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Shostakovich "Testimony" Debunked?

Twenty-five years after the death of Dmitri Shostakovich, there is still a great deal of mystique surrounding the man and his music. This website has one interesting section that tries to dispell some of the "myths" that came about as a result of the book "Testimony," by Solomon Volkov. While some of the evidence is accurate, and common knowledge to many musicologists, some of the arguments come across as rather shallow and unsupportable. The site's adherence to the KISS principle (keep it simple stupid) is, even to me, a bit boring. But that is not the only point of this site; the rest of the page has some interesting features, including the "Unknown Composers" section, which features lesser-known masters and is fairly interesting. There are also some other links that are somewhat interesting. However, as an overall site--unless you wanted some very specific information about the Volkov book which is presented in the bibliography--this is a bit of a sleeper site that could be missed, and you wouldn't even know you had passed it by.

Wed, 15 Mar 2000 02:32:03 -0800