My impression of Shostakovich used to be largely biased with his chromaticism–the squeakily sharp Symphony No. 1 and the rich underlying emotions embodied in Symphony No. 5, as Apple Music Classical introduced
His Symphony No. 5 (1937) and subsequent works express a fury and despair that he could not voice in public, although these works were often leavened with moments of sarcasm, irony, and cheeky allusions to his own private life.
And there is the famous Waltz No.2. But today a pretty much underappreciated work of theis great Soviet Union artist
Shostakovich: The Return of Maxim, Op.45.
The Return of Maxim is s a 1937 Soviet drama film–the second part of the ‘Maxim’ trilogy–about the life of a young factory worker, Maxim. The film was awarded the Stalin Prize. And Shostakovich composed the film’s orchestra soundtrack.
Shostakovich produced more original music for this film than for Maxim’s Youth but his contributions — presumably written during or soon after the onset of his political trouble — are still sparse. He provides thirty seconds of interesting, or comparatively interesting, murky music for a nighttime parting of Maxim and his beloved, before the hero is waylaid on the street; his score for the climactic street scenes hits the required somber and defiant notes. The most high-spirited music accompanies a billiards contest between Maxim and a drunken, bourgeois antagonist, for which Shostakovich supplies a characteristically energetic but rather perfunctory dance number:
It’s workmanlike stuff, which makes it fine enough film music due to the uniformly high level of Shostakovich’s work, but it doesn’t draw deeply from the composer’s talents.
Opus 45: The Return of Maxim (1937), The Exhaustive Shostakovich
An arranged version of the 3rd piece–a Valse–by Atovmyan for flute, clarinet and piano freed the composer’s constrained talent to a next level of elegance. Emmanual Pahud, Paul Meyer and Eric Le Sage’s 2005 rendition in their joint album French Connection used this piece as the opening, which serves, surprisingly beautiful.