writings
Love and Death: On Shostakovich Symphony No. 14
Shostakovich went into hospital on 13th January 1969. Having never properly recovered from a heart attack of three years before, he had by now lost the comfortable use of his right hand and could hardly walk. In constant pain, he was suffering from the form of polio that would eventually kill him. The city’s flu epidemic meant that no visitors were allowed, but this solitude led him to focus entirely on what was to be his Fourteenth Symphony.
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