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. 8 (Henze) Pole is naturally at the opposite end of the range. The second movement depicts Titania's attempted seduction of Bottom, whilst the Adagio final movement takes Puck's "If we shadows have offended" speech at the end of the play. It was premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, who commissioned the piece (and to whom Henze dedicated it) under Seiji Ozawa on 1 October 1993. Symphony No. 8 (Henze) The Eighth Symphony by the German composer Hans Werner Henze was composed in 1992–93. Using Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" as inspiration, it has a lighter theme than the major work it immediately