The War Symphonies: Shostakovich Against Stalin

The War Symphonies: Shostakovich Against Stalin (sometimes titled Shostakovich Against Stalin: The War Symphonies) is a 1997 documentary film about Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich. It focuses on the period between 1936 and 1945, during which Shostakovich composed his Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Symphonies, but also briefly discusses other works in the composer’s oeuvre, such as his Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. Production The film adopts the revisionist view of Shostakovich put forward by Solomon Volkov in his book Testimony (which is quoted extensively in the film without attribution). This view holds that Shostakovich was strongly opposed to the leadership of Josef Stalin, and that he included anti-government messages in his compositions under the Soviet regime. However, the extent to which this interpretation of his music is true is a subject of debate among musicologists. The work is narrated by Graham Haley as the voice of Shostakovich. The War Symphonies was filmed in Russia and highlights performances of Shostakovich’s symphonies by the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and the Kirov Orchestra, both conducted by Valery Gergiev. Gergiev