Philharmonia to play the jolting ‘Year 1905’

There’s a couple of horrific events memorialized in Yale Philharmonia’s featured piece of classical music on Friday in Woolsey Hall. Dmitri Shostakovich’s “Symphony No. 11 in G minor, Op. 103” tips off its story in the subtitle: “The Year 1905.”

That was the year of “Bloody Sunday,” when unarmed Russian demonstrators were massacred by the czar’s soldiers, leading eventually to the Russian revolution. The 1957 symphony is also a musical comment on the 1956 massacre in Budapest, Hungary.

We asked principal conductor Peter Oundjian how such a dramatic story can be told without lyrics and how a casual listener would know what the symphony is really about.

“I usually set it up with about a two-minute speech,” he said, noting there may be a lighting variation employed to set the scene at the onset.

Generally, said Oundjian, symphonies do tell a story (as do the nebulous “tone poems”). Gustav Mahler once notated narrative elements in programs, but stopped that — “in some ways a big mistake because he’s assuming a good deal of sophistication on the part of listeners.” ⏩ Woolsey Hall, 500 College St., New Haven. Friday, Jan. 18, 7:30 p.m. $5-$17. 203-432-4158. music-tickets.yale.edu

Not that you should talk down to patrons, but Oundjian is for clarity. He said he remembers going

Courtesy of Yale School of Music Principal Conductor Peter Oundjian and the Yale Philharmonia at Woolsey Hall.