SURVIVING BY DINT OF IRONY
BERKELEY—The best lecture-demonstrations on the music and life of Dmitri Shostakovich these Saturday mornings has unfolded by way of the informal visiting San Franciscans of the Alexander String Quartet and the entertaining lecturer Robert Greenberg. These “play-lects” have been profound, funny, insightful, leading you to hear the master’s music through new ears. Shostakovich (1906-75) you recall was under the Soviet yoke all his life. Furthermore, at least till the 1960s, he was derided by the cognoscenti over here as being…