From darkness to hope

Two albums this issue turn the spotlight on composers whose lives and art were restricted and policed by the Soviet Union. Shostakovich wrote his First Violin Concerto in 1948, the year of his second denunciation by the authorities; this remarkable piece couldn’t be premiered until 1955, after Stalin’s death. By Concerto No. 2 a decade later, his sense of hope had died, feels Frank Peter Zimmermann, the great soloist on our Recording of the Month (p68). Yet Shostakovich still inspired hope in others. When Sofia Gubaidulina (p81) met him, he praised her music. ‘[He] gave me the courage to follow my own path,’ she later said. ‘I am grateful my whole life for those wonderful words.’