From the football ledger to the Leningrad Symphony: the unknown Shostakovich

"Our candidate!"

Recently, on the eve of the elections, a scan of the old edition of 1966 spread in various groups and channels about academic music, in the center of the page is a portrait of Dmitry Shostakovich, and above the photo there is a headline: “Our candidate for deputies of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR Dmitry Shostakovich.” This post immediately spread through the channels of musicians with the caption "Our candidate!".

In general, Dmitry Shostakovich became a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in 1947. And this part of his social activity, the composer was engaged in a caring way (although 30 years of work in this post greatly distracted him from the work of life - composition of Music), another question is that his works did not always bring results. For example, the story is widely known that Shostakovich worked hard on the cases of Joseph Brodsky, but alas – to no avail. But more often his cares were not in vain, for someone he knocked out an apartment, for someone - material assistance or money for treatment. However, there was one situation for which the composer was condemned.

September 3, 1973 in the newspaper “Pravda” published a document in which academician Andrei Sakharov was condemned for “anti-Soviet activities”. Among the signatories are many musicians – Dmitry Kabalevsky, Georgy Sviridov, Aram Khachaturyan, Tikhon Khrennikov, Andrei Eshpay and... Dmitry Shostakovich. But it is worth noting that those who knew Dmitry Dmitrievich, said that it was done without looking – an accident, and that he often signed documents without thinking.

Professional football fan

When in 1936 Shostakovich was hit by a flurry of criticism (then the famous devastating article “Tumbur instead of music” about the opera “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk district”), football became an outlet for the composer. He almost did not miss the championships of the USSR, before the war he was a fan for the Leningrad Dynamo, and after that for Zenit. In a letter to the composer Boleslaw Javorsky, Shostakovich noted that “in this case he has already acquired some qualifications and is an academic spectator.” Even being a recognized composer, a world celebrity, Dmitry Dmitrievich revered before football players and was proud of his friendship with legendary football players of his time, among whom were Peka Dementyev and Valentin Fedorov, with whom he was in correspondence.

Football statistics became an incredible hobby for Shostakovich. With the same painstaking work as writing, he pored over his "bookbook" - a book where he wrote the schedule of the football season and kept statistics of each match.

There's a pretty funny story. Once the ancestor of Soviet sports statistics Konstantin Yesenin (yes, the son of the poet Sergei Yesenin and actress Zinaida Reich) received a letter, which outlined the indications of inaccuracies in his materials. According to the handwriting Yesenin decided that he wrote some old man. On the envelope was the phone, which he dialed, the woman picked up the phone:

- Do you have an old man interested in football?

- Well, yes, there is, answered on the other end of the line.

- Can I talk to him?

- You can.

And then:

- Dmitry Shostakovich listens, - as they joke now: the curtain. Yesenin was shocked.

They say that Dmitry Dmitrievich even had a certificate of a judge of the republican category. The document itself, unfortunately, has not been preserved - information about it is only orally from the composer's relatives. Researcher Dmitry Braginsky suggests that the certificate was issued to the composer in recognition of merit. The document gave the right of passage to any podium, and Shostakovich always suffered in trying to get tickets for the match (data that Dmitry Dmitrievich was among the listeners of special courses, unfortunately, was not found, hence the hypothesis).

Talk about the role of football in Shostakovich’s life would be incomplete without mentioning his “football” ballet “Golden Age”, which was originally called “Dynamiada”.

Finally, as Dmitry Dmitriyevich’s wife Irina Antonovna later recalled, on the day of his death on August 9, 1975, he wrote to her: “Come to the hospital, will watch football together.”.

Shostakovich is a superhero

In his youth, Dmitry Shostakovich worked as a taper - in the era before the sound cinema, he was among those who set the mood for what was happening on the screens. One day, during a session at the Select Theatre, the floor lit up, and to prevent panic in the hall, the composer continued to play - just like the musicians on the sinking Titanic.

There is a famous photo of Dmitry Dmitrievich, which at one time was replicated by the Soviet press - on it the composer stands in the form of a firefighter. During the air raids besieged Leningrad, he extinguished incendiary bombs on the roof of the Leningrad Conservatory. In general, he wanted to go to the front as a volunteer, but he was twice refused - the composer's vision left much to be desired: according to some reports, he dropped to -15, severe myopia. And then, wanting to be useful to the Motherland, he began to save his native conservatory.

At this "post" Shostakovich began work on his famous "Leningrad" symphony, and when the fires began, in the score he wrote: "V.N." - "air raid.".

Shortly before the essay in 1942 was first sounded abroad, Time magazine published on its cover a portrait of Dmitry Dmitrievich in the form of a firefighter against the background of burning Leningrad. This is how the artist Boris Artsybashev portrayed him.

Can you imagine a young man with thick glasses capable of doing this? Shostakovich was just that — not only a musical genius, but above all a Man with a capital letter.