Concerto Budapest Hommage à Shostakovich

The performance will be broadcasted on our website and YouTube channel.


Concert Budapest's tribute concert focuses on the memory of Dmitri Shostakovich. As the travel restrictions put in place due to the coronavirus pandemic have made it impossible for Sergei Krylov to visit Budapest, the symphony orchestra led by András Keller will instead be evoking the figure of the Russi...an composer who died 45 years ago together with outstanding Hungarian soloists.
After a few decades of relative neglect, the music of Dmitri Shostakovich is once again enjoying a renaissance these days, and today one can state without fear of contradiction that the Russian composer was one of the 20th century's very greatest. In recent years, beyond a doubt it is András Keller and Concerto Budapest that the Hungarian audience has to thank, in large measure, for their exposure to Shostakovich's oeuvre. Shostakovich's Chamber Symphony is a rescored version of his String Quartet No. 8, which conductor and violinist Rudolf Barshai created with the composer's endorsement. The work was created in Dresden, where Shostakovich was working on a film score, and the ruins left by the bombings of World War Two inspired him to write a string quartet instead of the work he was being paid to compose. His Piano Quintet dates from 20 years earlier: it was commissioned by the famous Glazunov Quartet with the stipulation that Shostakovich himself would play the piano part at the première. The extremely popular concerto closing the concert is essentially a double concerto for trumpet and piano and, like the quintet, reveals Neo-Baroque stylistic notes.