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Russia on Monday paid tribute to one of its celebrated sons, the classical composer Dmitri Shostakovich, born 100 years ago and to many a symbol of an age of repression of the arts under Stalinism.
The cellist and orchestral conductor Mstislav Rostropovich was set late Monday to conduct a special concert at the Moscow Conservatory in honour of his friend who died in 1975 at the age of 69.
The work for which Shostakovich is best known to many Russians is his seventh symphony honouring Saint Petersburg, then known as Leningrad, for its heroic survival of nearly two and half years of remorseless German siege during World War II.
Meanwhile another leading Russian musician, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, was simultaenously scheduled to conduct a performance of the Shostakovich opera "Lady Macbeth of Mzensk" at Moscow's Bolshoi Opera.
This 1934 work precipitated Shostakovich's first major crisis in relations with Stalinist culture authorities when he came under sharp criticism for its perceived lack of orthodoxy.
"The fate of Shostakovich is as tragic and paradoxical as that of Russia itself in the 20th century," wrote the newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta on Monday.
His life had been "a manual of how to get by while subjected to years and years of persecution," the veteran Russian operatic soprano Galina Vishnevskaya told the NTV television channel.
But critics have pointed out that identifying Shostakovich as a victim of cultural repression has tended to obscure the true value of his music.
The newspaper Novye Izvestia noted that his centenary was not being celebrated as a public festival in the way that the 250th anniversary of the birth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was being marked this year.
"His works are not well known," it said. "For the average Russian his name is associated with the seventh symphony dedicated to the siege of Leningrad, and this unconsciously evokes sad memories."
The composer, said to have hated official ceremonies,"would have been irritated by commemorations marking the centenary of his birth in typical Soviet-style tradition, with lots of chaotic concerts with all the best known works and quantity triumphing over quality," wrote the newspaper Vlast.
"Russia still has to learn to appreciate Shostakovich's music as music and not as an historic document," it suggested.
In the Urals city of Yekaterinburg, the last-ever Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachov meanwhile inaugurated a programme with a political flavour under the title "The Shostakovich Era," a mixture of conferences and concerts with the participation of concert pianist Andrei Gavrilov.
Gavrilov was allowed to emigrate from the Soviet Union in 1985 thanks to Gorbachov's personal intervention.
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AFP 251814 GMT 09 06
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