![]() The premiere that month, on the 21st, was given by the Leningrad Philharmonic under Yevgeny Mravinsky, who raised the score aloft to tumultuous applause. Whether or not there was coercion, an article in a Nov 1937 Moscow newspaper credited to Shostakovich said the new work, his Symphony No 5, was 'a Soviet artist's creative response to justified criticism'. (This was not performed until 1961, during the Kruschev era.) And completing his Symphony No 4 – a big brute of a work – he withdrew the planned Leningrad premiere in '36, after denunciation by the State. Composer Dmitri Shostakovich was already in the doghouse after performances of his 1934 opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. ![]() Things were very different in 1930s Soviet Russia under Stalin, when a knock at the door could lead to interrogation – or worse. New pieces by composers Harrison Birtwistle or Peter Maxwell Davies, say, will have received polite applause and a few boos from the audience at their premieres. Christopher Breunig sets out the background and suggests recordings Written under duress during four months in spring 1937, this would become his most popular work.
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