Music: Shostakovich - His life and legacy

Read about one of the most prolific Russian composers of the 20th Century as he struggled with his strained relationship with the Stalinist Bureaucracy.

Shostakovich and Stalin (BOOK): by Solomon Volkov

“Music illuminates a person and provides him with his last hope; even Stalin, a butcher, knew that,” said the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, whose first compositions in the 1920s identified him as an avant-garde wunderkind. But that same singularity became a liability a decade later under the totalitarian rule of Stalin, with his unpredictable grounds for the persecution of artists. Solomon Volkov—who coauthored Shostakovich’s controversial 1979Testimony—describes how this lethal uncertainty affected the composer’s life and work.
Volkov, an authority on Soviet Russian culture, shows us the “holy fool” in Shostakovich: the truth speaker who dared to challenge the supreme powers. We see how Shostakovich struggled to remain faithful to himself in his music and how Stalin fueled that struggle: one minute banning his work, the next encouraging it. We see how some of Shostakovich’s contemporaries—Mandelstam, Bulgakov, and Pasternak among them—fell victim to Stalin’s manipulations and how Shostakovich barely avoided the same fate. And we see the psychological price he paid for what some perceived as self-serving aloofness and others saw as rightfully defended individuality.

This is a revelatory account of the relationship between one of the twentieth century’s greatest composers and one of its most infamous tyrants.

The Cambridge Companion to Shostakovich (Cambridge Companions to Music) (BOOK): by Pauline Fairclough (Editor), David Fanning (Editor)

As the Soviet Union's foremost composer, Shostakovich's status in the West has always been problematic. Regarded as a collaborator, and by others as a symbol of moral resistance, both he and his music met equally with approval and condemnation. The demise of the Communist state has, if anything, been accompanied by a bolstering of his reputation, but critical engagement with his multi-faceted achievements has been patchy. This Companion offers a new starting point and a guide for readers who seek a fuller understanding of Shostakovich's place in the history of music. Bringing together an international team of scholars, the book brings up-to-date research to bear on the full range of Shostakovich's musical output, addressing scholars, students and all those interested in this complex, iconic figure.

Shostakovich Reconsidered (BOOK): by Allan B. Ho and Dmitry Feofanov

"...a splendid celebration of this sublime musician..." -- The Guardian. "...devastating..." -- The Daily Telegraph. "It's very rare to come across a book that's so readable..." -- BBC. "...one of those 'indispensable' books on your shelf..." -- DSCH Journal. "...an immense torrent of facts..." -- Helsingin Sanomat. "...holds the attention to the end..." -- The Times Literary Supplement. "...formidable wealth of data..." -- American Record Guide. "...essential reading for anyone interested in Shostakovich..." -- The Washington Post.

Dmitry Shostakovich's memoirs, “Testimony”, `related to and edited by Solomon Volkov', have been the subject of fierce debate since their publication in 1979. Was “Testimony” a forgery, made up by an impudent impostor, or was it the deathbed confession of a bent, but unbroken, man? Even now, years after the fall of the communist regime, a coterie of well-placed Western musicologists have regularly raised objections to Testimony, hoping with each attack to undermine the picture of Shostakovich presented in his memoirs that of a man of enormous moral stature, bitterly disillusioned with the Soviet system. Here, Allan Ho and Dmitry Feofanov systematically address all of the accusations levelled at Testimony and Solomon Volkov, Shostakovich's amanuensis, amassing an enormous amount of material about Shostakovich and his position in Soviet society and burying forever the picture of Shostakovich as a willing participant in the communist charade. Allan B. Ho is a musicologist and Dimitri Feofanov a lawyer and pianist.

Shostakovich: A Life Remembered (BOOK): by Elizabeth Wilson

A detailed portrait of the Russian composer, Dmitri Shostakovich, presented through the memories of those who knew and worked with him. The author - a cellist, broadcaster and writer - draws extensively upon interviews which she conducted in the Soviet Union with his contemporaries.