Shostakovich 2025: Vladimir Jurowski in Beyond the Baton video series
Boosey & Hawkes | Sikorski continues its series of web videos with conductor Vladimir Jurowski 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 third video in Beyond the Baton, released on 8 August, features conductor Vladimir Jurowski. He explains why he views The Nose as Shostakovich’s greatest opera, with its avant-garde Romanticism breathing the spirit of the Soviet Roaring Twenties. He also explores the enigma of the composer as a true genius navigating around the threats to his survival, particularly during the purges of the 1930s. He was both a man of the people while also a chosen channel for the state, a unique case in history. Even at the end of his life, Jurowski relates, when The Nose was revived on stage in Moscow, Shostakovich was involved in the production, displaying vulnerability together with unbreakable firmness, twin poles of humanity that unite to send an affirmative message to our own time.
> View the Vladimir Jurowski video on YouTube
This video follows the opening introduction by conductor Semyon Bychkov, released in January, and a further video in April featuring Marin Alsop. Future contributions are to be released later in the anniversary year from conductors including Simone Young. The Beyond the Baton series was created by Boosey & Hawkes | Sikorski in collaboration with videographers Open Strings Berlin.
Visit our www.boosey.com/shostakovich2025 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 has brought 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, were released in May, including Symphonies Nos. 2, 3, 12 and 14.
#shostakovich50
#shostakovich2025