"The teenage Shostakovich had imbibed all the lessons he could about what orchestral music should sound like and how it should behave, and was bold enough to subvert all those ideas and send them up."
"From the distorted trumpet call that opens the work a fanfare that thumbs its nose at your expectations of how a symphony should start; not an affirmative flourish, but a snakingly dissonant question mark."
"The momentum that Shostakovich generates from the way he juxtaposes ideas cutting from one to the other as if the symphony were a reel of film continues deliriously in the second movement."
"In the symphony's piano solos, he turns his work into a knockabout farce that Buster Keaton would be proud of."
Shostakovich's First Symphony premiered in Leningrad on May 12, 1926, conducted by Nicolai Malko. The 19-year-old composer boldly subverted traditional orchestral norms. The symphony features a four-movement structure but is unconventional in its execution. The opening distorted trumpet call sets a sardonic tone, while the first movement resembles a circus with various characters. The second movement introduces a piano part, revealing the compositional energy influenced by Shostakovich's experience with silent cinema, creating a farcical atmosphere reminiscent of Buster Keaton's films.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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