Shostakovich: Symphony No. 12 & Passacaglia

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 12 & Passacaglia

Santtu-Matias Rouvali conducts the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra in a performance of works by Dimitri Shostakovich. The concert opens with the Symphony No. 12, dubbed 'The Year 1917', composed in the memory of Vladimir Lenin. Like the composer's 11th Symphony, the work is programmatic as its subtitle and movements commemorate the Russian Revolution. Shostakovich planned this symphony to be a biographical drama, tracing Lenin from his youth to the new Soviet society he had created. The concert opens with a performance of the dramatic Passacaglia from Shostakovich’s masterpiece “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District”. This performance was recorded at Gothenburg Concert Hall (Konserthuset) in Sweden in 2018.