Classical Music Discoveries

Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 13 in B-flat minor (Op. 113), subtitled Babi Yar, was completed on July 20, 1962, and first performed in Moscow in December of that year. The hour-long work requires a bass soloist, men's chorus, and large orchestra and is laid out in five movements, each a setting of a Yevgeny Yevtushenko poem. This unusual form gives rise to various descriptions: choral symphony, song cycle, giant cantata. The five earthily vernacular poems denounce Soviet life one aspect at a time: brutality, cynicism, deprivation, anxiety, corruption. Kirill Kondrashin conducted the 1962 premiere after Yevgeny Mravinsky had declined the assignment under pressure; Vitaly Gromadsky sang the solo part alongside the combined choruses of the RSFSR State Academy and Gnessin Institute and the Moscow Philharmonic.

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