Dmitri Shostakovich

Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op. 93 (1953)

"I couldn't write an apotheosis to Stalin, I simply couldn't. ... But I did depict Stalin in my music in [...] the Tenth. I wrote it right after Stalin's death [1953], and no one has yet guessed what the symphony is about. It's about Stalin and the Stalin years. The second part, the scherzo, is a musical portrait of Stalin, roughly speaking. Of course, there are many other things in it, but that is the basis. 

I must say that it's difficult work depicting the benefactors of humanity in music, evaluating them through music. Now Beethoven managed it, from a musical point of view. He was mistaken from the point of view of history, however."  

- Dmitri Shostakovich, from Testimony - The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich (Faber and Faber, 1979)

I. Moderato

II. Allegro

III. Allegretto

IV. Andante; Allegro 

New York Philharmonic / Dimitri Mitropoulos

(LP transfer; Columbia, recorded 1956)