Happy Birthday DDS

Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich.

I have expostulated to some length on my love of this composer and his works. Often I find myself thinking how I would have liked to have met him, to have been taught or lectured by him. But then on the other hand, I have a strong conviction that the man wouldn't have liked me, or just viewded me with superficial interest, as a dilettante in his particular field of interest. Perhaps I could have convinced him of the passion I feel for Classical music study, my developing love of composition, and my desire to learn this at the hands of a true genius. But then again, for this unlikely series of events to have happened, I would have had to be born in Russia - almost certainly St Petersburg - and have had to be of a suitable age when Shostakovich was at the peak of his powers. Compromised by the authorities, but still with the fierce intellectual fervour and rigour of his youth. But then, that would have involved being at such an age in the late 1930s and early 1940s. And, as I would have been of fighting age then, I would almost certainly have perished in (then) Leningrad.

Perhaps I could have been taught by him in the mid-to-late 50s, after the effects of his second denunciation at the hands of the authorities had worn off, and after the death of Stalin, in the pre-emptive Krushchev "thaw". But by then his health was failing, he was veering on the edge of mani depression and suicide, and his spirit was seemingly broken, despite his continuing ability to write masterpieces.

Perhaps, then, I could have been a contemporary of his at the Conservatoire, in the days before the Stalinist terror machine cranked into gear. But then, being in his inner circle at this time, I almost certainly would have been executed after the "Muddle instead of Music" incidence.

When I think along these lines, the overwhelming impression is of the phenomenally difficult life of Showstakovich, and perhaps even worse, the Russian people, in the heydays of Soviet Communism. The lack of cosseting - in actual fact, the continual critical and official buffeting - the Shostakovich was on the receiving end, makes one ownder how he could have composed anything at all, let alone some of the musical masterpieces of the Twentieth Century.

I have been wondering how I should mark this day. Should I lock myself away in hushed vigil, listening to some of his finest works? Should I set aside a few hours and tackle some of the works that I still have not quite got to grips with, but desperately want to? Should I focus my evening on listening to Lady Macbeth, in all of its riotous technicolour glory?

Actually, this evening, I think I shall just quietly raise a glass in memory of a film pianist, who loved football, gambling and vodka, and happened to turn out some pretty nifty music of his own too.