Hello and welcome to the very first episode of Sticky Notes, the Classical Music Podcast. My name is Joshua Wilerstein. I'm a conductor and I'm the artistic director of the

Lozan Chamber Orchestra in Lozan, Switzerland.

This podcast is for anyone who loves classical music, works in the field, or is just getting

ready to dive into this amazing world of incredible music.

Today we're going to be exploring a piece I just

recently conducted in Tampa Florida with the Florida Orchestra, Shostakovic's

monumental 10th Symphony, which has always been one of my favorite pieces.

We'll be looking at the music itself and what's behind the music, which with Shostakovich is always

one of the first things you have to take into account.

I won't get too technical, so don't be alarmed, but I am going to take you

you moment by moment through one of the most profound and powerful works of art

of the entire 20th century.

Okay, here we go. The How do you write a story without words? How do you tell the history of your homeland without writing a single word down on paper?

How do you find with just music, a way to communicate symbols, ideas, political beliefs that cannot be communicated verbally.

Dimitri Shostakobich always found a way.

Shostakobich was 11 at the time of the Russian Revolution of 1917, lived the rest of his life

under the leadership of people like Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, and

Brezhnev. And there is perhaps no composer whose music is more tied to politics and to

controversy than Shostakovich. But why? And does it matter? Doesn't the music just speak for itself?

Well, it absolutely does, and that's where we're going to start, with the symphony itself, written in 1953. This is a truly monumental piece

clocking in in around 55 minutes. Now many composers are known for their

intensity but with Shostakovic what I find unique is that the intensity never lets up for even one second.

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