Romance

The Romance comes from the score Shostakovich wrote in 1955 for the Soviet film The Gadfly, after Ethel Voynich's novel about an Italian revolutionary. Levon Atovmyan later assembled a concert suite from the film music, and the Romance, a violin melody over plain accompaniment, became the best known number in it. Its circulation widened again in 1983 when British television used it as the theme of the series Reilly, Ace of Spies. Film work of this kind kept the composer solvent through the years when his concert music was under attack.