Symphony No. 2

Shostakovich’s Symphony No.2 was written in 1927 to fulfil a state commission to mark the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution. The composer opens the compact 20-minute work with a purely instrumental first section followed by a musical setting of Alexander Bezymensky’s poem To October, a hymn of praise to Lenin and the revolution. While avant-garde and modernist traits prevail in the first section, the choral finale features a conventional, almost placating tonal language that emphasises the histrionic gestures of the text, so that the composition communicates as a piece of programmatic propaganda. Shostakovich himself was rather dissatisfied with his Symphony No. 2 but it was awarded first prize in a composition competition for the best pieces relating to the revolution’s jubilee.

This volume is part of the revised and corrected new edition of all 15 symphonies by Dmitri Shostakovich published by Boosey & Hawkes and Sikorski as large format study scores for optimal legibility. All scores and the related orchestral parts have been newly computer typeset, and the orchestral parts are also compatible for performance use with scores in ‘The New Collected Works of Dmitri Shostakovich’.