101 Classical Music CDs

I can't help it. I just don't like Shostakovich. This is the second time I've tried my hand at a Shosty symphony, after listening to and heartily disliking his Eleventh Symphony . Unfortunately, I felt no emotional connection to his First Symphony either. The music seems random and arbitrary to me--and to be honest, I even caught myself rolling my eyes at a few of Shosty's musical devices. And as I'll show in the listener notes, it's more film score music than symphony. ********************** Leonard Bernstein and the Chicago Symphony Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 7 Deutsche Grammophone, 1989 ********************** Lucky me: I've still got three more of his symphonies left to listen to: his Second, Seventh and Twelfth. A little historical background before we get to the listener notes: Shostakovich wrote his First Symphony in 1925 at the shockingly young age of 18. It was his graduation piece at the Leningrad Conserva...

After learning about Dmitri Shostakovich's life, the poverty and ill-health of his youth, the ideological struggles he had with the Soviet regime (particularly under Stalin), and the general overall misery of his life, I was really looking forward to tackling his Eleventh Symphony. ********************** Mstislav Rostropovich and the London Symphony Orchestra Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) Symphony 11: The Year 1905 London Symphony Orchestra (Live Recording), 2002 ********************** It was a letdown. This symphony, written on the 40th anniversary of the 1917 revolution in Russia, commemorates the Bloody Sunday massacre of January 9th, 1905, when some 200,000 workers, peacefully demonstrating for better working conditions, were fired on by Tsarist troops. I can see why some critics have derided this symphony as a glorified film soundtrack. Even the ( surprisingly coherently written ) liner notes accompanying this CD sound a bit defensive on this point: "This is a symphony...