Symphony No. 8 in C Minor

Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, the “Leningrad”, made him a wartime hero. The Eighth, written two years later, in 1943, had a very different fate. Shostakovich appeared to have convinced some in authority that depictions of violence and grief were acceptable, so long as they were shown to have a suitably optimistic resolution. But the Eighth Symphony is pure tragedy, from its colossal, unrelievedly dark first movement through to its hushed, enigmatic ending. Initially, the symphony’s reception was somewhat muted. But after the end of the Second World War, the Soviet powers began reining in their artists again. When Shostakovich was denounced as “anti-people” in 1948, the Eighth was held aloft as symptomatic of all that had gone wrong—not just in his music, but in Soviet music in general—a view that prevailed in the USSR until well after the death of Stalin in 1953. Today, however, it is widely regarded as one of Shostakovich’s finest achievements. This was not the first time Shostakovich had expressed traumatic emotions in his music, nor was the mix of desolation, bitterness, irony, and sarcasm new in itself. But none of his previous symphonies had been as beautifully structured, giving the drama something of the magnificent inevitability and cathartic power of a great ancient Greek tragedy.