Composer

For the third and final time, artist in residence Sheku Kanneh-Mason will be a guest soloist with the Konzerthausorchester. With his cello, he lends his voice to King Solomon, as Ernest Bloch's ‘Schelomo’, first performed in New York in 1917, is a dialogue between the biblical ruler and his people. This in turn speaks from the orchestra. In terms of its musical structure, the short 20-minute, late-romatic neoclassical rhapsody could easily pass for film music: It illustrates the world view and character of the king, who, like other people, knows happy and darker phases of life. The composer's desire to create vital Jewish music is expressed in numerous sound quotations.

Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Michael Sanderling

Konzerthaus Berlin

Yulianna Avdeeva, First Prize winner of the 2010 International Chopin Piano Competition, is praised for her perfect execution and “sheer passion and musicianship, not to mention technical security…” (The Telegraph). In this program, she brings her insightful artistry to works of Shostakovich and Chopin.

Yulianna Avdeeva, piano

Rockport Music-Shalin Liu Performance Center

Written in 1937, in the midst of Stalin’s cruel artistic purges, Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 shows little of the terrible strain the composer and his compatriots felt. The government defined truth and beauty, and the consequences of coloring outside those lines were dire. Seemingly on a whim, an artist’s work could be condemned, and the artist himself banished. Despite the overriding climate of fear, his Fifth was a triumph; the Leningrad premiere received an ovation that lasted more than half an hour. It remains an extraordinary tribute to inspiration that defies restraint.

EPSG:4326

Alsop Conducts Shostakovich

Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater

"How can you say why you love something? You don't need reasons, you just love." Evgeny Kissin is irritated by the question of why he loves Dmitri Shostakovich. He owes this to his parents, who had a recording of his 1st Piano Concerto in their record cabinet. Young Evgeny fell in love with this music immediately. A love that continues to this day and that will shape both of the portrait artist's concerts at the Ruhr Piano Festival 2025 - the year that marks the 50th anniversary of Shostakovich's death. 

Ruhr Piano Festival

Anneliese Brost Musikforum Ruhr

Danish cellist Jonathan Swensen—the recipient of multiple international awards, including the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant—will showcase his talent in the neoclassical brick church in the village of Nossentin. He will be accompanied by fellow Danish cellist Elias Holm. The Danish duo's program will take them on a journey through music history: from Johann Sebastian Bach to Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann, and Dmitri Shostakovich, they will perform significant works from the cello repertoire.

YOUNG ELITE Jonathan Swensen

Kirche Nossentin

Line 2: The Noise of Time

Im Wizemann

Hear the blazing fanfares that open Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony? For Tchaikovsky, they symbolised Fate, and the whole symphony simply bursts with melody and emotion. If you’ve already heard Vasily Petrenko conduct Russian music, you won’t need telling twice: things are about to get exciting, in a concert that begins with the flying fiddles of Weinberg’s Moldavian Rhapsody and features the unforgettable tunes of Shostakovich’s irreverent Suite. Trust us, you’ll know them when you hear them!

White Nights

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic

E-WERK Freiburg e.V.

TMC Music for Brass and Percussion

Tanglewood Music Center

The Russian Masters

Western Washington University

Listening to live music is a wonderful experience. In the »Klangzeit« (Sound Time) concerts, you can close your eyes and escape everyday life for a moment. In the entertaining, hour-long concerts featuring the string players of Ensemble Resonanz, you can listen in a relaxed atmosphere, express yourself, sing along to well-known songs and move freely. Here, everyone can be themselves. This makes the format particularly suitable for people with dementia and their relatives. All venues are accessible.

Klangzeit

Elbphilharmonie Hamburg

Is Shostakovich facing further disaster? Three days after the premiere of his tenth symphony, the Soviet Composers' Union is discussing whether the work is too modern, too old-fashioned or too critical - after all, the composer had been ostracized by Soviet cultural policy a few years earlier. But the committee missed the grim satire with which Shostakovich ironically expressed his anger at Stalinism. Brahms' Violin Concerto, on the other hand, is presented in a sunnier light - a true celebration of the violin sound in close integration with the orchestra and a rhythmically well-seasoned "Hungarian" finale, performed by world star Hilary Hahn. This program was put together by Cristian Măcelaru, who is using this evening to celebrate his departure as chief conductor of the WDR Symphony Orchestra after six years.

