Shostakovich: The Bedbug - Love and Hate

Shostakovich was still a young composer when he was hired to provide incidental music for The Bedbug, a surreal and farcical satire on Communist utopian dreams and bourgeois corruption and vulgarity. He produced a terrifically knockabout score that draws on local fireman’s bands and American dance music. Illustrated by Shostakovich’s powerful middle-period music, Love and Hate is a film about female fortitude set in a mining village during the 1919 Civil War. The innovative score, newly reconstructed by Mark Fitz-Gerald from rough piano sketches and the 1935 soundtrack, combines symphonic sections with popular songs.