Shostakovich: Orchestral Compositions of Different Years

Description

This volume includes two Scherzos, Op. 1 and, Op. 7, Theme and Variations, Op. 3, and Five Fragments, Op. 42. Although these compositions are unlike each other in terms of their musical attributes and different periods of Shostakovich's creative work, they have something in common inasmuch as all of them are marked with two crosses in the list the composer included in a letter to Grigori Shneerson of 28 January 1941.

In a letter to Dmitri Rogal-Levitsky of 22 September 1927, Shostakovitch explained these marks as follows: "A cross (+) after the year means that this work has not been published because I do not consider it of high enough quality to be published, but I think it can be performed. Two crosses (++) mean that the work is not fit for publication or performance for the same reason. So you may be asking why I am including the work in my list, if it is not of high enough quality to even be performed, and why I give it an opus number? The answer is—once written, it remains forever." The "quality" Shostakovitch writes about fell into different categories: the composer used this method to mark both earlier compositions he considered "entirely unsuccessful" and mature works, on which he placed a "veto".