Masterful - Măcelaru & Hilary Hahn

Cologne Philharmonie

Masterful – Măcelaru & Hilary Hahn

Museum Ludwig

Join us on a journey from CPE Bach’s perfectly formed 1751 cello concerto, to Steven Mackey’s 2009 work Four Iconoclastic Episodes for violin, electric guitar and orchestra, which was written for Steven and Anthony Marwood to perform together. On the way we take in Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony – an arrangement by Rudolf Barshai of his 8th string quartet, originally written in 1945 and dedicated “to the victims of fascism and war”. The programme concludes with Tchaikovsky’s iconic Serenade for Strings.

Britten Sinfonia At Peasmarsh Festival

Church of Saint Mary, Rye

For this special edition series of Piano Explored, Howard Shelley will be taking you through a selection of popular piano concerts from Grieg, Mozart, Mendelssohn and more. Each concert will feature two piano concertos, accompanied by Howard’s spoken insights which reveal the secrets and nuances behind the music.

Piano Explored: Mozart and Shostakovich

St Paul's Knightsbridge

Shostakovich’s two piano concertos are worlds apart. The lively humour of the first, which dates back to 1933, is reminiscent of music for the silent screen; indeed, the composer had once earned his living as a cinema pianist. The neoclassical second from 1957, on the other hand, seems unrooted in time. The composer’s own view was merciless: »I have finished a piano concerto that has no redeeming artistic merits«. Yet perhaps his words should be taken with a pinch of salt: Shostakovich composed the work for his son, and he did not hinder him from performing it. To help launch the Shostakovich Festival, Marie Jacquot is combining this Janus-faced pair of works with Kurt Weill’s Symphony No. 2, which premiered in Paris in 1934, the year in which the composer fled Nazi Germany.

Special Concert International Shostakovich Festival Gohrisch

Kulturpalast Dresden

Shostakovich's piano concertos are rarely separated. The first dates from 1933. With its witty humor, it is reminiscent of silent film music: the composer once earned his living as a cinema pianist. The neoclassical second from 1957, on the other hand, seems out of date. "I have finished a piano concerto that has no value whatsoever," judged the Russian. But like so many things, these words should not be taken too lightly: Shostakovich composed the work for his son, who he did not want to prevent from seeing it. To open the Shostakovich Days, Marie Jacquot combines the Janus-faced pair with Kurt Weill's 2nd Symphony, which was premiered in exile in Paris in 1934.

Special concert on the eve of the International Shostakovich Days Gohrisch

Schaghajegh Nosrati

Gewandhaus

An extraordinary evening marking the 50th anniversary of Dmitri Shostakovich’s passing. This special concert explores the depth of his music alongside the brilliance of Benjamin Britten’s tribute to his teacher, Frank Bridge.

Shostakovich: In Memoriam

Cadogan Hall 

The mother of symphonies, its "immortal model," said Mendelssohn: the nickname "Jupiter," chosen after Mozart's death, fired the public's imagination, fascinated from the first day by this miracle, from the vigorous appeal of the first movement to the Apollonian radiance of the last. Simone Young commands the song of grace, after having made the National's music stands shine in Éric Tanguy's new Concert for Orchestra and awakened some Mozartian memories in Shostakovich's concerto.

Mozart, “Jupiter” Symphony / Simone Young

Maison de la Radio et de la Musique

Celebrate the arrival of summer with Le Foyer des Artistes as our talented lineup of musicians promises to create an unforgettable experience for music enthusiasts of all ages.

Summer Concert

St Columb's Hall

Promoting young talent is a central concern of the Hamburg Chamber Music Festival. This concert features five young prizewinners of international competitions. Together, they will rehearse true chamber music »highlights« especially for this evening.

Hamburg Chamber Music Festival International

Elisabeth Leonskaja, one of the great artists of our time, celebrates her 80th birthday in November a little ahead of schedule. For the portrait concert, the pianist has been given »carte blanche by agreement«, so to speak, by the Kammermusikfreunde Hamburg. She is coming to the Elbphilharmonie with close musical friends from the Staatskapelle Berlin and the young pianist Mihály Berecz.

