Page 131 - FINAL_Theatre of Sound Coverage Book
P. 131
Despite relentless Soviet efforts to tame the music of Dmitri Shostakovich,
his creative spirit “always sprang back, as if made of tempered steel”, wrote his lifelong
friend, the literary critic Isaak Glikman. The composer perhaps burnished that steel
best in his 15 string quartets, intimate personal testimonies that chart his life and
fortunes in the vice-like grip of totalitarianism.
Deliberately abstruse about his intentions, Shostakovich is easy to misinterpret, even
today. So the Carducci Quartet’s latest music and words project, Shostakovich: Life,
Letters & Friendship, is a welcome, richly rewarding contribution to our understanding
of one of the great figures of the 20th century.
We learn, for instance, that Quartet No 8, perhaps Shostakovich’s most widely known,
though dedicated to “the victims of fascism and war”, is also the composer’s howl of
shame and fury at being forced in 1960 to join the Communist party, the party that had
publicly denounced and once banned his music. Its savage allegro molto takes on extra
meaning after the actor Samuel West reads from Glikman’s recollections of that
shameful incident.
