Books > Language & Literature > Literature: texts > Essays, journals, letters & other prose works
|
Buy Now
Story of a Friendship - The Letters of Dmitry Shostakovich to Isaak Glikman, 1941-1975 (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R2,349
Discovery Miles 23 490
|
|
Story of a Friendship - The Letters of Dmitry Shostakovich to Isaak Glikman, 1941-1975 (Hardcover)
Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days
|
After considerable hesitation and soul-searching I have decided to
publish the letters Dmitry Dmitriyevich Shostakovich wrote to me.
This choice by the composer's close friend Isaak Glikman brought
the tormented feelings of the musical genius into public view. Now
those feelings resound in the first substantial collection of
Shostakovich's letters to appear in English.From the early 1930s
until his death in 1975 Shostakovich wrote regularly to Glikman, a
Leningrad theater critic and historian. The 288 letters included in
this volume began in 1941, at the time of Operation Barbarossa and
the composition of the controversial (Leningrad) Symphony no. 7,
and continue until 1974, by which time Shostakovich was too frail
to write. Glikman's extensive introduction explains that the
earlier letters were lost presumably left behind when both men were
evacuated from besieged Leningrad. In his account of those years,
Glikman relates personal details of the composer's life during the
height of the Stalinist Terror, including Shostakovich's response
to the public humiliation inflicted by the regime after the
premiere of his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.Taken together, the
letters and Glikman's fascinating commentary form a portrait of a
complex and acutely sensitive personality endowed with enormous
moral integrity, humanity, compassion, and a sharp, often
self-deprecating, sense of humor. The book recounts some of the
most pivotal episodes of Shostakovich's life, including the long
withdrawal of the Symphony no. 4, the regime's 1948 attacks on the
composer, his subsequent trips to the United States and other
Western countries, his frame of mind upon joining the Communist
party in 1960, his reactions to the music of his contemporaries,
and his composition of the devastating late symphonies and final
string quartets.The battles over the politics of Dmitry
Shostakovich and his music continue with undiminished vehemence,
and Story of a Friendship is sure to occasion still more argument.
At the same time, the book provides a unique opportunity better to
understand the man and his music, on the one hand, and the regime
that alternately hailed and reviled him, on the other."
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
|
|
Email address subscribed successfully.
A activation email has been sent to you.
Please click the link in that email to activate your subscription.