Prais

Leonid Girshovich

1998

“The tragic element in Shostakovich’s worldview” is the subject of longstanding debate. Was it a prophetic dream of Soviet Jewry, the spirit of which weighed on Shostakovich even in his youth? His enemies would have liked that: a prophet of the Jewish apocalypse, he foresaw his people’s apocalypse. Nonetheless, it is impossible to imagine…

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Creator Bio

Leonid Girshovich

b. 1948

Author and musician Leonid Girshovich was born in Leningrad. He attended the Moscow Conservatory and played with the Leningrad Philharmonic between 1969 and 1973. In 1980 he immigrated to Germany, where he is a violinist in the Hanover Opera Orchestra. Girshovich was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1999.

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