The War Symphonies: Shostakovich Against Stalin. Rhombus Media/Bullfrog Films, 1997. Director, Larry Weinstein. Music by the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic and the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra; conductor Valery Gergiev. 82-minute VHS video. Shostakovich angers Stalin with his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. From The War Symphonies. 28.8 | 56k “Music illuminates a person and provides him with his last hope; even Stalin, a butcher, knew that, and that was why he hated music”: so wrote Soviet composer Dmitrii Shostakovich (1906-1975), the subject of The War Symphonies. The central argument of this excellent documentary is that Shostakovich was “the voice of his time.” Living under and occasionally cooperating with a dictatorial…