Portrait concert Elisabeth Leonskaja

Celebrate Father’s Day at Carillon Park with a sensational concert by the Philharmonic!

Father’s Day Concert

Carillon Historical Park

Before Dmitri Shostakovich became a composer-critic of the Stalin dictatorship, the music world experienced him as a carefree, talented child prodigy: for example in his first piano trio, which the seventeen-year-old wrote during his studies - a one-movement, grand, racing flight of thought by a genius who had perfected his skills at an early age. Also worth discovering is the piano quintet by the far too unknown Polish romantic composer Juliusz Zarębski, which he dedicated to his teacher Franz Liszt.

Chamber Concert 5

WDR Funkhaus

How much personal life do composers allow to flow into their works? And can you hear it? The musicians of the Collenbusch Quartet have selected three works that are strongly influenced by the experiences of their creators. In the case of Polish composer Karol Szymanowski, it is the First World War, which he experienced on his parents' country estate in what is now Ukraine: In his string quartet, he looks back musically and into the future. Similarly, Shostakovich composed his Third String Quartet at the end of the Second World War. But not in a gloomy, tragic way, but rather in a darkly humorous way, in which he allows the pain to come across as almost musically light-footed. The Czech national composer Smetana had an inkling when he wrote his quartet that he would soon be deaf. In a way, the result is an autobiography in sound

Collenbusch Quartett

Palace of Culture

Leopold Stokowski, a great admirer of Bach, examined his works under the microscope and, with the aid of modern instruments, "magnified" the Baroque master's sound world into an orchestral experience. Taneyev, on the other hand, demonstrated an affinity for historical compositional styles, whose polyphonic compositional artistry even inspired admiration from his teacher Tchaikovsky. The cantata, little known in this country, tells of the last hours of John of Damascus in a haunting choral-symphonic movement. In contrast, Shostakovich chose a very secular theme for his cantata, which, in a historicizing way, was a parable of the brutal oppression in his time.

Kantaten

Principal Conductor Dinis Sousa brings the season to a close, alongside pianist Benjamin Grosvenor and our very own Royal Northern Sinfonia.

Benjamin Grosvenor plays Shostakovich

The Glasshouse International Centre for Music

As a chamber music professor and piano accompanist, Mara Mednik worked for decades to turn talented young musicians into the stars of tomorrow. She brought many as yet unknown greats to the stage of the Hamburg Chamber Music Festival. Her former students have included Daniel Hope, David Garett, Julian Steckel and Vilde Frang.

Join us for the Grand Final of BBC Radio Scotland’s Young Classical Musician 2025 and prepare to be inspired as three of Scotland’s most talented young instrumentalists perform alongside the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra with conductor Andrew Gourlay!

BBC Radio Scotland’s Young Classical Musician 2025 – Grand Final

City Halls

Benjamin Britten anticipated that the Second World War would break out soon. He couldn't stay in England and boarded a ship to Canada. One can hear in his music how unbearable this must have been for him as a committed pacifist. During the voyage, he composed his Violin Concerto in D minor, which will be performed by Augustin Hadelich in our concert. Dmitri Shostakovich's Eighth Symphony also reflects this war, although composed on the other side, in Stalin's Soviet Union. For Shostakovich, it was a balancing act: he didn't want to write optimistic music, but it couldn't be tragic either. The result is a work that mirrors these contradictions. Michael Sanderling is considered one of the leading Shostakovich experts among today's conductors. He experienced his father's close friendship with the composer as a child. <br><br>JUNE 13: Concert as part of the Dresden Music Festival.

Sanderling and Hadelich

Acclaimed for her dazzling technique and expressive depth, Beatrice Rana joins your Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra for a thrilling performance of Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto, a sparkling showpiece inspired by the composer’s time in Italy. The program also features a world premiere of Lera Auerbach’s Frozen Dreams, showcasing her innovative voice. In tribute to the 50th anniversary of Shostakovich’s death, your PSO performs his powerful Symphony No. 10, filled with emotional intensity and drama.

