Choral-conducting student hosts online listening parties 

On Sunday, a group of classical-music enthusiasts gathered on Zoom, the virtual meeting space of the day, to listen, together, to a recording of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony. The performance, by conductor Kirill Kondrashin and the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, elicited comments from the first downbeat. 

Choral conducting student Oscar Osicki ’20MM, who hosted the listening party, wrote, under the username InsideTheScore, “I feel like I’m listening to this movement for the first time again.”

A listener named Martina wrote, in all caps, “SO MUCH TENSION.”

“That dissonance,” Classical Jay wrote.

“And here,” Osicki wrote, as the first movement drew to a close “is a kind of coda.”

Osicki launched the listening parties when the COVID-19 pandemic forced people away from one another and into isolation. 

“People weren’t going to be going to concerts,” he understood, but also knew “we can come together and listen to a piece of music.” Using a platform called Discord, synched with Spotify, he found a way for people to engage with the music and with one another. “If we’re listening to music in sync,” he said, “we can also discuss the music in sync,” thanks to Discord’s chat-room function. 

In December 2017, before he came to Yale, Osicki launched Inside the Score, a series available on YouTube in which he offers tutorials about specific works and the composers who wrote them, along with explanations of musical forms and functions. The Listening Club grew out of that. 

Osicki had conducted ensembles during his undergraduate years at Trinity College, University of Cambridge, and around London and Manchester, England. His interest in orchestral composers is owed to a high school English-literature teacher. 

“I just wanted to pass that on,” Osicki said.

The goal of his YouTube channel is to “help open the door to classical music through a real understanding of music.” The Listening Club, he said, “is an extension of that mission. It’s a new way of enjoying a concert experience with each other.”

On Sunday, Osicki told the Listening Club that the third movement of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony “is often thought of as a kind of tribute to those oppressed, or those who have suffered from Stalin’s brutal purges.” Later, he wrote, “And after all that struggle, back to (a) weakened return of the opening material.”

As the fourth and final movement began, Martina wrote, “OMG WHAT A BEGINNING.”

“It is an immense challenge for conductors to pace this properly,” Osicki wrote. “It is breakneck speed.”

“I love that we can share this on quarantine,” Lautaro Vinci wrote. 

Classical Jay shared an NPR article titled “Hearing History in Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony.”

Just before Kondrashin and the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra arrived at the coda, a listener named Cnut wrote, “Here we go!”

“OMGGGG” Martina commented, also opining, “Percussion is on point.”

“I’ve decided that what’s most fun about this,” Osicki said, via Zoom from the Detroit area, “is the experience of community. We share our reactions.” 

Visit Oscar Osicki’s YouTube channel, Inside the Score, for instructions on joining a listening party.