Richibi’s Weblog

    “Portrait of Dmitri Shostakovich“ (1963) 

 

           Martiros Sarian

 

                ________

                

Shostakovich is especially interesting

for being a political composer, caught

up in the Soviet experiment, his soul 

is Russian, you can hear it in the folk

music that grounds his compositions,

strict tempo, an aspiration towards 

melody

 

but the tonality is off, the singer sings

off key, the dancer’s legs are broken

 

Shostakovich describes a people,

an exuberant people, lusty, 

warm-hearted, whose spirit has 

been broken, you can hear it

 

had there been a Nobel prize for music, 

Shostakovich would’ve won it, along 

with his contemporary, and compatriot, 

Boris Pasternak, for literature, at the 

time, whose Doctor Zhivago was a 

phenomenon, back in the 1960s

 

both were, incidentally, persecuted

by their government

 

here’s Shostakovich’s Violin Sonata,

Opus 134, 1968, written for his friend,

the noted violinist, David Oistrakh, 

for his sixtieth birthday

 

enjoy

 

 

R ! chard