Kuba Williams & Ameen Elbadry

Composed with great difficulty between 1935-6, Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony is one of his most experimental and emotionally draining works. Due to its extreme dissonance (and the poor response from Soviet officials regarding his opera Lady Macbeth) he was forced to withdraw the work during rehearsals, leaving the orchestral version unperformed and unheard for 25 years. The two-piano version arranged by the composer was itself difficult to acquire before its first circulation in 1946, only to also be banned from circulation two years later.

When Shostakovich eventually reconstructed the lost orchestral score for its 1961 premiere, it featured several revisions that we would be unaware of if it were not for the piano arrangement. This concert is an exceedingly rare opportunity to hear the original version of the symphony in the only form that would have been possible for the first quarter of a century of the work’s lifespan.

Kuba and Ameen were contemporary students at the University of Manchester where they began their collaboration as a piano duo culminating in a performance of Rzewski’s Cotton Mill Blues and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring at a lunchtime recital. They have a combined interest in contemporary composition and premiered Sina Saloor’s Raz-o Niaz at the Royal Northern College of Music.

Host or Publisher Forsyth Brothers Limited