Symphony No. 12 (Shostakovich)
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The Symphony No. 12 in D minor (Opus 112; subtitled The Year 1917) by Dmitri Shostakovich was premiered by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under Yevgeny Mravinsky on 1 October 1961.
The symphony has four movements:
The work follows the model of the Symphony No. 11, with a subtitle and movement titles commemorating the Russian Revolution of 1917. The first movement repeats the quotations from a revolutionary song including the words "shame on you tyrants" and the Polish song The Warsaw March, both of which appear in the finale of the 11th symphony. The second movement, an expressive adagio, also quotes this symphony, as well as the composer's early Funeral March for the Victims of the Revolution. The movement depicts the headquarters of Lennin at RAZLIV in the coutryside outside Petrograd. "Aurora" is the name of the vessel that marked the first gun fire in the revolution. The funeral march quotation is transformed into a jubilant theme in the finale, before a celebratory conclusion which can be interpreted either "straight" or ironically. This finale and the symphony as a whole have been criticised as "cinema music", and below the composer's usual standards.