There may be no composer whose life and work divide critics more than Dmitri Shostakovich. Was he a courageous rebel working against the Stalinist regime from within, or a Communist stooge too fond of his privileged place in Soviet Russia to worry about the politics of it all? Does his music represent a visionary advancing of the traditions established by Russia’s 19th-century compositional luminaries, or is it all “undercomposed” and second-rate stuff? “It is extraordinary how vitriolic such discussions… become, both inside and outside Russia.”