The Cambridge Companion to Shostakovich

This is unequivocally Shostakovich for the scholar and scholarly reader. The 15 chapters are broadly grouped into four sections: instrumental works; music for stage and screen; vocal and choral works; performance, theory, reception. The book is a “western” approach to the complex life and work of a man about whom much has been written in his native Russian tongue. Earlier writings in English are of their time, and the need was perceived for a twenty‐first century post‐glasnost appraisal by western academics of Shostakovich's prodigious output. This sets his work against the political and wider musical background of its time...