* Nevertheless some of the more unlikely-sounding stories in Testimony are vindicated here: eye-witnesses, for instance, confirm that Shostakovich's long-time political tormentor Apostolov died of a heart-attack during the closed performance held to solicit ideological approval for the Fourteenth Symphony, that long meditation on the power of death. Afterwards Shostakovich said to Rudolf Barshai, who was conducting, ‘I didn't want that to happen, I didn't want that’.

† Anyone seeking gossip about his love-life will be disappointed, though it is acknowledged that he and his first wife Nina Varzar maintained an ‘open’ marriage. Galina Ustyolskaya refused to be interviewed for the book, but other witnesses refer in passing to her relationship with Shostakovich, as a matter of common knowledge.