South African artist William Kentridge has been commissioned by the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra to create a film to accompany Dmitri Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony, performed by the Luzerner Sinfonieorchester conducted by Michael Sanderling.
On March 5, 1953, the dictator Stalin died. In the summer and fall of that year, Shostakovich composed his tenth symphony. Eight years had passed since the ninth, and the return to the symphonic genre was thus a momentous decision. The emotional intensity of this symphony was correspondingly great – a reckoning with Stalinism as a whole and, especially in the second movement, a grimacing musical portrait of the tyrant. Destruction and human degradation also dominate the third movement, where Shostakovich also weaves in his initials D-Es-C-H – unmistakable signs of his own suffering from this dictatorship. The “official” reaction to the Tenth was divided in the USSR; in the Western hemisphere, however, it was immediately recognized as one of Shostakovich’s most important works. It has lost none of its overwhelming impact to this day.
After its world premiere on June 15, 2022 at the KKL in Lucerne, the opera makes its Italian premiere at the Teatro Grande del Parco Archeologico di Pompei.