Shostakovich 2025: Beyond the Baton video series launched
Boosey & Hawkes | Sikorski launches its new series of web videos with leading international conductors discussing the music of Dmitri Shostakovich in his 50th anniversary year.
Fifty years after the death of Dmitri Shostakovich, leading conductors contribute to a new series of web documentary features, Beyond the Baton, presented by Boosey & Hawkes | Sikorski. With a longer viewpoint possible, Shostakovich’s creative life is reassessed from the perspective of the conductor’s rostrum. The video series offers insights into Shostakovich’s works in their historical Soviet context and their ongoing relevance for today’s musical and political situation.
The first introductory video in Beyond the Baton, released on 5 February, features conductor Semyon Bychkov, explaining how Dmitri Shostakovich can now be viewed as a miraculous survivor, coding into his works the fears and aspirations of the Soviet people. He charts how the Zhdanov denouncement of ‘formalists’ in Pravda in 1948 devastated the composer’s creative life and how he responded in Symphony No. 5 and later works. Semyon Bychkov recalls his own attendance at the premieres of Symphonies Nos. 14 and 15, understood respectively as a personal requiem and a final enigmatic release of creative tension.
> View the Semyon Bychkov video on YouTube
The second video, to be released in March, features American conductor Marin Alsop, with future contributions to be released later in the anniversary year from conductors including Vladimir Jurowski and Simone Young. The Beyond the Baton series was created by Boosey & Hawkes | Sikorski in collaboration with videographers Open Strings Berlin.
Visit our Shostakovich 2025 web page for an introduction to the composer, programming suggestions, downloadable brochure and works catalogue, and links to publications, recordings and a calendar of upcoming Shostakovich 50th events. Presenting organisations can also download anniversary logo assets for inclusion in digital marketing and concert programmes.
2025 brings the completion of the Boosey & Hawkes | Sikorski new edition of Shostakovich’s symphonies. These revised and corrected large-format study scores have been newly computer typeset and the parts are also compatible for performance use with scores in ‘The New Collected Works of Dmitri Shostakovich’. The final publications, completing the set of 15 symphonies, are due for release in March 2025, including Symphonies Nos. 2, 3, 12 and 14.
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