Dmitri Schostakowitsch

The fateful Pravda article 'Muddle Instead of Music' appeared in January 1936, in which Shostakovich was directly attacked for his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, at which point the composer had comple...

In the summer of 1937 - during the dangerous time of Stalin's Great Terror - Shostakovich completed his Symphony No. 5. The Pravda article "Muddle Instead of Music" from January 1936, which condemned...

While the German Wehrmacht besieged Leningrad, Shostakovich wrote his 'Leningrad' Symphony. More than a million people died during the 28-month-long isolation of the city. Against this backdrop, Shost...

In September 1961, Yevgeny Yevtushenko's poem 'Babi Yar' appeared in the Soviet Literaturnaya Gazeta, addressing the mass shooting in 1941 of more than 33,000 Jewish men, women and children on the out...

Shostakovich originally intended his Symphony No.6 to be a monumental homage to Lenin for vocal soloists, choir and large orchestra. Even in the year before its completion, he announced in the press t...

Während die deutsche Wehrmacht Leningrad belagerte, schrieb Schostakowitsch an seiner "Leningrader" Sinfonie. Im Verlauf der etwa 28 Monate andauernden Einkesselung der Stadt starben mehr als eine Mil...