Reviews provided by Syndetics

Kirkus Book Review

Although they've hardly been convincingly discredited, Shostakovich's fiercely bitter memoirs (Testimony, edited and transcribed by Solomon Volkov, 1979) have aroused considerable debate as to their reflection of the composer's true feelings and character; but even assuming that only a fraction of Testimony is pure Shostakovich, this bland ""outline"" of his life by two Soviet musicologists is near-laughable as it attempts to smooth over or bypass all the thorny political/ artistic controversies. The Sollertinskys follow lovable little prodigy Dmitri year by year and work by work--from happy 1910s home life (""All present were genuinely happy"") to Leningrad studies to early celebrity, through two marriages and WW II discomfort and many illnesses. Their style of presentation is plodding and vacuous: ""The year 1970 began with great activity. . . 1970 brought quite a lot of creative activity."" They give exorbitant emphasis to the composer's friendship with musicologist Ivan Sollertinsky (co-author Dmitri's father--""perhaps the only person who was truly close"") and to Shostakovich's interest in soccer. But Stalin is never mentioned; nor are the purge-deaths of Shostakovich's colleagues. And when it comes to the unavoidable discussion of the official attacks on the composer's ""formalism,"" the self-contradicting authors pussyfoot in every conceivable direction: they downplay the criticism (identified here as stemming only from ""the press""); they sometimes imply that the attacks were wrong; but they also portray Shostakovich as a happy practitioner of classic self-criticism (""he took serious and careful note of the critical remarks and tried to comprehend his errors and shortcomings"") who really did strive to make his music more socially utilitarian. All this, of course, is directly contradicted by Testimony--as are most of the Shostakovich quotations here and the Sollertinskys' fatuous portrait of ""a man who never acted against his own conscience."" True, it would certainly be useful to have a Shostakovich book--even a clearly propagandistic one--to address the questions raised by the controversial memoirs. But one that simply ignores them (and is itself shallow and dull) is virtually worthless except as source material for the most knowingly selective scholars--or as an object of study for analysts of current Soviet musico-political party lines. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.