Dmitri Shostakovich's son Maxim described the 15th and final symphony of his father, who died 50 years ago and to whom the music world is dedicating a memorial year in 2025, as an autobiography from birth to death.
Billed as a cheerful symphony, Shostakovich wrote a complex composition a few years before his death: serious, but also with irony, it is a kind of review of his eventful life. He quotes himself and some of his colleagues, Gioachino Rossini, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Gustav Mahler.
The short Festive Overture was composed almost 20 years earlier, in 1947 for the anniversary celebrations of the October Revolution. Brilliant, effervescent and full of energy, it takes up the spirit of Glinka's Ruslan and Ludmilla Overture.
After this festive fanfare, the trumpet appears as a solo instrument: in Joseph Haydn's E flat major concerto, which the Viennese classicist wrote in 1796 for the court trumpeter Anton Weidinger and his new keyed trumpet. At the November concert, the French, internationally acclaimed trumpet virtuoso Romain Leleu accepts the Rostock invitation, as does the Italian conductor Marco Angius.
November 16, 17 and 18, 2025
