January 20, 2026
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She turned down Shostakovich

She turned down Shostakovich

From the Lebrecht Album of the Week:

The first thing anyone learns about Galina Ustvolskaya is that her composition teacher, Dmitri Shostakovich, asked to marry her in the early 1950s. She rejected him, saying once that ‘he killed my best feelings’. He remembered her warmly enough, however, to quote a trio of hers in his fifth string quartet, and again in the late Michaelangelo Suite.

That was the closest Galina came to a fame she never sought…

Continues here.

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