SHOOTING DOWN A RUSSIAN STAR
Composer Dmitri Shostakovich, who in his last 22 years was widely recognized as the cream of the crop among the Soviet Union’s composers, arguably turned out most of his significant, insightful music after the 1953 death of his nemesis, dictator Josef Stalin. Stalin had turned music criticism into a personal tool of repression which threatened either gulag confinement or execution to dissidents of any stripe. Dmitri’s later compositions of greatest note contained his repeated musical signature, D-S-C-H, which indicated via…