Check this page each month to discover another rare piece of music that ASO has unearthed!

Dmitri Shostakovich
The Bedbug, Op. 19 (1929)

In 1929, after being rejected by Prokofiev, legendary Moscow theatre director Vesevolod Meyerhold hired his former music director, Dmitri Shostakovich, to write the score for his spectacular new production based on the poet Mayakovsky's work, The Bedbug, “a hilarious, buffoonish, and double-edged satire on Soviet life in the early Stalinist period, when... small businesses were temporarily allowed to flourish and there was something of a consumer boom in the main Soviet cities.”

The ASO performed this work at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall on January 25, 2008 under the direction of Leon Botstein.

For the fascinating background on this piece, click here to read the program notes written by Gerard McBurney, composer and Shostakovich scholar.

Download the full piece on iTunes or at Amazon.com.

Click below to listen to the closing Waltz.

Loading player...