Symphony No. 14

Shostakovich was only 63 when he wrote his Symphony No. 14 (1969), but the twin traumas of war and an exacting totalitarianism regime had taken their toll on his health. The prospect of death both tormented and fascinated him, and he turned to it again and again in his work, nowhere more strikingly than in this symphony. While Shostakovich’s other mature symphonies are more or less indebted to Classical-Romantic models, the 14th evolves in a sequence of 11 linked songs, with soprano and bass soloists accompanied by a small string orchestra and a large and colourful percussion section featuring whip, wood block, tom-toms and vibraphone. There’s much more to this, however, than a prematurely aged man confronting his own end. The poems chosen—by Lorca, Apollinaire, Rilke and Wilhelm Küchelbecker—often deal with the death of the young, victims of injustice and, particularly memorably, suicide, in the agonisingly beautiful fourth movement. There is an outburst of pure rage in the eighth movement, as a murderous tyrant is denounced; but then comes the true heart of the Symphony, a wonderful tender expression of friendship and shared pain, unmistakably addressed to the Symphony’s dedicatee, Benjamin Britten. Both voices unite for the brief final song, a reminder that death is everywhere, waiting for us. It’s a harrowing experience, yet the beauty of the expression can remind us just how precious life is.