Oh to Believe in Another World: Shostakovich's 10th reimagined by William Kentridge

How can a film accompany a live orchestral performance of a symphony? This was the question facing William Kentridge in 2022, when the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra commissioned the film Oh To Believe in Another World to accompany Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10. Using collage and puppetry, Kentridge creates an “abandoned Soviet museum,” inhabited by a cast of figures who drift through its spaces—including Lenin, Stalin, and Shostakovich himself. The result is a mesmerizing work that illuminates Shostakovich’s subversive symphony, which premiered a few months after the death of Stalin and reflected the tragedy of the preceding decades.

Photo © William Kentridge