Original version

BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

Migrated podcast image for: Composer Of The Week

Composer of the Week

Music: Classical

Composer of the Week - Brand

An informative guide to composers' lives and their music.

An informative and accessible guide to composers' lives and their music.

Composer of the Week: Dmitry Shostakovich (1906-1975)

Composer of the Week: Dmitry Shostakovich (1906-1975): Episode 1: Turning Inward

Dmitry Shostakovich (1906-1975)

Episode 1

Episode 1: Turning Inward

Turning Inward

BBC Radio 3 - Composer of the Week, Dmitry Shostakovich (1906-1975), Turning Inward

How Shostakovich withdrew from public art to the inward sphere of the quartet.

Donald Macleod explains how Shostakovich withdrew from the risky world of public art to the inward sphere of the quartet.

This week, Donald Macleod views Shostakovich through the prism of his string quartets. Today, the composer withdraws from the risky world of public art to the inward sphere of the quartet.

Shostakovich came relatively late to the string quartet; he wrote his first in the year following the 5th Symphony, which had marked his rehabilitation after the furore whipped up by Stalin over the opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District - "Muddle instead of music", screamed Pravda - and the suppression of his angular, epically-proportioned 4th Symphony. A bad review from the Soviet state's official mouthpiece wasn't just an inconvenience; if you were considered guilty of 'formalism', or of not reflecting 'the life of the people', you could be whisked away in the dead of night and never seen again - or not for a long time, anyway. So after what must have been a truly terrifying period for Shostakovich, it's not particularly surprising, even once the 5th Symphony had been pronounced an official success, that he should have decided to take a holiday from the limelight and immerse himself in the rarified world of the string quartet - beyond the interest and under the radar of Soviet officialdom. Shostakovich's 1st String Quartet is a charming if relatively unambitious work, described by the composer as "joyful, merry, lyrical" and even "springlike", though a vein of melancholy winds its way through the first three movements. The story goes that Shostakovich's Piano Quintet started life as a second string quartet - with the composer adding a piano part when he realized that touring with it would allow him to travel!

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Donald Macleod views Dmitry Shostakovich through the prism of his string quartets

Donald Macleod views Dmitry Shostakovich through the prism of his string quartets, which he began writing relatively late in his career

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Composer of the Week

Dmitry Shostakovich (1906-1975)

Episode 1: Turning Inward

Genres

Brand

Series

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3