Soviet Rhapsody

Even as youngsters playing his music, we were aware that Shostakovich had led a life dominated by the vicissitudes of Soviet politics, that his art was frequently manipulated for the party’s anti-artistic purposes. It seemed to us that his works, which invoked the passion and melancholia of the proverbial Russian soul, also betrayed a sense of personal tragedy. His most evocative music, for instance, the slow, dirge-like movements in the Sixth, Eighth, and Thirteenth (Babi Yar) symphonies—reflected not only the traditional inner tensions of an artist but Shostakovich’s own silent, bitter struggle with the state. Now, with the publication of his posthumous memoir, Testimony, his life and music emerge with a pathos greater and more complex than we could have imagined.

This is an oral history, most of it written down in 1972 during conversations between Dmitri Shostakovich and Solomon Volkov, a young Jewish Soviet musicologist. Each section of the manuscri...