Symphony No. 15 in A Major

His health declining steadily, Shostakovich probably suspected that his Symphony No. 15 (1971) might be his last. As in many of his late works, death casts a long, chilly shadow. Yet it is remarkable how vibrant, colourful, and playful the music can also be. Quotations from Wagner, Rossini’s William Tell and Shostakovich’s own works have set musical clue hunters speculating, sometimes wildly. Was he partly enjoying a private joke at their expense? Privately, Shostakovich insisted he had no idea why the quotations were there. But take a step back from all this, and the Symphony No. 15 can be read as a magnificent summing-up of a lifetime’s experience and achievement, in which grief, and possibly self-laceration, alternate with wicked, teasing joie de vivre. From a first movement apparently set in a haunted toy shop, we progress through anguish and desolation in the slow movement, biting humor in the scherzo, to a finale that evokes death and longing, glances back bitterly at the destruction depicted in the wartime “Leningrad” Symphony, then emerges into a strange but deepening serenity. The ticking and chiming noises at the ending have puzzled some, but Shostakovich was an avid collector of clocks (apparently he found them soothing during difficult nights), and there is something eerily consoling in the way they bring this endlessly fascinating symphony to a close.