with Vasily Petrenko and the London Philharmonic (LPO), and Hilary Hahn with Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic (Deutsche Grammophon). Also noteworthy among the many available recordings are Joshua Bell’s with Michael Tilson Thomas and the Berlin Philharmonic (Sony), Jascha Heifetz’s with Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Sym- phony (RCA), Anne-Sophie Mutter’s with the Vienna Philharmonic under Herbert von Karajan and later under André Previn (both on Deutsche Grammophon), David Oistrakh’s with Franz Konwitschny and the Dresden Staatskapelle (Deutsche Grammophon), Itzhak Perlman’s with Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic (EMI), and Isaac Stern’s with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra (Sony Classical).

Important books about Shostakovich include Elizabeth Wilson’s Shostakovich: A Life Remembered, now in a second edition published in 2006 (Princeton University paperback); Laurel E. Fay’s Shostakovich: A Life (Oxford paperback); the anthology Shostakovich Reconsidered, written and edited by Allan B. Ho and Dmitry Feofanov (Toccata Press); Shostakovich and Stalin by Solomon Volkov (Random House); Shostakovich and his World, edited by Laurel E. Fay (Princeton University Press), and A Shostakovich Casebook, edited by Malcolm Hamrick Brown (Indiana University Press). Among other things, the last two of these continued to address issues of authenticity surrounding Volkov’s earlier book, Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich as (ostensibly) related to and edited by Volkov, published originally in 1979 (currently a Faber & Faber paperback). Volkov’s Testimony served as the basis for a 1988 Tony Palmer film starring Ben Kingsley as Shostakovich. English writer Julian Barnes’s recent novel, The Noise of Time, uses three crucial moments in Shostakovich’s life to address matters of life, art, society, and political oppression (Knopf). An older but still important biography of the composer, written during his lifetime, is Dmitri Rabinovich’s Dmitri Shostakovich, published in a 1959 English translation by George Hanna (Foreign Languages Publishing House). Also still useful is Boris Schwarz’s Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, Enlarged Edition, 1917-1981 (Indiana University Press). David Fanning discusses Shostakovich’s symphonies in the chapter “The Symphony in the Soviet Union (1917-91)” in A Guide to the Symphony, edited by Robert Layton (Oxford paperback). Hugh Ottaway’s Shostakovich Symphonies in the handy series of BBC Music Guides is worth seeking (University of Washington paperback).

Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 2, To October, is being recorded live during these concerts for future release on Deutsche Grammophon as part of the ongoing Andris Nelsons/BSO Shostakovich symphony cycle on that label. The composer’s son, Maxim Shostakovich, recorded the Symphony No. 2 with the Prague Symphony Orchestra and Prague Philhar- monic Chorus (Supraphon). Other recordings, listed alphabetically by conductor, include Valery Gergiev’s live with the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra and Chorus (Mariinsky), Bernard Haitink’s with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir (Decca), and Vasily Petrenko’s with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir (Naxos).

Marc Mandel

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