Rana Plays Mendelssohn

Heinz Hall for the Performing Arts

Mendelssohn is a dazzling showpiece, written for the composer’s own use after an influential stay in Italy where he became infatuated with a young pianist named Delphine von Schauroth.

He had a premonition of World War II breaking out imminently. Therefore, Benjamin Britten decided he could no longer stay in England, and left for Canada in 1939. The difficulty of his situation as an outspoken pacifist can be heard in his music as well. Even during the Atlantic crossing, he worked on his Violin Concerto in D-minor, whose solo part will be played at the Kulturpalast by Augustin Hadelich, known for his outstanding technique and the profound emotion and conviction of his interpretations. Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony also bears the signs of war. Composed in Stalin’s Soviet Union, it was a balancing act for its creator: he did not want to write optimistic music, yet he was not permitted to write tragic music. The resulting work reflects these contradictions. Michael Sanderling – the conductor of the evening and chief conductor of the Dresden Philharmonic from 2011 to 2019 – is considered one of the leading Shostakovich experts of our time, having witnessed during his childhood the close personal friendship of his father with the composer.

Hadelich —  Dresden Philharmonic — Sanderling

The twentieth century produced some of the most passionate and dramatic music ever written. MSO Principal Conductor Benjamin Northey joins forces with Australian violin wunderkind Christian Li to deliver this riveting program of symphonic powerhouses.

A Reflection in Time

Arts Centre Melbourne

Shostakovich’s Eighth String Quartet in C minor is one of the composers most personal works. There are striking allusions to Wagner’s »Götterdämmerung« and Tchaikovsky’s confessional symphony »Pathétique«. But Shostakovich also immortalised himself, with themes from earlier works as well as the musical code D-Es-C-H. The piece was composed in 1960 during a visit to Dresden, which was destroyed in 1945.

NDR Chamber Music Concert / Elphier-Quartett

Chamber music with works by Brahms, Glinka, Kim and Shostakovich: The Elphier Quartet, together with double bassist Benedikt Kany and pianist Haiou Zhang, invites you to the Recital Hall of the Elbphilharmonie on June 10th.

Chamber music: Elphier Quartet with Shostakovich and Brahms

The Geneva Camerata presents a unique encounter between the world of Krump – a Hip-Hop dance style originating in the Los Angeles suburbs – and one of the greatest masterworks in music history, Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony. The orchestra musicians become part of the choreography developed by the director and choreographer Kader Attou for this impressive score. Based on the rhythmic intensity of Shostakovich’s Fifth and the virtuosity of the four dancers, the performance stages the body movements of Krump as an expression of self-liberation, symbolizing revolt and the struggle against brutality. The result is a moving total work of art, inviting the viewer to reflect intensively upon various topical social issues such as tolerance, courage and liberty, but from a new perspective.

»revolta«

This lighthearted matinee featuring everything from classical to pop will make the walls at the venerable Semper Oper shake! The exceptional all-round musician Friedrich Gulda, who passed away in 2000, wrote a five-movement Concerto for Cello and Brass Ensemble, which he dedicated to Heinrich Schiff in 1980. It begins in a funky rock tone and ends with an Alpine folk melody. The solo part will be played by Jan Vogler, not only the Intendant of the Dresdner Musikfestspiele and an outstanding cellist, but also a former student of Heinrich Schiff, bringing matters full circle.

 Vogler – Berlin Philharmonic Brass – Handler

Semperoper Dresden

It takes but a few minutes, a blink of the eye in the history of music. And yet, Arnold Schönberg’s melodrama »A Survivor from Warsaw« is a central work within 20th-century music. The composer Luigi Nono even went so far as to call it »the aesthetic musical manifesto of our period.« The work for narrator, men’s chorus and orchestra conjures up a horrifying scene in the Warsaw Ghetto: The selection and dismissal of prisoners who are sentenced to death. Schönberg reconverted to Judaism in 1933, shortly before emigrating to the USA. Two years after the war had ended, he dealt with the Holocaust on a musical and literary level and formulated a warning addressed to all people of Jewish faith, »never to forget what has been done to us.« In the final chorus, the prisoners – in the face of death – break into sung prayer, the Shema Yisrael. Together with the designated Gürzenich-Kapellmeister Andrés Orozco-Estrada, the Gürzenich Orchestra welcomes the renowned French singer and actor Dominique Horwitz who will take on the role of the narrator.

