Born in St Petersburg on 25 September 1906, died in Moscow on 9 August 1975; Dmitri Shostakovich was a Russian composer and pianist. At the Petrograd Conservatory he studied piano with Leonid Nikolayev and composition with Maximilian Steinberg; his First Symphony made him internationally known in 1926. In 1936 and 1948 his music was publicly attacked in the Soviet Union, among it the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk; he responded with works that stand between official expectation and personal expression. His output comprises fifteen symphonies, fifteen string quartets, concertos for piano, violin and cello, the operas The Nose and Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, film scores and piano works, among them the 24 Preludes and Fugues op. 87. Two albums connect him with Cybele: Changeant appeared in 1995, and Russian Piano Quintets followed in 1998.
Dmitri Schostakowitsch
Composer
