{"id":1235,"date":"2013-01-20T21:58:29","date_gmt":"2013-01-21T02:58:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/?p=1235"},"modified":"2013-01-20T21:58:29","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T02:58:29","slug":"shostakovich","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/?p=1235","title":{"rendered":"Shostakovich"},"content":{"rendered":"

It goes without saying that great music has the potential to transport us to a different world – a world with its own sense of style, preferred colors, and points of view. \u00a0A painting by Monet blurs our vision and wraps us in washes of color.\u00a0In his world, the emotional truth needs no defined lines. \u00a0A film by Pedro Almodovar shows us a vibrant, edgy world where we\u2019re sure to see red. \u00a0In his world, we might feel slapped in the face by reality.<\/p>\n

\"DmitriThe sound-world that I was immersed in this past week was that of Dmitri Shostakovich – \u00a0his Fifth Symphony, to be exact. It is a breathtaking piece and beautiful in a raw kind of way.\u00a0 It is sometimes terrifying, sometimes heartbreaking, and every so often it shimmers with glimmers of hope.\u00a0 It is pure genius to me that the angularity of Shostakovich\u2019s musical language manages still to be lyrical and expressive.\u00a0 It is open and transparent in its structure without being simple.\u00a0 For me, there are few things more truly awesome than sitting on stage in the middle of this music.<\/p>\n

I came to know his music through the horn initially, of course.\u00a0 A few of our most (in)famous audition excerpts are in this piece.\u00a0 His cello concerto also has a prominent solo horn part, and the horn is a prominent presence in most of his orchestral works.<\/p>\n

That being said, I love his non-orchestral work too.\u00a0 I had the good fortune of studying piano in college with a teacher who knew just what to choose for me to play as a non-piano major with horn ambitions.\u00a0 He chose several of Shostakovich\u2019s piano preludes (op. 34) for me to learn.\u00a0 One of my very favorites is no. 14 in E-flat minor.\u00a0 It is haunting and anguished, a mood not unlike parts of the Fifth Symphony.\u00a0 Several other of the preludes are more jaunty and seem to poke fun.\u00a0 Others are wry and whimsical.<\/p>\n

If you are ever interested in some good stories about how music and politics might intersect, Shostakovich\u2019s life might be an interesting one to study.\u00a0 His relationship with the Stalinist regime is fraught with drama and intrigue.\u00a0 Even his memoirs (Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich<\/i> by Solomon Volkov<\/a>) have served as a lightening rod, spurring controversy over the composer\u2019s life and motivations.<\/p>\n

As juicy as the intrigue is, the juiciest place of all is in the sound-world that Shostakovich creates.\u00a0 Here are a few of those piano preludes I mentioned<\/a>\u00a0 – minus my favorite one. You\u2019ll have to look that up on your own as well as the Fifth Symphony if you don\u2019t already know it.\u00a0 Enjoy!<\/p>\n

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It goes without saying that great music has the potential to transport us to a different world – a world with its own sense of style, preferred colors, and points of view. \u00a0A painting by Monet blurs our vision and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1235"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1249,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1235\/revisions\/1249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}