Shostakovich Quotes

“It meant different things to different people, but somehow it meant them all intensely. Shostakovich's words just confuse the issue. His symphony itself is what remains. Listen to it. It is your symphony to write with him.”
― M.T. Anderson

“One of the reasons I never enjoy the music of Shostakovich, although I admire it and think it captures an essential part of the human condition. is that it's all impasse with no release. When there are solutions, they tend to be grudging, tragic, or ambivalent, like the famous ending of the Fifth Symphony that everyone argues about.”
― Jeremy Denk, Every Good Boy Does Fine: A Love Story, in Music Lessons