Dimitri Shostakovich - Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3 ("The First Of May")

Let´s celebrate the International Workers Day with a recording of Dimitri Shostakovich´s Symphony No. 3, called "The First of May". Shostakovich wrote this symphony in 1929, the recording presents the conductor Ladislav Slovák, the Czecho-Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra (Bratislava) and the Slovak Philharmonic Chorus and was done in Bratislava in 1986 and 1990.

The Symphony No. 3 in E flat major (Opus 20; subtitled First of May) was first performed by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra and Academy Capella Choir under Aleksandr Gauk on 21 January 1930.

Similar to the Second Symphony, it is an experimental choral symphony in four continuous sections:
Allegretto - Allegro
Andante
Largo
Moderato: 'V pérvoye, Pérvoye máya'

The symphony lasts around 25 to 30 minutes. The finale sets a text by Semyon Isaakovich Kirsanov praising May Day and the revolution.

Across the globe people celebrate the International Worker’s Day on the first of May.

"For many people it comes as a bit of a surprise that May Day doesn’t have its origins in, say, revolutionary Russia, the Soviet Union or China – what with all those hideous military parades on Red Square and Tiananmen Square of rows and rows of rocketry filing past gigantic banners of Marx, Lenin and Mao.

The celebration of the first of May as International Workers’ Day, in fact, goes back to the United States in the 19th Century and involves several high-profile anarchists. In the late 1800′s there was a widespread movement for the establishment of an 8-hour working day which coincided with massive repression of workers by authorities, factory owners and the police. At a workers’ rally in Chicago’s Haymarket Square on the 4th of May 1886 a bomb was thrown at police.



Who threw the bomb was never discovered, but police used the incident to charge eight prominent anarchists with the crime, four of which were subsequently hanged." (from: http://theantidote.wordpress.com/)

Dimitri Shostakovich - Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3 ("The First Of May")
(256 kbps, cover art included)