Shostakovich started work on the songs after coming across Efros' recently published volume of the poems.[2] Shostakovich was dissatisfied with Efros' translations and privately asked the poetAndrei Voznesensky to see about making some new translations. Nevertheless it was premiered, using Efros' texts, on 23 December 1974 in Leningrad by the bassYevgeny Nesterenko and pianist Yevgeny Shenderovich.[3]
During rehearsals for the orchestral version, Opus 145a, in October 1975,Maxim Shostakovich disclosed to Yevgeni Nesterenko that his father considered this composition to take the place of the Sixteenth Symphony in his oeuvre.[4]
^Dmitri Shostakovich Catalogue: The First Hundred Years and Beyond - Page 552 Derek C. Hulme - 2010 Settings of 11 poems by Michelangelo Buonarroti, the original Italian translated into the Russian language by Abram Efros (see Note).
^Pages from the life of Dmitri Shostakovich - Page 224 Dmitriĭ Ivanovich Sollertinskii, Ludmilla Sollertinsky, Liudmila Vikentʹevna Mikheeva - 1980 "Returning from Repino to his dacha near Moscow, Shostakovich embarked on his next opus. He had come across a recently published volume of the poems of Michelangelo Buonarroti in translations by Efros, the noted Soviet literary scholar."
^Laurel E. FayShostakovich: A Life Page 282- 2005 "On 8 January 1975, Nesterenko and Shenderovich gave a repeat performance at the composer's Moscow apartment for a gathering of colleagues. Later in the evening, Voznesensky arrived with his translations, which he read to the approval of the assembly. Shostakovich found himself confronted with an embarrassing predicament; he had written the music to Efros's translation and, ..."
^Derek C. Hulme,Dmitry Shostakovich Catalogue: The First Hundred Years and Beyond, Page 555
