[lit-ideas] Re: TUESDAY'S FORCAST

Donal: this is surely unfair to Shostie
Perhaps I am overly influenced by "Bad Bargains for Russian Music," on page 51 of the latest New York Review of Books, which recounts three new books, including _On Russian Music_ by Richard Taruskin. This last book is a revisionist take on Shostakovitch, and savages the view of DS as a "closet dissident." It offers a view of DS quite different from _Testimony_ or the Vollman portrait in _Europe Central_.
Sure, DS can be ironic, as in his Ninth Symphony, or he can push the margin as in his Babi Yar Symphony (16?), but he does mostly take party superhighways in his music. (Consider the Soviet agitprop about Dresden in his 8th String Quartet ... Soviets worried about Dresden? Yeah sure, it being one of the few places they didn't ravage first.) 

Eric
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