Dmitri Shostakovich

Today we are celebrating the birth anniversary of Dmitri Shostakovich, born 1906.  His life is one of the most well-known and historically iconic in all of classical music.  The creative life of people in Soviet Russia was surely traumatic and that is heard throughout the defiant and at times tortured music of this composer.  The "DSCH" musical motif is incorporated into many of his most famous pieces as a kind of musical signature.

Here's a great performance of the Symphony No. 5.  It is an emotional, epic piece which has an often quoted history of its own. 

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