Survive

About Life – Special Concert

Shostakovich 7

Athenaeum Center for Thought & Culture

Beethoven and Shostakovich

Sarasota Opera House

The dazzling Sheku Kanneh-Mason, “technically superb and eloquent in his expressivity” (The Guardian), performs Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto, renowned for its virtuoso fireworks.

The Grand Finale

Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts

Officially, Shostakovich based his massive Eleventh Symphony on the Russian revolution of 1905, but this blockbuster of a symphony is still grippingly relevant today. As we pay tribute to the 50th anniversary of Shostakovich’s death, Thomas Søndergård brings our Concert Season to a close in truly epic style: opening with the jubilant trumpets of the Festive Overture and joining Daniel Müller-Schott (‘Fearless’ – The New York Times) in a Cello Concerto that feels more like a Cold War thriller. It doesn’t get more powerful than this.

RSNO Season 24-25: Season Finale - Spectacular Shostakovich

Usher Hall

From Bach to Block

The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra's season goes out with a bang when guest conductor Peter Oundjian presents two orchestral heavyweights. Mahler described his uber-Romantic Seventh Symphony as three "night pieces" with a "bright-as-day" finale. Marshaling a mammoth orchestra, the Seventh overflows with velvety richness sprinkled with arresting intimacy before delivering a raucous, triumphal ending. The staggering piano virtuoso and Atlanta favorite Inon Barnatan returns for Shostakovich's snarky and rapid-fire Piano Concerto No. 1., a piece that delivers parody and humor with fistfuls of notes for the solo pianist and principal trumpet.

Oundjian Conducts Mahler Symphony No. 7

The Woodruff Arts Center

Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich

Mayo Performing Arts Center

New Jersey Performing Arts Center

Princeton University

Count Basie Center for the Arts

SPO Museum Concert 2025

Seoul Hanseong Baekje Museum

Two magnificent orchestral works from two very different periods – Joseph Haydn’s Farewell Symphony and Dmitri D. Shostakovitch’s Symphony No. 8. Both are characterised by a dichotomy of sorrow and rebellion. The members of the royal court orchestra at Esterházy Palace wanted to go home to their families after a long summer season. The Prince, however, would not release them. Haydn struck a subversive note of protest for the welfare of his fellow musicians, by having one instrument after another fall silent and withdraw at the end. The Prince, as lore has it, understood the message and gave in. Shostakovich found the courage not to sing songs of jubilation at the end of the Second World War, but instead lamented the deaths of millions and loss of personal freedom under the Stalinist regime. “All that is dark and ignominious will disappear, all that is beautiful will triumph,” Shostakovich explained in a newspaper article. The dictator heard a threat in the contradiction between the music and the asserted expression, and promptly had all performances of the piece banned. His instinct did not fail him. Today, Shostakovich&#39;s Symphony No. 8 is considered a, “tragedy of the present” (Ivan Martynov), and has lost none of its topicality.

Academy Concert: Vladimir Jurowski

Max-Joseph-Platz

Andrey will present in his program selected etudes by Liszt, selected etudes by Chopin. In the second part, Liszt’s Spanish Rhapsody, Granados’s “Love and Death”, Babajanyan – Nocturne and Stravinsky’s Petrushka.Concert pianist Andrey Gugnin is rapidly gaining international acclaim as a passionately virtuosic performer, who possesses an “extraordinarily versatile and agile technique, which serves an often inspired musical imagination” (Gramophone). One of his recent achievements is winning the prestigious 12th International German Piano Award in 2023. In 2024, Andrey Gugnin won first place at the Classic Piano International Competition in Dubai, claiming the grand prize with a performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3. In 2020, the BBC Music Magazine Awards named Gugnin the winner of the Instrumental Award for his recording Shostakovich: 24 Preludes – Piano Sonatas 1 & 2 (Hyperion). Since winning the prestigious Sydney International Piano Competition in 2016, Gugnin has gone from strength to strength in concerts and recordings which exhibit his impassioned interpretations.

