Dmitri Shostakovich: the Soviet voice of the oppressed. Discover the lives and works of all the great composers, at classical ...

The Carduccis maintained astonishing intensity throughout the complete cycle of Shostakovich’s 15 string quartets – performed in a single day Most ensembles gung-ho enough to attempt a complete cycle ...

For a composer who saw his popularity fluctuate more wildly than the Dow Jones averages while he was alive, Dmitri Shostakovich would have been astounded to find himself in the middle of a major ...

On Dmitri Shostakovich’s gravestone in Novodevichy Cemetery in St. Petersburg, under his name, is a musical staff with a treble clef and his musical signature: DSCH. Even in death he asserts his ...

Evgeny Kissin, Gidon Kremer, Maxim Rysanov, Giedrė Dirvanauskaitė and Alexander Roslavets collaborated in a thoughtful and powerful programme of Shostakovich’s chamber music In the 50 years since his ...

Many years ago, a relative of mine used the term "music-intense" in conversation to describe a musician we both knew. I think it's also an apt descriptor for BBC music broadcaster Stephen Johnson. His ...

Aside from the obvious marketing hooks, the 100th anniversary of the birth of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich this week gives us an opportunity to delve more deeply into the less-explored music ...

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 ...

Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich died in 1975 without completing his dream of setting Anton Chekhov’s short story, “The Black Monk,” as an opera. Thanks to playwright James Glossman and musician ...

WHEN PAAVO JÄRVI CONDUCTED two rarely performed Shostakovich cantatas in Tallinn, Estonia, three years ago, an outcry in the media forced him to hire a bodyguard. This episode highlighted both the ...

Fancy living where the late great Shostakovich composed his famous seventh symphony? For £300,000, this luxury St. Petersburg apartment could be yours (musical genius not included in the price). Once ...