The 20th-century Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich might be best known for his conflicted but patriotic symphonies, his daring operas, including two takes on Nikolai Leskov’s novella “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District,” or the extent to which, decades after his death on this day in 1975, no one can say authoritatively whether his music was actually good.
Yet one of the most moving stories about Shostakovich is that of how the composer wove sympathy for the Jews into his music — and how, in Stalin’s officialy anti-Semitic Soviet Union, he was punished for it.