The Youth of Maxim: Film music

Score for the film by Grigory Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg.


Kozintsev and Trauberg’s ‘Maxim Trilogy’ was one of the most successful and popular film series of its period. All three films were scored by Shostakovich.


The first film in the cycle was ‘The Youth of Maxim’. The only part of Shostakovich’s score that is published and available for separate performance is the delightful and uproarious Prologue, which enthusiastically weaves together scraps of three different popular tunes including the well-known cabaret number ‘Black Eyes’ (‘Chorny Ochi’). In the middle of the piece, to hilarious (and very politically incorrect!) effect, a soprano solo sings Shostakovich’s only football song:
 I’m a female footballer, I play football,
 I defend my own goalposts.
 In vain I squeezed my legs together,
 The ball flew between them and I lost!


Note by Gerard McBurney