This revised edition of Shostakovich: A Life Remembered has been made possible through the assistance and generous help of many people. First and foremost I must thank the original contributors, without whom this book would not exist.
I owe the stimulus for revising my book to Belinda Matthews, my editor at Faber and Faber. In helping to nurse it into existence she has shown that wonderful balance of enthusiastic support and gentle pressure which only a really excellent editor knows how to exert. I must thank her for her encouragement in getting me to tackle the task in hand. My gratitude also to her assistant Elizabeth Tyerman for all her attentive help.
In preparing the revised edition I have received help from scholars and institutions all over the world. To start with I must reiterate my thanks to the Shostakovich family: to Maxim Dmitryevich Shostakovich and Galina Dmitriyevna Shostakovich, and most particularly to Irina Antonovna Shostakovich, the composer’s widow.
It is through Irina Antonovna’s vision and dedicated work that the creation of the Shostakovich archive in Moscow, the Centre Shostakovich in Paris and the DSCH publishing house in Moscow have come about. The family archive, housed on the same landing as the composer’s own town apartment in Bryusovsky Lane (which is soon to be opened as a ‘museum apartment’), provides facilities for scholars to examine materials, copies and originals of manuscripts and to consult the library. The week I spent there in January 2005 was invaluable, and I am most grateful to the team of dedicated archivists who were unfailingly helpful to me: Olga Dombrovskaya, Olga Digonskaya and not least the curator Manashir Yakubov. Yakubov has been consistently generous to me with advice and information, and we have spent many wonderful hours discussing Shostakovich’s music. I am most grateful to him for his time, patience, and friendship.
In St Petersburg I must warmly thank Lyudmila Kovnatskaya, a specialist in English music but also an all-round musicologist who has set the highest standards of musical research in her native city. In the last fifteen years or so she has also become a considerable Shostakovich expert, and used her manifold skills to edit volumes of articles, write her own papers and organize seminars and conferences. (We also owe to Kovnatsksaya the recent discovery of a little-known work by Shostakovich, the Finnish Suite.) Kovnatskaya’s disciples and pupils uphold their teacher’s example of impeccable scholarship. Among them I wish to single out Olga Manulkina, both for her kind hospitality, and most of all for the enormous amount of time she has given me. Olga has translated my book into Russian, and in doing so has checked through every page of it, listing my errors and making many useful suggestions as to how to correct them. I regard her as my ‘Russian editor’ par excellence, and thank her warmly. I also wish to thank A. Vulfson for his editing suggestions.
I wish to express my gratitude to the Paul Sacher Siftung for the opportunity of a two-week period of study in their archives in Basle at the end of November and beginning of December 2004. This wonderful archive offers scholars the ideal conditions for study. My thanks to the curator, Dr Felix Meyer, and his excellent team of archivists, who allowed me to examine their collection of Shostakovich manuscripts.
My thanks also to Tatyana Baranova and Ivan Monighetti for offering me hospitality in Basle and for much stimulating discussion.
In Moscow I wish to thank Vladimir and Irina Tarnopolsky, and Natalya Gutman for their kindness and hospitality, and again for patiently talking to me about a myriad of musical matters, not least Shostakovich’s work. I also wish to thank Levon Hakobian for generously sending me a copy of his recent book Dmitri Shostakovich: An Essay in the Phenomenology of his Work. Other friends and colleagues in Russia whom I would like to thank include A. Knaifel and T. Melentieva, F. Kara-Karayev and Pavel Maximov and his family.
My gratitude also to my friend, the composer and Russian music expert Gerard McBurney, who has unfailingly provided me with support, sharing his enthusiasm for Russian music and his knowledge of Shostakovich in particular. His insights into the composer’s theatre music for instance cannot be overestimated. I refer in particular to his reconstruction and orchestration of the vaudeville work Hypothetically Murdered (also known as Declared Dead). Another important scholar of Russian and ‘ex-Soviet’ music in London is my colleague Alexander Ivashkin, who likewise has been consistently generous in giving information and help.
