Symphony No. 12 (Shostakovich) Symphony No. 12 (Shostakovich) Dmitri Shostakovich composed his Symphony No. 12 in D minor, Op. 112, subtitled "The Year of 1917", in 1961, dedicating it to the memory of Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik Revolution, as he did for his Symphony No. 2. The symphony was premiered that October by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky. This was also the last Shostakovich symphony which Mravinsky premiered; his refusal to give the first performance of the Thirteenth Symphony, "Babi Yar", caused a permanent strain in their working relationship. The symphony, which is scored for medium-size orchestra, runs approximately
Symphony No. 2 (Martinů) Symphony No. 2 (Martinů) Bohuslav Martinů's Symphony No. 2, H. 295, was composed from May 29 to July 24, 1943 under a commission from the Czech community in Cleveland. It was premiered by the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Erich Leinsdorf on October 28 that year, which marked the 25th anniversary of the foundation of Czechoslovakia, then downgraded to a Czech protectorate and Slovak puppet state under German occupation. The work, which has been linked with Antonín Dvořák's 1889 Symphony No. 8 due to its innocently pastoral character, is the shortest of Martinů's six symphonies, lasting ca. 24 minutes, and the