Evanston RoundTable, May 4, 2017 Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and Mahler all wrote great Fifth Symphonies. Shostakovich’s was something else: a plea for redemption and a window to the terrorism that was life under Stalin. It seems there is something about fifth symphonies. Beethoven wrote the most famous one, of course, the one that blasted a hole in music forever – you can hear it in the incredible four-note engine that drives the first movement and the titanic transition from C minor to C major at the end of the third movement. Haydn and Mozart could never have written this piece, it was too modern, the downbeat to the future. Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, Bruckner, and Mahler wrote great fifths later in the 19th century, as did Sibelius, Nielsen, and Prokofiev in the 20th. But no one wrote a Fifth Symphony like Dmitri Shostakovich, and for anyone who values liberty and creative expression, it is worth getting to know. There are many fine performances on YouTube, from Bernstein to Mravinsky. Shostakovich had the misfortune to live and work for much of his career under Stalin. Born in St. Petersburg in 1906, Shostakovich was a prodigy whose First Symphony, written at the age of 19 … Continue reading →