Composer Dmitri Shostakovich.
In Tuesday’s (1/7) San Francisco Classical Voice, Harlow Robinson writes, “Just shy of 50 years ago, in early August 1975 … I learned of the death of composer Dmitri Shostakovich…. I had become obsessed in college with … the Fifth Symphony. The alternating moments of ironic exuberance and black anguish puzzled and overwhelmed me—as they had so many others since the piece’s dramatic premiere in Leningrad in 1937…. Official Communist sources underplayed the news of Shostakovich’s death, reflecting the regime’s ambivalent attitude toward the composer and the taunting duality of his oracular music. Pravda waited several days to publish an obituary … full of the cliches of Soviet Party-speak lauding the composer as a faithful Communist … In the West, however, Shostakovich’s passing made headlines…. Many other publications have fundamentally endorsed [the] portrait of the composer as a closet critic whose music bristles with ironic and bitter subtext…. Even today, Shostakovich’s music is used [in Russia] for unsavory propaganda purposes…. Since his death, Shostakovich’s vast and influential body of work in many genres has gradually moved from the periphery to the center of the classical repertoire. In the post-Cold War era, we have come to hear Shostakovich’s music with post-ideological ears, appreciating more than ever its craftsmanship, emotional power, fearlessness, and philosophical depth.”
