Shostakovich orchestral scores question

Anyone know if there is a 'critical' edition of Shostakovich Symphonies or at least who was his official publisher to reference when ordering

Can't help you with a critical edition, but the currently available study scores I have of the symphonies and quartets are published by Sikorski (www.sikorski.de). I'm afraid they're all rather expensive. Is that of use?

There is a 'complete' edition that was published in the Soviet Era; it was not 'critical' because, for political reason, it published the revised version of the 13th Symphony (with the altered words) and Katerina Ismailova rather than 'Lady MacBeth' etc. But now that Sikoski has the rights, I believe that the originals are (or will be) available as well.

For a long time, most of the symphonies were available very cheaply from Kalmus because of Russia's non-participation in international copyright conventions; but now that they are back in copyright the Kalmus scores are gone and the Sikorskis are very expensive. They are, as far as I can tell, reprints of the old Soviet Edition.

Dave Hurwitz

There's some mouth-watering stuff in the above edition: an unpublished symphony movement and a violin sonata from 1945!

Now, if only someone could unearth the lost pieces for cello & piano, op. 9...

Thanks to all for the information. Now that I think about it, there used to be a copy of the 'nearly complete' edition in my college library back in the day that was somewhat hard to read and find, since it was in cyrillic and the it was filled under 'C'

conventions;

There were also inexpensive Leeds editions of some of the symphonies, and Dover published two full-size volumes, one with symphonies #1-5, one with #9-10. There was also a volume containing the first five quartets and one with the piano preludes and fugues. You might keep an eye on eBay or abebooks.com for used copies.

Odd that they omit Shostakovich's version of Boris Godounov.

Regards, Eric Grunin

I wonder....are the Dover editions of those technically illegal now? I mean, they were legitimately released, but the copyright has since changed....

Yes, they are now illegal. Dover no longer sells them or lists them in their catalog. Same I believe for some Prokofiev stuff; and copyright issues may also explain why Dover now offers the Mikuli edition of Chopin rather than the Paderewski.

On 15 Aug 2003 19:35:29 -0700, David Hurwitz

Though it appears that Sikorski has the US rights for everything now, rights for individual works were held by different publishers at different times in different countries, so you should be able to find used copies around.

On my shelf I see various of the Symphonies published by Leeds (15), MCA (5), CF Peters (7), and Breitkopf (8), along with Kalmus (1, 10, 11, 14) and various Soviet editions (2, 12, 13).

The Sikorski editions are remarkably expensive. I bought the 8th recently (in London) for around $16. Now (at SheetMusicPlus.com) the Sikorski is $42 for 150 pages. What are they thinking? I could understand these prices for full-size (conductor) scores, but these are study scores (6' x 8.5'. They probably didn't even have to pay engraving costs.

As a student I would figure which scores were cheaper to photocopy than to purchase. In this case, the score of the 14th Symphony comes out to 41 cents per page.

Regards, Eric Grunin

He meant '1 and 5,' not '1 through 5.'

Regards, Eric Grunin