Dmitri Shostakovich

Dmitri Shostakovich wrote the First Symphony as a graduation exercise; its 1926 premiere brought him international recognition. At the conservatory he studied with Maximilian Steinberg and received support from Glazunov. The opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk was denounced in 1936 and withdrawn, and was followed by the Fifth Symphony. A second campaign against formalism came in 1948. The fifteen symphonies and the fifteen string quartets form part of his output, with several works using the DSCH motif drawn from his own initials. The Eighth and Tenth Symphonies, the Eighth Quartet, the violin and cello concertos and the Twenty-Four Preludes and Fugues are also among his works. He died in Moscow in 1975. He came to Bulgaria twice. In January 1958 he played his Second Piano Concerto with the Sofia Philharmonic, and the Eighth Symphony was given under Konstantin Iliev on the tenth and twelfth of that month; in 1965 he was present for the Bulgarian premiere of Katerina Izmailova at the Rousse Opera. He taught instrumentation and composition at the Leningrad Conservatory from 1937 and as professor from 1939, in Moscow from 1943, was dismissed in 1948 and took up a Leningrad post again in 1961.