Oistrakh Shostakovich Quotes

I was a guest in the home of a conductor when I was in my early twenties. They turned on the gramophone and played a popular record of a foxtrot. I liked the foxtrot, but I didn't like the way it was played. I confided my opinion to the host, who suddenly said, 'Ah, so you don't like the way it's played? All right, if you want, write down the number by heart and orchestrate it and I'll play it. That is, of course, if you can do it and in a given amount of time: I'm giving you an hour. if you're really a genius, you should be able to write it in an hour.' I did it in 45 minutes. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

Prokofiev and I never did become friends, probably because Prokofiev was not inclined towards friendly relations in general. He was a hard man and didn't seem interested in anything than himself and his music. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

I always try to make myself as widely understood as possible; and if I don't succeed, I consider it my own fault. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

I'm training my left hand to write, in case I lose the ability in my right. That's gymnastics for the dying. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

What galls me is that these sadists always have fans and followers-- and sincere ones at that. The typical example of this is Toscanini. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

I feel eternal pain for those who were killed by Hitler , but I feel no less pain for those killed on Stalin 's orders. I suffer for everyone who was tortured, shot, or starved to death. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

People knew about Babi Yar before Yevtushenko 's poem, but they were silent. And when they read the poem, the silence was broken. Art destroys silence. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

But I like listening to any music, including bad music. it's a professional disease, an addiction to notes. The brain finds sustenance in any combination of sounds. It works constantly, performing various composerly operations. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

The friendship of Shostakovich cast a brilliant light over my whole life and whose spiritual qualities captured my soul once and for all time. ~ Galina Vishnevskaya

Badgering a colleague doesn't come from a fit of pique, it comes from an organic quality of the soul. And a mean soul will inevitably be reflected in music. Wagner is a convincing example of that, but far from the only one. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

If they cut off both hands, I will compose music anyway holding the pen in my teeth. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

When a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

I do write quickly, that's true, but I think about my music for a comparatively long time, and until it's complete in my head I don't begin setting it down. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

This quality of Jewish folk music [- it can appear to be happy when it's tragic-] is close to my idea of what music should be. The should always be two layers in music. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

I know now, like drumbeats. Portentous, and a little sinister, like tympani strikes at the start of a gloomy symphony. Shostakovich, maybe. ~ Lee Child

A fresh approach to a work of music (...) usually comes to those who have a fresh approach to aspects of life, to life in general. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

Most people are average, neither black nor white, but grey. A dirty shade of grey. To the best of my ability I tried to write about these people, about their completely average, commonplace dreams and hopes, and about their suspicious tendency towards murder. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

I'll admit that writing doesn't always come, but I'm totally against walking around looking at the sky when you're experiencing a block, waiting for inspiration to strike you. Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov didn't like each other and agreed on very few things, but they were of one opinion on this: you had to write constantly. If you can't write a major work, write minor trifles. If you can't write at all, orchestrate something. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

In the future, you won't buy artists' works; you'll buy software that makes original pieces of 'their' works, or that recreates their way of looking at things. You could buy a Shostakovich box, or you could buy a Brahms box. You might want some Shostakovich slow-movement-like music to be generated. So then you use that box. ~ Brian Eno

Stravinsky is one of the greatest composers of our time and I truly love many of his works. ( ... ) The marvellous composer has invariably been at the centre of my attention, and I not only studied and listened to his music, but I played it and made my own transcriptions as well. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

In the background, classical music plays from a paint-splattered radio, the New York station with the ancient announcer more frequently heard in doctors' waiting rooms and other places where signs prohibit the use of cell phones – the last bastions of Beethoven or Chopin or, on racier days, Shostakovich. ~ Kate Walbert

The critics say that Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony has no form. They are wrong; it has the form of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony. ~ Edward Abbey

Outside Soviet Russia, and following the last symphonies of Mahler, Nielsen and Sibelius, an element of obsolescence has unmistakably attached itself to the genre. One could, perhaps, be forgiven for regarding Stravinsky's two ironic stylizations of the symphony as a fitting farewell salute. And yet the Shostakovich symphonies have, in Philip Larkin's phrase, 'penetrated the public mind' to an extent that has put them on a level with Beethoven. ~ Pauline Fairclough

I write music, it's performed. After all, my music says it all. It doesn't need historical and hysterical commentaries. In the long run, any words about music are less important than the music. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

The most uninteresting part of the biography of a composer is his childhood. All those preludes are the same and the reader hurries on to the fugue. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

I don't think that Prokofiev ever treated me seriously as a composer; he considered only Stravinsky a rival and never missed a chance to take a shot at him. I remember once he started telling me some vile story about Stravinsky. I cut him off. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

Those who have ears to hear, will hear ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

I don't think that either self-deprecation or self-aggrandizement is among the defining qualities of an artist ... Beethoven could have been forgiven if his symphonies had gone to his head. Gretchaninoff could also be forgiven if his Dobrinya Nikititch went to his head. But neither one could be forgiven for writing a piece that was amoral, servile, the work of a flunky. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

Brancusi has his medium: Picasso, Faulkner, Shostakovich, theirs. Mine happens to be cloth. ~ Charles James

Now I can't abide rudeness, even in so called great artists. Rudeness and cruelty are the qualities i hate most. Rudeness and cruelty are always connected, I feel. One example out of many is Stalin. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

When I was 20, Shostakovich was my favorite composer. I still find his Fifth Symphony wonderful, with its outstanding themes and rhythms. That's the piece that made me want to be a classical composer. ~ Dave Brubeck

So many unsaid things collect in the soul, so much exhaustion and irritation lie as a heavy burden on the psyche. And you must, you must unburden your spiritual world or risk a collapse. Sometimes you feel like screaming, but you control yourself and just babble some nonsense. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

The truth is that the war helped. The war brought great sorrow and made life very very hard. Much sorrow, many tears. But it had been even harder before the war, because then everyone was alone in his sorrow. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich

The 'secret' of Shostakovich, it was suggested - by a Chinese neurologist, Dr Dajue Wang - was the presence of a metallic splinter, a mobile shell-fragment, in his brain, in the temporal horn of the left ventricle. Shostakovich was very reluctant, apparently, to have this removed:
Since the fragment had been there, he said, each time he leaned his head to one side he could hear music. His head was filled with melodies - different each time - which he then made use of when composing.
X-rays allegedly showed the fragment moving around when Shostakovich moved his head, pressing against his 'musical' temporal lobe, when he tilted, producing an infinity of melodies which his genius could use. ~ Oliver Sacks

Probably many people think that I came back to life after the Fifth Symphony. No. I came back to life after the Seventh. ~ Dmitri Shostakovich