Andrey Gugnin

Meydenbauer Center

The indomitable spirit of human perseverance is on full display in this timely and powerful program. Join us for the Bay Area premiere of Gity Razaz’s Methuselah (In Chains of Time), which is a lush and poignant reflection on the endurance of life inspired by an ancient Great Basin bristlecone pine tree growing high in the White Mountains of Inyo County in eastern California. Then be transported to the rugged landscapes of South America with Astor Piazzolla’s Aconcagua, featuring Hanzhi Wang on the bandoneon, who wields the instrument with “staggering virtuosity.” Drawing inspiration from the majestic peaks of the Andes, Piazzolla’s composition captures the fiery spirit of Argentine tango with its lush melodies and pulsating rhythms. To close out the season, Shostakovich’s monumental Symphony No. 5 serves as a stirring testament to the triumph of the human spirit over oppression and tyranny.  From its brooding opening to its victorious finale, Shostakovich’s symphony resonates with themes of resilience, redemption, and the enduring promise of hope.

Triumph

University of California, Berkeley

One of today’s most insightful artists—pianist Evgeny Kissin—leads an all-star lineup in his third and final Shostakovich program of the month. Among the concert’s world-class soloists are violinist Gidon Kremer and cellist Giedrė Dirvanauskaitė. The performance also marks the Carnegie Hall debut of the illustrious Kopelman Quartet, whose members worked directly with Shostakovich on his late quartets as founding players in the Moscow String Quartet.

Evgeny Kissin and Friends: A Tribute to Shostakovich

Carnegie Hall

Secure one of our three package deals by phone, online or at the Gewandhaus box office and save up to 20 percent compared to individual ticket sales. The concerts can be freely selected from all festival events and are available in various price categories.

The four Daniels

Experience the profound intensity and emotional depth of classical music with the Omaha Symphony's presentation of "Negrón, Grieg & Shostakovich 5." This captivating concert series will take place at the prestigious Holland Center, with performances scheduled for Friday, May 30, and Saturday, May 31, both at 7:30 PM.

Under the baton of Music Director Ankush Kumar Bahl, the concert opens with the mesmerizing "Moriviví" by Angélica Negrón. Premiered in 2022 by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, this orchestral feature traces the evolution of a shy succulent native to Puerto Rico, showcasing Negrón's innovative and evocative composition style.

The concert continues with the renowned pianist Joyce Yang taking the stage to perform Edvard Grieg's glorious Piano Concerto. Yang's vivid and beautiful playing, praised by the New York Times, promises to breathe new life into this beloved masterpiece.

The evening will culminate with Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5, a work of intense emotion, drive, and instinct. Recognized as one of the greatest symphonies ever written, Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony offers a powerful and moving close to the 2024/25 season.

In addition to the performances, attendees will have the opportunity to delve deeper into the music with program information on each piece and the chance to meet composer Angélica Negrón. This event not only celebrates the rich legacy of classical music but also highlights contemporary compositions that are shaping the future of orchestral music.

Tickets for "Negrón, Grieg & Shostakovich 5" are available for purchase, with individual tickets going on sale in August. However, patrons can secure their seats today and enjoy savings, free exchanges, and more great benefits by subscribing to the Masterworks series, with 7-Concert packages starting at $150.

Don't miss this unforgettable musical journey with the Omaha Symphony at the Holland Center. Secure your tickets now and be part of a night filled with the beauty, drama, and passion of classical music.

Negrón, Grieg & Shostakovich 5

Omaha Performing Arts

Was it, or wasn’t it, an act of defiance and bitter retort to Stalin’s displeasure? Shostakovich’s life was so utterly and constantly in peril that he could never publicly declare whether his Fifth Symphony was simply ‘a Soviet artist’s reply to just criticism’ or a satirical puncturing of the dictator, deliberately hollow but dressed as adulation.

Ulster Orchestra: Act Of Defiance

Ulster Hall

Yulianna Avdeeva

William Kentridge

GS Arts Center

Festivalorchester, Andris Nelsons & Anna Rakitina

Empowered by the great adagios of late Beethoven, Shostakovich’s quartet farewell is music for which isolation holds no terrors: five sombre Adagios (the composer’s instruction was to play so slowly ‘flies drop dead in mid-air’) plus a Funeral March. The Quartet No 7 remembers Shostakovich’s beloved first wife Nina, finally retreating into affectionate reminiscence, then grateful repose. First, though, comes the Quartet No 10 composed in 1963 when, creatively restored, Shostakovich gleefully dedicated it to his fellow composer Mieczysław Weinberg, who had only notched up 9!

