The Symphony No. 11 in G minor (Opus 103; subtitled The Year 1905) by Dmitri Shostakovich was premiered by the USSR Symphony Orchestra under Natan Rakhlin on 30 October 1957.

The symphony has four movements:

1. Adagio (Palace Square)
2. Allegro (9 January)
3. Adagio (In Memoriam)
4. Allegro non troppo (Tocsin).

The subtitles of the symphony and of each movement officially commemorate the attempted Russian Revolution of 1905. However, there is also reason to believe that it was a commentary on the Hungarian Uprising of 1956; it was composed immediately after the uprising, and his widow Irina has said that he had it "in mind" during composition (DSCH Journal, No. 12 p. 72). Quotations in the work itself can support either interpretation: the first movement quotes a song with the text "The autumn night is ...black as the tyrant's conscience",while the final movement refers to one including the words "shame on you tyrants". Volkov compares this movement's juxtaposition of revolutionary songs to a cinematic montage, while quoting Anna Akhmatova's description of it as "white birds against a black sky".

Further reading

• Volkov, Solomon (2004). Shostakovich and Stalin: The Extraordinary Relationship Between the Great Composer and the Brutal Dictator. Knopf. ISBN 0375410821.

External link

• London Shostakovich Orchestra