Shostakovich: A Life Remembered (Second Edition) [Paperback]

Although not as thorough on the music of the great composer itself, this book is a must read for anyone interested in Shostakovich, or music and Soviet history in general.

Wilson lucidly supports her interviews and articles from colleagues, friends, and family of the composer with a curious detachment that serves to clarify rather than alienate the subject matter. The articles and interviews themselves are priceless artifacts, and presented here in an intelligent fashion.

Shostakovich's life is portrayed here with startling intimacy. The reader will find him or herself able to visualize the genius composer and his quirks, and those who listen to the relevant works of music will find their messages so much more meaningful.

In 1936 Stalin walked out of Dmitri Shostakovich's opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Soon an article in Pravda appeared: "Muddle Instead of Music" - inept criticism, but devastating effect. The political war for Shostakovich's soul had begun.

Performance of his Fourth Symphony was canceled. Friends avoided him. Musicians supporting him were persecuted. And as Shostakovich, one of the 20th century's greatest composers, would acknowledge much later, had it not been for the totalitarian regime under which he lived, "I would have written more pure music."

Yet this same man who suffered under Soviet communism also joined the Communist Party in 1960, even spoke or signed statements against Soviet dissidents. What are we to make of him?

In Elizabeth Wilson's artfully woven collection of reminiscences, Shostakovich (1906-75) emerges three-dimensional, fascinating, yet still enigmatic - neither Soviet cheerleader nor covert subversive, as some would have him. First published in 1994, the book is freshly augmented with new material for his centenary. The voices of family, friends, composers, conductors and other musicians make riveting reading; they document Shostakovich's struggle to balance the demands of musical genius with those of a repressive state.

Wilson's credentials are first-rate: She studied cello with the great Mstislav Rostropovich, a close friend of Shostakovich's, and attended several premieres of the composer's late work. She documents in chilling detail the fears under which Shostakovich worked, the subterfuges he used to make his music pass in a hostile climate while still mining his soul's depths.

For 1936 wasn't his last run-in with the state. His heroic Seventh Symphony, performed during the World War II siege of Leningrad, bought him credit with Stalinist authorities up to a point. But with war's end came new decrees denouncing artistic "formalism" - excess attention to aesthetics at the expense of socialist realism.

Rostropovich recalls: "For him it was a calamity that the people for whom he had written his works with his very blood, to whom he had exposed his very soul, did not understand him."

One decree came in 1948 as Shostakovich wrote his Concerto for Violin in A minor. The work could not be performed publicly till 1955, after Stalin's death. Musically, it's no proletarian picnic: a "relentlessly hard, intense piece for the soloist," Russian composer Venyamin Basner calls it. Violinist David Oistrakh even asked Shostakovich for the mercy of "letting the orchestra take over the first eight bars in the Finale so ... I can wipe the sweat off my brow."

Though her book doesn't move in a straight-line narrative, Wilson's analyses frame the oral histories - many of them from interviews she conducted - and for the most part provide adequate context. At times she fails to referee discrepancies between speakers. Laurel Fay's 2000 Shostakovich: A Life, a more traditional biography, clears up some confusions.

With Shostakovich, some matters may never be entirely clear. He gave communism lip service, but did speak out powerfully in his music. He helped innumerable repressed artists behind the scenes. Though not Jewish, he defended the Jews, affirming their culture musically.

As another composer said, the perpetually nervous, agitated Shostakovich was "pain personified," but in his music "was able to transform the pain ... into something exalted and full of light."

Elizabeth Wilson did a great job writing this book.It must be difficult to write a balanced biography on a deceased artist which lived under a different political-cultural regime compared to modern western regimes. Only recently I have read several biographies of Musicans which were very disappointing. Wilson collected lots of personal information supplied by friends, collaborators and other world known Musicans. This information provided an excellent picture of Shostakowich the giant Musican his outstanding work and personal difficulties. I heartily recommend this book to every Music lover.