owl. I'm on a call right now and cannot listen, but I'm "sticking" the post to listen to later. Thanks for the post CSpoons.
Oh hey there. It's been a while. Been busy doing my own things, listening and discovering more music in my quest to find that platonic, archetypal piece that is in my head waiting to get out, and maybe even attempting (gasp) to try my hand at composing a thing or two myself. As someone whose knowledge of music is all informal, taken from bits and pieces at my own leisure, I doubt I have anything more interesting to say that coffee hasn't already said. The passion in enjoying something like this, however, and not just music, but anything, is admirable as all hell and deserves a badge. Passionate people who are passionate about things are cool. I really dig Shostakovich's music myself. His 5th symphony is a great one. A lot of shostakovich's music is really colored by the area and time he was living in, and you can feel it in the anger that coffee mentions in his post. My favorite Shostakovich piece has to actually be his Second Symphony, which doesn't seem as popular as most of his others, and is a piece even he disliked, but I managed to find some beauty in it, especially in the latter half. If anyone likes angry, ferocious pieces, I would heavily recommend Gavriil Popov's 1st Symphony. It's sad he got soviet folks angry, causing him to be more conservative in his composing. That explosion at 5:18... Potent stuff there. Here's something on Popov: http://www.therestisnoise.com/2004/09/the_popov_disco.html
Thinking of a piece that gets me as passionate as coffee here seems like a fun idea, so I'll try that. I would say Erik Satie's Le Fils Des Etoiles is a piece that speaks to me: I feel as though there's a secret in this piece that careful study will unravel. It feels alien and otherworldly to me, almost as if it it is out of place in history. Here's an orchestrated version arranged by Toru Takemitsu: For whatever reason, when I think of pieces that get me passionate, I also feel compelled to post this piece: Scriabin in general gets me excited. How many other composers have the courage to write a piece to signal the end of the world? And of course he had to die before finishing it... They always die before finishing it!
thanks for the badge. Man, Scriabin was a crazy dude. Love his music, especially his piano works. This one is just gorgeous.
#1 fan of Scriabin here, can confirm the crazy. I'm learning this piece now. It's gonna take a while. Also, I believe every Scriafficionado should listen to this performance. Pabs' thread contribution, out.