Dmitri Shostakovich | Festive Overture

In 1954, the conductor of the Bolshoi Theater approached Dimitry Shostakovich to ask if he would write a new piece to celebrate the 37th anniversary of the October Revolution. But there was a problem: the concert was in three days. Shostakovich agreed and sat down to put thoughts on paper as quickly as possible.

Working at a breakneck pace, he finished the score in a matter of hours, according to Shostakovich’s friend, the musicologist Lev Lebedinsky: “The speed with which he wrote was truly astounding. When he wrote light music he was able to talk, make jokes and compose simultaneously, like the legendary Mozart.’’

Couriers delivered individual pages of the score – as they were completed − to copyists at the Bolshoi, allowing the musicians piecemeal rehearsals. The premiere took place as planned, and listeners had no idea they were hearing music with ink barely dry on the page.

Cast in a single movement, the six-minute piece opens in a blazing brass fanfare taken up by the entire orchestra. Clarinets play the main theme at a crazed pace and give way to a noble second theme before a variation of the fanfare leads to a rousing finish. The work was chosen to open the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.

It was the first work that Shostakovich conducted, in a 1962 Gorky Philharmonic concert that also featured the First Cello Concerto. When asked later how he enjoyed the experience, the composer replied “not in the slightest,’’ and he never conducted again.

Program notes by Kurt Loft, former music critic for the Tampa Tribune who has covered the arts for more than 40 years. A member of the Music Critics Association of North America, he lives in St. Petersburg.