Symphony No. 2 (Shostakovich) - Overview

Overview

Shostakovich's Second and Third Symphonies have been often been criticized for incongruities in their experimental orchestral sections and more conventionally agitprop choral finales. In the Soviet Union they were considered experiments, and since the days of Stalin the term "experiment" was not considered positive. Much later, Shostakovich admitted that out of his 15 symphonies, "two, I suppose, are completely unsatisfactory - that's the Second and Third." He also rejected his early experimental writing in general as "erroneous striving after originality" and "infants' diseases" .

The Second Symphony was commissioned to include a poem by Alexander Bezymensky, which glorified Lenin's role in the proletariat struggle in bombastic style. The cult of Lenin, imposed from the upper echelons of the Party, grew to gigantic proportions in the years immediately following his death. The work was initially titled "To October". It was referred to as a Symphonic Poem and Symphonic Dedication to October. It became To October, a Symphonic Dedication when the work was published in 1927. It only became known as a "symphony" considerably later.