Dmitri Shostakovich lived through one of the most dangerous periods in Soviet history. His career was shaped by constant pressure from the state and fear of repression. At times he resisted, but often ...

Our critic tracked one concert, from its first rehearsals to its first performance. Practice is only part of what makes this ensemble excellent. By David Allen Banned for decades in the Soviet Union ...

The initial time I heard the Chicago Symphony Orchestra perform the politically charged Shostakovich 10th was during the first week of October 1990. The second time was last weekend, the first week of ...

As a symphonist, Dmitri Shostakovich was now up to Beethoven—in quantity.* Last week his new Ninth Symphony was tried out in Moscow, in the manner the U.S.S.R. now decrees: at a private hearing of ...

When guns speak, the muses keep silent, says an old Russian proverb. Last winter, as he listened to the roar of German artillery and watched the sputtering of German incendiaries from the roof of ...

In commemoration of the 40th anniversary of Dmitri Shostakovich's death in 2015, filmmaker Reiner Moritz produced his documentary Dmitri Shostakovich, A Man of Many Faces. With British actor John Hurt ...

When Dmitri Shostakovich announced he’d written a 15th Symphony, his fans might have expected another excursion into darkness. It was 1971, and the composer had heart problems as well as neurological ...

MILAN (AP) — The gala crowd at Milan's Teatro alla Scala cheered the season premiere of Dmitry Shostakovich's "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk '' with a 12-minute standing ovation Sunday, as the storied ...