27, is a ballet music score written by Dmitri Shostakovich between 1930 and 1931 to a libretto by Victor Smirnov [ru].
The lazy Lyonka hates work and together with a local priest and anti-Soviet plotter he plans to sabotage the machinery by putting a bolt in it.
The 2002 Naxos recording of the suite extracted from this ballet, performed by the Russian State Symphony Orchestra, uses four saxophones here instead.
The waspish and delightfully colourful score bowls along like a children’s cartoon-film, every number full of drama and parody and fine take-offs of serious and popular music of every kind.
Among the highlights are the opening scene when the workers gather in the morning for their physical fitness class before hitting the conveyor belts, the appearance of pompous and opinionated officials and bureaucrats, a ridiculous church-going episode, and the exciting scene when the sabotage-conspiracy nearly succeeds and is only foiled at the last moment.