I also wish to thank Rosamund Strode for her corrections on the dating of Britten’s visits to Russia, and Rosamund Bartlett for kindly sending me her articles and books, and keeping me abreast of current publications.
I am grateful to many friends around the world for stimulating discussion on the subject of Shostakovich and his music, including Anthony Phillips (translator of The Story of a Friendship: The Letters of Shostakovich to Glikman) and the composers Elena Firsova and Dmitri Smirnov, Boris and Alyona Petrushansky. A particularly warm thank you to the New York scholar Laurel Fay, who has selflessly devoted much of her life to defining new standards of Shostakovich study. Her patient work in the Russian archives and her comprehensive knowledge of printed source material have ensured that her many publications are beacons of serious and reliable scholarship. She has had to bear the brunt of some scurrilous attacks during the ‘Shostakovich Wars’, but she has shown the courage of her convictions and has emerged from them unscathed, and definitely with the last word. Laurel has been consistent in her generosity, sharing information, answering my queries and giving advice. In the USA I would also like to thank Malcolm H. Brown for stimulating conversation and for giving me his latest book on Shostakovich. I am also grateful to Elena Dubinets for much practical advice as well as lots of fascinating discussion and speculation.
In the translations of the original taped interviews I received help from Grigory Gerenstein, to whom I extend once more my gratitude.
I can never forget the excitement I felt when I first heard Shostakovich’s music live during the Edinburgh Festival of 1962. Naturally, for the young, aspiring cellist that I was then, the most thrilling event was Mstislav Rostropovich’s performance of the First Cello Concerto. When, two years later, I found myself in his Moscow class, I was given a unique opportunity to learn more about Shostakovich’s music as it were from the horse’s mouth. Mstislav Rostropovich continues today to share with audiences his deep insights into the music through his superlative performances and recordings of the works. As his pupil and friend, and dedicatee of Shostakovich’s two concertos, Rostropovich is a living repository of priceless information about Shostakovich, which he willingly shares with the world at large. My gratitude to him is infinite.
Lastly I wish to thank my own family for their patience. My sister Catherine and sister-in-law Ann have always been enormously supportive. At home Francesco Candido has read through much of what I write, offering useful and constructive criticism. Both he and our daughter have consistently encouraged me in my writing and research, and have also put up with the consequences.
I wish to thank the following publishers and individuals for granting permission to quote from the following books and journals:
Revd Mikhail Ardov, for permission to quote from Our Father, Dmitri Shostakovich in the Reminiscences of his son Maxim and his daughter Galina
The Britten–Pears Library for use of extracts from Moscow Christmas by Peter Pears
Faber and Faber, for use of extracts from Dialogues and a Diary by Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft
V. Gurevich, for use of extracts from S. Khentova, In Shostakovich’s World
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich and Hodder & Stoughton, for use of extracts from Galina: A Russian Story by Galina Vishnevskaya
Kompozitor (Moscow), for use of extracts from D. D. Shostakovich: Articles and Materials (ed. G. M. Shneerson); Music, Contacts and Destinies by Grigori Fried; Alexander Vasiliyevich Gauk: Memoirs, Selected Articles and Reminiscences edited by L. Gauk, R. Glezer and Y. Milstein; Discourses on Conducting by Boris Khaikin
Kompozitor (St Petersburg) and DSCH publishing house, for use of extracts from Letters to a Friend: Dmitri Shostakovich to Isaak Glikman
Little, Brown & Co., for use of extracts from Old Friends and New Music by Nicholas Nabokov
George Malko, for use of extracts from Nikolai Malko’s A Certain Art
Krzysztof Meyer for use of his obituary article published in Rych Muzyczny
Boris Lossky, for use of his article ‘New Facts about Shostakovich’, published in Russkaya Mysl’
Irina Shostakovich, for permission to quote from Shostakovich’s published letters