Russian composer. His music is chromatically tonal/modal, expressive, and sometimes highly dramatic; it was not always to official Soviet taste. He wrote 15 symphonies, chamber and film music, ballets, and operas, the latter including Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (first performed in 1934), which was suppressed as being ‘too divorced from the proletariat’, but revived as Katerina Izmaylova in 1963. His symphonies are very highly regarded. His son Maxim (1938– ), a conductor, defected to the West after his father's death. Shostakovich was born in St Petersburg. He entered the conservatory there in 1919 and studied with Leonid Vladimirovich Nikolaiev, Maximilian Steinberg, and Alexander Glazunov; he left in 1925, having already written a great many works. The first symphony, which dates from that year, was performed in 1926 and later throughout Europe. It quickly established his reputation internationally. He came into conflict with Soviet authority in 1930, when his opera, The…