Review by Choice Review
"Sensitive" would probably be the best word to describe the author of this book--politically and socially sensitive, as admirably shown in his writing, and musically sensitive as demonstrated in the many recordings of the Borodin Quartet. The cultural and political leaders of the USSR created almost insurmountable problems for artists. Musicians at the level of Dubinsky were subjected to limited choices when selecting music for performance in the Russia of Stalin and Krushchev, and they were often told when and where to perform. This book describes the experiences of the Borodin Quartet members over a period of 25 years, and it demonstrates the ingenuity and integrity of the leader of Russia's premier quartet. The life of this man is brought into focus together with his inner conflicts as he comes into contact with everyday folk as well as other artists. Readers interested in the political machinations that controlled cultural activities in Soviet Russia from 1950 to 1975 will find this rewarding reading. Recommended for all libraries from high school up. -D. G. Engelhardt, University of Hawaii at Manoa
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Dubinsky, who emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1975, now serves as chairman of the department of chamber music at Indiana University. He founded the Borodin Quartet after graduating from the Moscow Conservatory in 1954. The reader follows his career from the International Quartet competition in Prague in 1950, to the International Youth Festival in Moscow in 1952, to his tours to East Germany in 1955, Siberia in 1957, and the U.S. in 1964, and beyond. One intriguing chapter is devoted to the quartet's forced participation in Stalin's burial ceremonies for three days in 1953. Another chapter concerns Shostakovich's death in 1975 (the composer had been banished from the Soviet musical scene 27 years earlier). Dubinsky chronicles his and his colleagues' harrowing road to success as it was plagued by Soviet bureaucracy and anti-Semitism, amounting to an enticing firsthand account of life behind the iron curtain. No index. --George Cohen
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
These chronicles of a Jewish musician in the postwar Soviet Union--sometimes awkwardly written, often amusing and affecting--are by the first violinist of therenowned Borodin Quartet. Concerned solely with the author's experiences as a Soviet artist from 1949 to 1975, the year he emigrated to the United States, the works make little mention of Dubinsky's childhood and family. Much is made of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, the realities of working for a Soviet cultural agency, and the omnipresence of vodka in the lives of the people. Lyrical when he writes of people he loves and biting when the subjects are less than lovable, Dubinsky offers funny stories that balance the acrimony. Memorable is the one about how the quartet got to the head of a restaurant line by posing as foreigners and speaking in Italian musical terminology.-- Bonnie Jo Dopp, District of Columbia P.L. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Lovers of chamber music and especially of the Shostakovich quartets will give Dubinsky's memoir of the chamber music scene in postwar Russia stormy applause. He is a spirited and amusing writer about the most ratified musical matters. This is nothing if not an education in how to listen to chamber music, or in how to grasp the intent of the players and, with luck, the composer. What is clear from first-violinist Dubinsky's description of performances by his own Borodin Quartet, founded by him in the late 40's, is that a quartet work is never the same twice, that it is a supple, living organism that breathes with the daily lives of its players. Dubinsky's tale is one of living death under the Communist Party and of innocents abroad as the rising Borodin Quartet is sent out to Eastern bloc countries and at last to the West as a symbol of musical art in the Soviet Union. The tone is both Helleresque in the Catch-22s of bureaucracy and very funny, much like Iranoff, Buljanoff, and Kopalski being sent to Paris in Ninotchka. Dubinsky never fears farce in showing us the quarter's inner agonies, the terrifying spiritual blinkers applied by the quartet's two Party members, Berlinsky and Alexandrov, in lording it over non-Party members Dubinsky and Shebalin (and Shebalin secretly has been appointed as the group's informer while abroad!). And yet the group must harmonize or their music will not breathe. Often they play socialist ""masterpieces""--""making candy from a piece of shit."" But the book's most wrenching moments are about the abyssal agonies of Dmitri Shostakovich, who twice suffers civil execution, lives daily under the threat of immediate death, and hides out spiritually in his quartets while composing public symphonies; the death of violinist David Oistrakh (for whom the Borodins play a Shostakovich quartet on his deathbed); the friendship of Rostropovich; the Borodins playing for three sleepless days and nights over Stalin's bier. Superb. And let the Western reader count his blessings. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
