"Here is music turned deliberately inside out in order that nothing will be reminiscent of classical opera, or have anything in common with symphonic music or with simple and popular musical language accessible to all...Here we have "leftist" confusion instead of natural human music. The power of good music to infect the masses has been sacrificed to a petty-bourgeois, "formalist" attempt to create originality through cheap clowning. It is a game of clever ingenuity that may end very badly."
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Academics from RussiaRussian communistsComposers from RussiaPianists from RussiaAtheists from Russia
Original Language: English
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Though this review of Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District appeared anonymously, Shostakovich believed it to have been written by Stalin himself.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dmitri_Shostakovich
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Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich (25 September 1906 – 9 August 1975) was a Soviet composer and pianist. Many of his works mark the epochs of Soviet history, or explore his own position as an artist in a communist state. Since his death there has been much controversy as to his private political views.
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