The New Shostakovich
  • Published: 1 September 2006
  • ISBN: 9781845950644
  • Imprint: Pimlico
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 464
  • RRP: $29.99

The New Shostakovich

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Party stalwart or secret dissenter? A major reassessment of the life, works, and politics of the Soviet Union's greatest composer by one of our best music critics.

Who was Dmitri Shostakovich? The USSR's official figurehead composer and son of the revolution that brought the Soviet state into being, or a secret dissident whose contempt for the totalitarian regime was scathing? Perhaps both?

Since the posthumous publication in 1979 of alleged memoirs by Shostakovich, the controversy about the composer and his music has escalated into the most rancorous debate the world of classical music has ever known. Ian MacDonald's The New Shostakovich presents the case for the dissident view, arguing passionately that the meaning of the composer's music cannot be fully appreciated without a knowledge of the terrible times he and his fellow artists lived through under Soviet Communism.

A widely read and critically acclaimed book in the 1990s, this new edition has been comprehensively revised, extensively corrected, and updated with much new material. Whichever side of the debate readers support, The New Shostakovich presents them with a viewpoint which cannot be ignored.
  • Published: 1 September 2006
  • ISBN: 9781845950644
  • Imprint: Pimlico
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 464
  • RRP: $29.99
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About the author

Ian MacDonald

Ian MacDonald was born in 1948. A writer with many interests, he was Assistant Editor of the New Musical Express during 1972-5. He also worked as a songwriter and record producer, and is the author of The New Shostakovich, The People's Music, Revolution in the Head and The Beatles at No. 1. He died in 2003.

Also by Ian MacDonald

The People's Music
Revolution in the Head
See all

Praise for The New Shostakovich

One of the best biographies of Dmitri Shostakovich I have read

Maxim Shostakovich

Compelling ... a portrait of a creative artist tormented and harried by the random assaults of Stalinism

Financial Times

Persuasively argued and forceful ... A valid, politically driven reconsideration of the composer's works

New York Times Review of Books

With passionate integrity, MacDonald fastidiously builds a case to rival the most compellingly labyrinthine detective investigation. Now the great music of Shostakovich will be heard anew

Q

Much-needed - a very fascinating insight

Neil Tennant (Pet Shop Boys)

Anyone concerned with Soviet music, twentieth-century music, arts in politics, and politics in art, will be interested in this book

Gunther Schuller

Fascinating ... Manages, better than any previous publication, to make connections between Shostakovich's work and the works of other Soviet artists whom he admired and was influenced by

Times Educational Supplement

A considerable tour de force of musical and social analysis which will hold its own for some time to come

Norman Lebrecht

Harrowing... riveting... superb

Classic CD

The best biography of the composer available... has broken new ground by fusing biography with political analysis. A formal lesson to Western writers on post-1917 Russia, whether their subject is music or life itself

Andrei Navrozov

A monumental achievement

City Limits

Superb ... This compassionate and very knowledgeable book is humbling in its understanding of how far an individual can be pushed by the coercive forces of a grotesque, perhaps insane, authority

Sydney Morning Herald