SHOSTAKOVICH DMITRI: (1906-1975) Russian Composer. An excellent and very rare signed musical score, with multiple ...

SHOSTAKOVICH DMITRI: (1906-1975) Russian Composer. An excellent and very rare signed musical score, with multiple annotations in Shostakovich´s hand, being an original copy of the score for his 14th Symphony, offered by the Russian composer to his biographer, the day before its premiere. Printed musical score signed `D. Shostakovich´, in Cyrillic, one hundred and sixty pages, folio, Leningrad, September 1969, in Cyrillic. Signed by the author to the first page, also adding multiple annotations, corrections, tempos, words and musical notes in his hand, in red ink, to over twenty five pages. The present score wa offered by Shostakovich to his biographer and musicologist Marina Sabinina. To the last inside blank page, Sabinina annotates and signs in Cyrillic, `I received this musical score from Dmitri Shostakovich, the day before the performance of the premiere of the symphony, with his annotations. M. Sabibina. 4th July 1999. I offer it to Volodia Hofmann, son of my old friend and colleague Rotislav Modestovich. M.C´. Bounded in a semi-rigid grey leather cover. Small overall age wear, mostly to cover, otherwise G to VG £2500-3500 The Symphony No. 14, Op. 135, by Dmitri Shostakovich (1969), is a work for soprano, bass and a small string orchestra with percussion, consisting of eleven linked settings of poems by four authors. Most of the poems deal with the theme of death, particularly that of unjust or early death. The symphony is dedicated to English Composer Benjamin Britten (1913-1976). The Symphony was a creative response to Modest Mussorgsky´s Songs and Dances of Death, which Shostakovich had orchestrated in 1962. Like Mussorgsky, Shostakovich brings back the subject of death in various images and situations. The Mussorgsky cycle contains four songs. Shostakovich added eleven poems by Federico Garcia Lorca, Guillaume Apollinaire, Wilhelm Kuchelbecker and Rainer Maria Rilke. Shostakovich attached great importance to this work, commenting in a letter: ''Everything that I have written until now over these long years has been a preparation for this work.''