Shostakovich Quartets: Intimate Portraits, Part 5

Milton Court Concert Hall

Guest Concert of the Staatskapelle Dresden in Toulouse

La Halle aux Grains

To mark the anniversary of Dmitri Shostakovich’s death, our chamber music collaboration with the Leipzig Gewandhaus is turning to one of his most significant works: the second piano trio. It was written in memory of Ivan Sollertinsky, the critic and musicologist who not only introduced the composer to the music of Gustav Mahler, but also provided important impulses for Shostakovich’s own work. Dedicated to his friend in the year of his death, the trio also reflects on the hardships and despair of WWII. In the final movement, a melody styled on Jewish folk music recalls the victims of both Hitler and Stalin. The tune was later reworked in the famous 8th String Quartet from 1960 as a poignant reminder to those who survived.

7th Chamber Music Evening Concert

er Kammermusiktausch mit dem Leipziger Gewandhaus rückt zum Jubiläum von Dmitri Schostakowitsch mit dessen zweitem Klaviertrio eines seiner wichtigsten Werke in den Mittelpunkt. Es entstand im Andenken an Iwan Sollertinski. Der Dramaturg hatte dem Komponisten nicht nur die Musik Gustav Mahlers nahegebracht, sondern auch gewichtige Impulse für das Schaffen Schostakowitschs gegeben. Neben der Trauer um den Freund spiegelt das Trio die Not und das Elend der Kriegszeit. Ein aus jüdischer Volksmusik entlehntes Thema erinnert im Finale gleichermaßen an die Opfer Hitlers und Stalins. Es wird später im berühmten 8. Streichquartett von 1960 erneut verarbeitet – als düstere Mahnung an die Überlebenden.

7. Kammmerabend

Dmitri Shostakovich composed just a single, unforgettable sonata for each principal string instrument. In this concert, pianist extraordinaire Evgeny Kissin welcomes an all-star group of musicians to perform all three. From the earliest of the works (1934’s youthful Cello Sonata) to the final piece Shostakovich ever composed (the elegiac Viola Sonata of 1975), the program offers a revealing look at a small, but essential part of the composer’s enduring musical output, performed at the highest possible level.

Evgeny Kissin and Friends: The Shostakovich Sonatas

Dmitri Shostakovich's 2nd and 3rd symphonies carried a clear political inspiration and patriotic tone, celebrating the Soviet revolution and the labor movement. Both symphonies were composed early in Shostakovich's career, and were favorably received by the Soviet government for their strongly patriotic character. In contrast, Shostakovich's 4th Symphony, composed in 1935-1936, was not met with the same level of enthusiasm by the Soviet authorities. The symphony was not actually performed publicly until 1961, when it was deemed too "dangerous" by the Soviet authorities due to its complex harmonies and emotional depth, which did not fit into Soviet art policy at the time. Only after Stalin's death was the symphony first performed. With its structure and wide musical range, Shostakovich's 4th Symphony requires an appropriate number of musicians and instruments. That is why, true to tradition, we have teamed up with the Schleswig-Holsteinisches Sinfonieorchester to take on the task.

Shostakovich's 4.

Deutsches Haus venues GmbH

Alsion

Guest Concert of the Staatskapelle Dresden in Paris

Cité de la Musique

Liederabend

Guest Concert of the Staatskapelle Dresden in Basel

Stadtcasino Basel

Andris Nelsons musical direction , Francisco Negrin direction , Rifai Ajdarpasic set design , Ariane Isabell Unfried costumes , Leipzig Opera Chorus, Gewandhaus Orchestra, with Kristīne Opolais (Katerina Ismailova), Pavel Černoch (Sergej), Dmitry Belosselskiy (Boris Ismailov), Matthias Stier (Zinovy ​​Ismailov), Dan Karlström (The Shabby One), Ivo Stanchev (Pope) and others.

