Description
Alongside his intense, complex and monumental orchestral and operatic output Shostakovich (1906-1975) also enjoyed writing in a more light-hearted vein. Indeed, he often turned to writing music in a more popular style as a means of making ends meet during periods in which he had fallen out of favour with the Soviet authorities.
He was commissioned to write the Suite for Jazz Orchestra No. 1 (a.k.a. Jazz Suite No. 1) by a Leningrad dance band in 1934. At that time the Soviets had little access to the American jazz style, so Shostakovich’s experience of jazz was limited. Little wonder, then, that Shostakovich’s ‘jazz’ reflected more of his interest in Jewish folk and theatre music than jazz as westerners knew it. There is more than an air of cabaret about it.
Classic FM captures it perfectly, describing Shostakovich’s Jazz Suites (he wrote two) as having, “a sort of end-of-the-pier quality to them. In truth, they bear the same relationship to authentic jazz as socks and sandals do to high fashion. This is deeply sugary music, created in direct response to the Soviet government’s demand that more be done to reflect this emerging genre.”
The suite has three movements: a waltz, a polka, and a foxtrot. The waltz, arranged here for wind quintet, also appears in the ballet The Limpid Stream.
