Dmitri Shostakovich - Symphony No. 5
Shostakovich shortly before the first performance of the Fifth Symphony wrote, "Working ceaselessly to master my art, I am endeavoring to create my own musical style, which I seek to make simple and expressive. I cannot think of my further progress apart from our socialist structure, and the goal that I set for my work is to contribute at every point toward the growth of our remarkable country,"
The score bears this inscription: "A Soviet artist's practical, creative reply to just criticism."
Alexei Tolstoy wrote after the first performance: "The powerful, rousing sounds of the Finale stirred the audience. All rose to their feet, infused with joy, and happiness streamed from the orchestra like a spring breeze. We cannot but trust the Soviet listener. His reaction to music is a just verdict. Our listener is organically unreceptive to decadent, gloomy, pessimistic art, but he responds enthusiastically to good art that is clear, bright, joyful, optimistic, viable."
Shostakovich said of this new work: "The theme of my Symphony is the stabilization of a personality. In the center of this composition-----conceived lyrically from beginning to end-----I saw a man, with all his experiences"....the second movement as "an ironic smile over the irrevocable past".....the third movement as "being filled with tears and suffering".....the finale as "resolving the tragically tense impulses of the earliermovements into optimism and joy of living."