Briefe an Iwan Sollertinski

Shostakovich without a mask. Nowhere does the Soviet composer reveal himself as candidly as in his letters to his best friend Ivan Sollertinsky, Russia's most brilliant musicologist. They met in Saint Petersburg (then Leningrad) when Shostakovich was 20 and Sollertinsky was 24. The two immediately became inseparable. And when they were apart, they wrote letters or postcards to each other. Only Shostakovich's letters have survived. They paint a picture of two brilliant young artists who enthusiastically throw themselves into the current debates without forgetting to enjoy life. Nowhere else do we experience Shostakovich in such an intimate way. From 1935 onwards, with Stalin's terror, the tone gradually changed. The two were no longer so sure that skill and arguments would prevail. The German invasion of the Soviet Union and the encirclement of Leningrad by Nazi troops separated the friends: Shostakovich was evacuated to Samara (then Kuibyshev), Sollertinsky to Novosibirsk. A happy ending seemed possible when Shostakovich moved to Moscow in 1943 and arranged a professorship for his friend at the Moscow Conservatory. But Sollertinski, weakened by the hardships of war and bullying at the Leningrad Philharmonic, succumbed to a heart attack in 1944 at the age of 41. For Shostakovich, this was a catastrophe. His letters form a monument to a great friendship and provide intimate insights into the cultural and political development of the Soviet Union. Translated from Russian by Ursula Keller

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