Talk:Symphony No. 15 (Shostakovich)

Removal of Konstantin Ivanov

I removed Konstantin Ivanov's recording from the discography. As it turns out, the Ivanov was actually the Chandos recording conducted by Polyansky. I also believe that Daniil Shafran is NOT the cellist on the Cello Concerto No. 1 that accompanies the Fifteenth Symphony on that Regis disc. You just never know what your buying these days! El Chileno Chido 10:22, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Can you please cite references for this assertion? --Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 13:05, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Never mind, I found it. Verrrrrrrrrry interesting, but unfortunately a little stupid. --Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 14:25, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Opinions?

The Fifteenth, along with the Fourth, is my favorite Shostakovich symphony. In fact, it was the second Shostakovich symphony I had ever heard (The Seventh and the Dances of the Dolls were my introduction to this composer). I first heard this symphony back in 1994, when I was twelve. The Seventh made an enormous impression on me and I was eager to further explore this composer's sound world. The only other Shostakovich CD I could find at my local library was one of Maxim conducting the Fifteenth on Collins. I checked the CD out and was very excited to hear it.

I decided to hear the work one dark night when I was alone at home. Big mistake. I don't think that I had ever heard such frightening music in all my life. I'm not kidding when I tell you that the work caused me to panic and break out in a sweat. By the symphony's end, I was simply a wreck. I couldn't sleep for the next month or so, such was the impression this symphony made on me. I could only muster the courage to listen to this macabre work again months later and that time, I made sure to listen to the symphony in day time!

Today, the symphony still gives me the chills (those bizarre canon-like figures for the strings and later the winds in the first movement!) but at least I'm able to sleep after listening to it. I still feel this work to be Shostakovich's darkest composition, darker and more frightening than the Fourteenth. The Fourteenth certainly is a bleak work but the Fifteenth seems darker, even sinister with its wild shifts of mood. Just thinking about the symphony's coda gives me goose-bumps. Anybody else have similar experiences with this symphony? El Chileno Chido 10:48, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I would suggest that this symphony is among the clearest examples of DSCH as vurodivy. The incredibly oblique approach to expression, the sense that the whole thing is full of riddles and puzzles, the refusal to state directly what he is about (compare the preceding two symphonies), all make this one of his most personal utterances, which paradoxically makes it universal. And it's that very indirectness that makes the work so disturbing for you, I suspect. We the listeners get to choose how we view it, I think. It is definitely among his greatest works but it is also one of the most baffling. --Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 13:17, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I first listened to this piece over thirty years ago. It always gave me the chills. There's that preoccupation with time and mortality, and still a sweetness at the end. I just heard it for the first time in a long while (the last time was long before Wikipedia), and I can't help feeling that right at the end, Shostakovich was also speaking to the Soviet regime (a source of anxiety for much of his life): "My end is near... but so is yours." [D M Smith] 96.226.229.68 (talk) 04:24, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

The quoation of the "Fate motive" from Wagner's Nibelung Ring (at least twice in the finale, noted in the article) is made in a form that's practically identical to its sombre use in Die Walküre, act 2, the scene where Brünnhilde is approaching Siegmund, knowing she will have to tell him of his impending death. That's not an accident of course: D.S is admitting his own sense of the proximity of Death, in the finale of his last major orchestral work. 188.150.64.57 (talk) 21:50, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Dubious

B - U - N - K

"Despite the subtitle, the work never so much as passes through the key of A-major until shortly after rehearsal number 143, half-way through the fourth movement."

Not true! Aside from the fact that the first movement clearly has an A-major key signature, the music is DEFINITELY in A major immediately after figure 8 in that movement. --Matthew L. Thompson (talk) 11:15, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

This statement has been challenged for a year and a half and should probably be removed from the article. --Deskford (talk) 23:17, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

I've now removed the disputed statement. --Deskford (talk) 11:49, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Latest edit

I just went through the revision history on this article, and amazingly enough, that missing word after "variable" has been missing from the very first time the sentence appeared. Amazing that nobody has noticed that before now! I'd suggest that unless the original author can come back in and clarify the phrase, someone should just re-write the whole sentence; I'll give it a go even though I don't think it's remotely clear just how to fix it. --Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 21:23, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I noticed that, and couldn't make sense of what the editor was trying to say. In fact this article contains a lot of unreferenced opinion that looks like original research to me. Perhaps it would benefit from a radical pruning...? --Deskford (talk) 21:56, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

82.120.235.207 (talk · contribs) suggests "tempi" as the missing word. It seems plausible to me, but we really need properly cited references to back these things up. --Deskford (talk) 14:28, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Rather than guessing the missing word (sort of a WP version of Wheel of Fortune), I really think it would be better to re-write the whole sentence, or even the whole section, to make it more encyclopedia-like and less like a high-school music-appreciation term paper. --Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 17:23, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. I'm sure there is an appropriate place for an essay such as this, but Wikipedia is not the place. --Deskford (talk) 00:17, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

"Toyshop?"

My understanding is that Shostakovich likened the first movement to a toyshop, never actually nicknamed it "The Toyshop." In a 1973 interview with Norman Pellegrini, Shostakovich seemed to distance himself from that comment. Will properly cite this interview in the near future. --CurryTime7-24 (talk) 00:08, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Rewrite

Earlier today, I rewrote nearly the entirety of this article as it was poorly written and loaded with WP:NOR and WP:NPOV issues. I kept and expanded the section on the symphony's influence on Lynch's Blue Velvet. CurryTime7-24 (talk) 03:53, 11 January 2021 (UTC)