Dimensions of Energy in Shostakovich's Symphonies

Rezensionen / Stimmen

'Rofe's study is a welcome addition to Shostakovich scholarship and will certainly influence the analysis of his music.' Russian Review 'Clearly written, coherently argued and generous in its engagement with other scholars, Dimensions of Energy in Shostakovich's Symphonies is evidence of a long-awaited and long wished for turn to detailed analytical work on the composer's scores themselves, and suggests that there are reasons to be optimistic, both about the future of Shostakovich studies, and about the fate of Shostakovich's music in the concert hall'. Philip Ross Bullock, Slavonic and East European Review An understanding of, and familiarity with, even fairly elementary mathematics will provide the reader with the necessary tools to appreciate Rofe's approach. The book is well indexed and there is an extensive, though unannotated, bibliography. The unobtrusive footnotes are used mostly to cite sources. Few readers will come away from reading Dimensions of Energy in Shostakovich's Symphonies without a new perspective, without learning much about Shostakovich's music itself from an analytical and technical (as opposed to a biographical one) angle. So - given Rofe's initial premise about the body of published material - readers' understanding and appreciation of the composer's symphonies music will be significantly increased. Recommended. - Mark Sealey, Classical Net