Symphony no. 10 in E minor, op. 93

Eight years separate the Tenth Symphony from the Ninth, and they were the worst of Shostakovich's life: the Party resolution of 1948 branded his music formalist, he lost his Conservatory post, and he kept himself by writing film scores and official cantatas. The symphony appeared in 1953, forty-eight minutes of terror, grief and violence closing with a two-minute triumph. Since the late 1970s it has most often been read as a portrait of the Stalin years, with the composer's DSCH monogram hammered out against the second movement's brutality.