Books: Music Was His Final Refuge

TESTIMONY: THE MEMOIRS OF DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH

As related to and edited by Solomon Volkov

Translated by Antonina W. Bouis; Harper & Row; 289 pages; $15

For both Russians and Americans, the supreme symbol of the Soviet Union at war was the "Leningrad" Symphony, Dmitri Shostakovich's Seventh. In 1942, when Arturo Toscanini and the NBC orchestra performed it on radio for the first time in America, the New York Times music critic remarked that "the ballyhoo has never been surpassed in history for the scope of the publicity and the distribution of the music." In the U.S.S.R.,...