Lady Macbeth Of Mzensk

Oper Leipzig

To what lengths may a person to go to free themselves from terrible circumstances? The young Katerina, married into wealth yet lonely nonetheless, imprisoned in a mercilessly cold world dominated by men and controlled by its police force, is longing for something more. She is forced to hide her joie de vivre on account of her tyrannical father-in-law, and suppress her desires for love because her husband is impotent and distant. When he is away and the bravado Sergei starts working on the farm, she seems to have found a way out of this dull situation devoid of action. But in the end, four people are dead, including a murderess. Premiered in Leningrad in 1934, the acclaimed opera was intended to further fuel the promising career of the then 24-year-old Dmitri Shostakovich. But one visit to a performance by Stalin was enough for him to suspect the celebrated star of being a potential enemy of the regime. From then on, Shostakovich was forced to live and compose in oppressive fear. Yet where words are forbidden, his musical world simmers, sizzles and lies in wait to explode at the next touch.

Lady Macbeth von Mzensk

MDR Radio Choir & Philipp Ahmann

Guest Concert of the Staatskapelle Dresden in Munich

Gasteig HP8

Symphonic Grandeur

Living Arts Centre

Gewandhausorchester, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Festivalorchester & Andris Nelsons

Gewandhausorchester, Boston Symphony Orchestra & Andris Nelsons

Elgin Symphony String Quartet Plays Haydn, Shostakovich and Mendelssohn

Prince of Peace Lutheran Church

Guest Concert of the Staatskapelle Dresden in Vienna

Wiener Konzerthaus

Royal Northern Sinfonia is joined by dynamic conductor Delyana Lazarova and extraordinary cellist Jaemin Han.

Beethoven's Fifth Symphony

Middlesbrough Town Hall

Westmorland Hall

World-renowned violinist Leonidas Kavakos interprets Shostakovich’s Concerto, whose sonorities range from quiet contemplation to the most spectacular cadenza you’re ever likely to witness to a frenzied finale, guaranteed to leave you amazed. Then, from two out-of-the-blue chords to exhilarating finale, the “Eroica’s” majesty and grandeur, extraordinary scope, and bold harmonies rise to a triumphant climax and proclaim that a new era in music has begun. Dallas-based composer Kyle Gann “tinkered” with one of his favorite Charles Ives pieces (which he lamented as being too brief) and “stretched it out,” as he says, resulting in his Serenity Meditation (after Ives).

Beethoven’s “Eroica”

Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center

Guest Concert of the Staatskapelle Dresden in Berlin

Berliner Philharmonie

Philadelphia Sinfonia Festival Concert

The concert is capped with what are perhaps the most famous four notes in history. Drama, tension and emotion, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is an epic musical journey that begins with those iconic four dada-da-daaaa’s. Carlos Simon’s piece, full of shimmering melodies, is inspired by Beethoven’s music and starts the evening with high drama.

Royal Northern Sinfonia: Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony

Guest concert of the Staatskapelle Dresden in Hamburg

Guest Concert of the Staatskapelle Dresden in Hamburg

Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider, Gautier Capuçon & Daniil Trifonov

A concert with the Staatskapelle Dresden under the baton of Tugan Sokhiev and with Sol Gabetta as a soloist: this is the stuff musical dreams are made of. Especially since Dmitri Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 and Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 are outstanding works of their respective composers, which means the audience is in for an extra-special treat. »Since Beethoven, nothing even similar has been written…!«, the conductor Arthur Nikisch uttered when he gave the first performance of Bruckner’s Seventh in 1884.

Composer

Dmitri Shostakovich

Events

Upcoming events

Jun 27, 2025 - Apr 11, 2026

Klangzeit · Elbphilharmonie

11 - 13 Jul, 2025

Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Michael Sanderling · Konzerthausorchester Berlin

Jul 20, 2025

BBC Proms Ravel with Nicholas McCarthy · Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra

23 - 24 Jul, 2025

Alinde Quintet · Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele

Jul 24, 2025

Vasily Wohlgemuth · Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern

Past events

11 - 13 Jul, 2025

Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Michael Sanderling · Konzerthausorchester Berlin

Jul 10, 2025

Yulianna Avdeeva, piano · Rockport Music

About

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