Petrushka

Do fairy tales always have happy endings? Is cheerfulness always joyful and lighthearted? In Gubaidulina's fairy-tale poem , a piece of school chalk dreams of drawing flowers and the sea. When its dream finally comes true, the chalk is so happy that it doesn't even notice it dissolving while drawing this beautiful world. Shostakovich, too, typically combines sweetness, melancholy, and bitterness in his symphonically structured First Violin Concer...