I noticed there are some people on here who seem especially interested in Russian music, esp. Shostakovich, so I thought I’d recommend this book. Just published this year, authored by Prof. Taruskin, probably the best-known and simultaneously most-admired and most-controversial musicologist in the field. I am almost finished with it now…
Like another recently published volume “The Danger of Music”, “On Russian Music” is a collection of essays and talks previously given or published that have been reworked and compiled. Really, like most of Taruskin’s writings, these are scholarly achievements on a level so ridiculously high that they are always compelling, direct, understandable, and affecting. The plus here is that Taruskin is especially in his element, even moreso than the recent 5-volume Oxford History of Western Music which he authored, due to the fact that Russian music was his original area of specialization.
Among the topics discussed in this book are Roslavets, Gergiev’s programming of A Toast to Stalin, much material about Prokofiev, censorship, etc. He especially drives more nails into the coffin than have already been nailed by he and countless other musicologists regarding Volkov’s fictitious Testimony and a recent book defending it, Shostakovich Reconsidered.
Whether one shares his opinions or not, this book makes for some of the most exciting and colorful reading about great musical minds, ethics, history, etc. all the way from the introduction through the last chapter. It’s highly likely however, due to the incredible scholarship and prose, that one may put the book down saying “How can it be any other way?”
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
