David Mitchell

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One night, I remember, Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 came on the radio. Partway through the third movement, Ai-ming sat down and gazed into the speakers as if into the face of a person she knew. Even I, as young as I was, felt disturbed by the music and the emotions it communicated. Or perhaps this is all hindsight, because later, through the Book of Records, I learned that Shostakovich had written this symphony in 1937, at the height of Stalin’s Terror when more than half a million people were executed, including some of Shostakovich’s closest friends. Under terrible pressure, he composed the ...more
Do Not Say We Have Nothing
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