Word: shostakoviches
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...small, drab figure in the dark suit hunched forward in the front row of the gallery listening tensely. Sometimes he tapped his fingers nervously against his cheek; occasionally he nodded his head rhythmically in time with the music. In the whole of his productive career, remarked Soviet Composer Dmitry Shostakovich, he had "never heard so many of my works performed in so short a period." This year's Edinburgh Festival was offering no fewer than 25 of his works in three weeks, including six of the symphonies, eight quartets, two concertos. Western observers got their best chance...
Persuasive Speech. The festival was organized as a salute to Soviet music in general: along with Shostakovich came Conductor Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, Violinist David Oistrakh, Cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and his wife, Singer Galina Vishnevskaya. (After Pianist Sviatoslav Richter failed to show up, forcing the refund of $11,200 worth of tickets, the Russians tersely announced that their great virtuoso was resting at home with a mild stroke.) But for all the heavy concentration of glamorous box office names, the center of attention remained Shostakovich, who often could be seen sprinting from one concert hall to another to keep up with...
...Complaint. What obviously incensed many a critic was that a composer of such talent would permit himself to be so bad. It is an old complaint about Shostakovich. In an unusually talkative mood last week, he did his best to scotch one explanation-that having been rapped by the government for "decadence," he now strenuously zigs and zags with the party line. "I was criticized extensively and I hope I will be criticized in the future. In my country I was praised and criticized quite a lot, and criticism was always meant to help me, not to destroy me. Every...
...Monteux, 86, flatly replied: ''I don't see any, except perhaps Stravinsky." In a tart catalogue of inadequacies, the peppery new conductor of the London Symphony went on: "Mahler, he won't live; he's an imitator. Prokofiev, I don't think so. Shostakovich, no. Hindemith, no inspiration. Bartok: I give him ten years...
...Shostakovich was clearly determined to woo a large audience, and there was never much doubt that he would succeed. With his political credentials in apple-pie order, he was rewarded by the usually cautious critics with an instantaneous rave. Said Izuestia: "Just as today we feel an involuntary envy for the contemporaries of Beethoven, Paganini and Tchaikovsky, so will future generations envy us who first heard the Twelfth Symphony of Dmitry Shostakovich, the greatest composer of the 20th century...