Dimitri Shostakovich
Beginning of paper
Dmitri Shostakovich, born on September 25, 1905, started taking piano lessons from his mother at the age of nine after he showed interest in a string quartet that practiced next door. He entered the Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg, later Leningrad) Conservatory in 1919, where he studied the pian ....
Middle of paper
.... Union at its peak, free at the time. Even the music of Igor Stravinsky and Alban Berg, then in the avant-garde, was played. Bela Bartok and Paul Hindemith visited Russia to perform their own works, and Shostakovich toyed openly with these novelties. His first opera, The Nose, based on the satiric Nikolay Gogol story, displayed a thorough understanding of what was popular in Western music combined with his "dry" humor. Not surprisingly, Shostakovich's undoubtedly finer second opera, Lady Macbet ....
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Word count: 1484
Page count: 6 (approximately 250 words per page)
