Dmitri Shostakovich - Symphony No. 5 (1937)

I usually do a nice write-up highlighting specific parts and some more technical explanations of why I like parts and why they work for me and what your dad ate for dinner last night.

However, people who are smarter than me at music do this all of the time for European Art Music. Check out this wiki article on Shostakovich's fifth symphony. Well what am I supposed to say after that?

The opening motif in this waltz-like scherzo is a variation of the second theme of the first movement; other variations can be detected throughout the movement. The music remains a witty, biting satire—gay, raucous while also nervous, its energies playfully discharged in an episode of comic relief with its roots in Prokofiev and especially Mahler.

Doesn't that seem exactly like something that I would write or what? What fun is it blogging about music when wikipedia is better at it than you? I'll just say that:

The end of the first movement is fucking creepy and tells tales of ghost trains cruising through the woods. The main theme of the second movement rules. Right at fifty seconds. Court jesters battling to the death.

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