Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarroti

The Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarroti (Сюита на слова Микеланджело Буонарроти, Op.145, 1974) is a cycle of song settings by Dmitri Shostakovich of eleven poems by Michelangelo Buonarroti, translated into the Russian language by Avram Efros (ru).

Shostakovich started work on the songs after coming across Efros' recently published volume of the poems.

[3] During rehearsals for the orchestral version, Opus 145a, in October 1975, Maxim Shostakovich disclosed to Yevgeni Nesterenko that his father considered this composition took the place of the Sixteenth Symphony in his oeuvre.

Later recordings include Fyodor Kuznetsov, Yuri Serov (Delos), and John Shirley-Quirk.

145a, has been recorded several times, including the first by Yevgeny Nesterenko, with the USSR State TV and Radio Symphony Orchestra, under Maxim Shostakovich (Melodiya С10-07395-6), then Anatoli Kotcherga, Kölner Rundfunk-Sinfonie-Orchester, Michail Jurowski (Capriccio), Robert Holl with the Orchestre National des Pays de Loire, Isaac Karabtchevsky (Calliope), Hermann Christian Polster with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Thomas Sanderling (Berlin Classics), Ildar Abdrazakov, with the BBC Philharmonic, under Gianandrea Noseda (Chandos).