Shostakovich: His Life and Music

by Brian Morton

An intriguingly illustrated passionate portrayal of the most controversial Russian composer of Soviet times

Genres: Nonfiction, Russia, Music

137 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2006

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Brian Morton (born 1954) is a Scottish writer, journalist and broadcaster, mainly specialising in jazz and modern literature. Morton was educated at Edinburgh University and taught in the late 1970s at the University of East Anglia and the University of Tromsø in Norway.

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Shostakovich had avoided the fate of many writers, composers, and playwrights who were shot, gulaged, driven to suicide or forced to emigrate during the Stalin purges of the 30s. As Brian Morton explains in his concise Shostakovich: His Life and Music (Haus, $25), Shostakovich had been successful in 'disguising his deeper, slower evolution behind a façade of accommodating activity, all the time refusing to be a pipe that others could play on, farting inaudibly under cover of the noise and brouhaha and then denying that the bad smell was his.'"

-- from Metro Pulse [http://www.metropulse.com], May 24, 2007

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although a compelling picture of Shostakovich's life, its depth of its descriptions is highly variable and mildly opinionated. A great outline that also provides a picture his life in the USSR, it brushes off a great body of Shostakovich's work without any stated justification. I especially noted this with his more "Soviet" pieces, the ones that didn't reek of irony and dissent.

[M · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating account of a musical genius plagued by Soviet ideology.