Bard Music Festival Weekend Three

Shostakovich and His World

November 5-7, 2004

The life and work of Dmitrii Shostakovich are inextricably entwined with the central questions of politics and culture of the 20th century. Born in 1906, his career spanned the 1917 Revolution, two World Wars, and the Cold War. The greatest composer of the Soviet era, he struggled to sustain his ambition as a composer and at the same time maintain a working relationship with the Soviet regime. In the 1950s and 1960s, he was celebrated in the West, partly in the name of peaceful coexistence and partly because his music seemed accessible and conveyed both emotional intensity and a connection to
tradition seemingly absent from the music of radical modernists.

The controversy over the meaning and significance of Shostakovich’s music has only intensified since his death in 1975. Not only has there been the predictable rush to interpretive revisionism, but debate has continued about his significance and influence.

The 15th annual Bard Music Festival will attempt to confront and untangle the strands in Shostakovich’s music, personality, and career as well as the politics of his posthumous reception. His work will be reassessed in the 2004 Princeton University Press BMF volume edited by Laurel E. Fay, the leading Shostakovich scholar in America, and in the annual symposium, various panels, and preconcert lectures over two summer weekends and a third fall weekend of orchestral and chamber performances.

Click here to see individual panels and programs.