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While Dmitri Shostakovich is celebrated for his contributions to classical music, he also had a surprising passion for football, or soccer. His involvement with the sport reveals a more personal and unexpected side of his life, as we reveal….<\/p>
Shostakovich<\/strong><\/a> and football may seem unlikely bedfellows. But the great composer happened to be a passionate and obsessive fanatic of the beautiful game, as well as a lifelong supporter of his local team, FC Zenit. Indeed, so devoted was he to Zenit that the club \u2013 called Zenit St Petersburg today \u2013 decided to pay tribute to their most illustrious fan by putting on a spectacular celebration timed to coincide with the 110th anniversary of his birth.<\/p> It took place at the Petrovsky Stadium in St Petersburg on 2 October 2016, just before a match between Zenit and their bitter rivals, Spartak Moscow. As an astonishing visual and music display, the event featured a huge portrait of the composer draped along the stands and was accompanied by a live performance of musical quotations from his Leningrad<\/i> Symphony. It may well have inspired Zenit to produce their best football and to win the match 4-2.<\/p> This remarkable incident is described in vivid detail in the final chapter of Shostakovich and Football: Escape to Freedom<\/i>, a fascinating book by Dmitry Braginsky, who teaches at the St Petersburg Conservatory. Braginsky got the idea of exploring the composer\u2019s fascination for the game some 15 years ago.<\/p> \u2018I had just read the recently published correspondence between Shostakovich and his close friend, the theatre critic and historian Isaak Glikman,\u2019 he says. \u2018It was amazing to discover how frequently the composer referred to football in these letters. Although many of the composer\u2019s biographers had mentioned that Shostakovich enjoyed attending football matches, what really emerged from these letters was that he was so knowledgeable and passionate about the game.\u2019<\/p> Thanks to the support and encouragement of the composer\u2019s widow Irina, Braginsky gained access to the Shostakovich Family Archive in Moscow where he uncovered a wealth of previously unknown material that confirms the extent of the composer\u2019s football obsession. Among the most notable discoveries was a letter that Shostakovich had written to Peter Dementyev, one of his favourite Leningrad players.<\/p> This letter testifies to the composer\u2019s keenness to maintain active contact with a circle of professional sportsmen. It also explains his extraordinary decision to invite the entire Leningrad Zenit team to lunch at his flat, an occasion memorably recalled in the early pages of the Glikman correspondence.<\/p> Also discovered in the Shostakovich archive were two newspaper reports on football matches from the 1940s which had been written by Shostakovich himself. One, which carried the headline \u2018Leningrad Football Players in Moscow\u2019 was published in 1942 in the Soviet national sports paper Krasny sport<\/i>, a month after the historic premiere of the composer\u2019s Leningrad<\/i> Symphony.<\/p> In welcoming a group of football players from Leningrad to Moscow at a time when the city was under siege from the Germans, Shostakovich was prompted to pepper his report with many morale-boosting remarks, suggesting for example that \u2018by greeting the football team, we are greeting not only football players, but also the defenders of our city Leningrad\u2019.<\/p> Another clipping confirms that even at an advanced age, Shostakovich never relinquished his love of football. In an interview published in the Soviet newspaper Izvestia<\/i> in the mid-1960s, Shostakovich declared how much he was looking forward to joining a delegation of Soviet composers to visit London and cheer on the USSR national team at the World Cup in 1966. Unfortunately, the plan had to be abandoned in the light of his heart attack during that year \u2013 that the Soviet Union made it to the semi-finals can only have increased his disappointment.<\/p>
Shostakovich was knowledgeable and passionate about soccer<\/h2>
He invited the entire Zenit team to lunch at his flat<\/h2>
He was all set to travel to the 1966 World Cup<\/h2>
Its pages contain football results, USSR league table positions and analysis of individual team scores<\/h6>