Few composers of the twentieth century have proved themselves so enduringly fascinating and appealing as Dmitri Shostakovich. The more we feel ourselves drawn into the orbit of this man’s life and work, the more difficult it becomes to definitively answer the many puzzles which inevitably arise. The composer appears to embody a handful of creative, political and personal paradoxes while exercising an unequivocal draw on the emotions - thus presenting anyone who takes the composer’s extraordinary body of work seriously with all manner of questions.

Leipzig is certainly taking Shostakovich seriously. This spring the Saxon city will embrace the thrills and riddles - the forces dark and joyous - that define the composer. From 15 May to 1 June, Leipzig will host the most ambitious celebration and examination of the composer’s music ever mounted in a single city over a two-week period.

In 1978, the late Kurt Masur’s Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra became the first to perform a cycle of the composer’s symphonies. Now, fifty years on from Shostakovich’s death, Leipzig will go a good few steps further. Three orchestras, a litany of world-class soloists and many more will interpret the composer’s complete symphonies, concertos, string quartets and major chamber music works as well as piano and choral music while Oper Leipzig will stage its production of the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District.

Andris Nelsons and Anna Rakitina (photo: Eric Kemnitz)

Shostakovich Festival Leipzig promises to look beyond the usual Shostakovich clichés, presenting a multifaceted, questioning yet celebratory picture of a changing and adapting artist whose relationship with the unpredictable Soviet authorities had such a profound influence on how and why he wrote. It will do so, first and foremost, by offering total immersion in the composer’s works from the best performers in the business. Together, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and Boston Symphony Orchestra will perform the composer’s fifteen symphonies, uniting as one orchestra for three performances of the Leningrad Symphony. They will be joined by the Festival Orchestra for the third performance.

Andris Nelsons, Music Director of both orchestras, will lead performances following his critically acclaimed Shostakovich symphony cycle recorded in Boston for Deutsche Grammophon. Sharing conducting duties is Anna Rakitina, who served as Nelsons’s assistant in Boston and is now enjoying an exciting conducting career in her own right.

All six of Shostakovich’s concertos will be performed over the course of the festival, which straddles two weeks from 15 May to 1 June, with soloists including Daniil Trifonov, Baiba Skride, Gautier Capuçon and Thomas Rolfs. A specially formed Festival Orchestra, comprising academy students from both the Boston and Leipzig orchestras and students from the Leipzig University of Music and Theatre, will perform Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony.

‘Shostakovich’s music reflects all the facets and abysses of human existence: from anguish and darkness to biting irony and sarcasm, but also childlike, playful joy and burgeoning hope,’ says Andris Nelsons, who also conducts two performances of Francisco Negrin’s production of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District at Leipzig Opera, starring Kristīne Opolais and Pavel Černoch. ‘Shostakovich allows us to share in his personal fate, in his fears and in all that threatened him – dangers that are a tragic reality for so many people today,’ says the conductor.

Gewandhaus Leipzig (photo: Philipp Kirschner)

Shostakovich was a composer of extremes - an artist who wasn’t afraid to confront darkness, who was forced to react to the very worst in humanity and recognized the necessity of that act and even the privilege of it. A deep engagement with both the realities of life and the escapism of entertainment coloured everything Shostakovich did, whether boundlessly elated or mired in depression. Uniquely among mid-twentieth-century composers, his appeal continues to stretch beyond classical music’s usual confines, engaging new generations who see his works as a direct expression of life’s joys and fears.

To help contextualize all this, Shostakovich Festival Leipzig will offer the public the chance to go deeper into the composer’s life and music - particularly with regard to his much-discussed relationship with Stalin and the Soviet authorities. The festival will include a three-day symposium organized by the German Shostakovich Society alongside lighter events to further illuminate audiences including film screenings, performances of the composer’s salon music, Night Music soirées and a Shostakovich Lounge in which audiences can enter into dialogue with the festival’s performers. Every orchestral concert will be prefaced with pre-concert talks in German (from Ann-Katrin Zimmermann) and English (from Stephen Johnson).

Engaging with the mysteries and intrigues of Shostakovich’s life can be tantalizing. But it’s the music that counts - in everything from its soulful intimacy to its ferocious exaltation and terrifying bleakness. Shostakovich’s bawdy humour and chilling fatalism were there in his music from the very start and never went away; the unlikeliness of that combination remains one of his music’s most appealing qualities.

Perhaps the best way to engage with this perennially relevant artist is, first and foremost, to listen more deeply to the music itself, in which there is always so much more to hear. In presenting an unprecedented menu of music by Shostakovich over just two weeks, the city of Leipzig and its musicians invite you to do just that. And why not take advantage of a special travel packages? From €399 per person, you can secure accommodation for two nights, a city tour, dinner in the historic Gasthaus Barthels Hof, admission to the Bach Museum and priority booking for selected festival concerts. Just visit leipzig.travel/en/package/reiseangebot-schostakowitsch

Shostakovich Festival 2025 runs from 15 May - 1 June gewandhausorchester.de/en/shostakovich/

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This initiative is co-financed from tax revenues on the basis of the budget agreed by the Members of the State Parliament of Saxony.