From Bruce Duffie’s 1990 interview in Chicago with the Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin, who died this week:
RS: I must tell you little story. I know Shostakovich personally, himself, because my father a few years was his secretary. He knows me from my childhood, and we spent together summertime, two months in Armenia. It was 1965, and we meet each other day and night, eat together, and so on. Suddenly he
ask me, “If somebody will send you to island and possible to take for all your second part of life only one score, what you will took with you? But I give you only ten seconds.” And I said, “Kunst der Fuge by Bach. And you?” And he told, “Das Lied von der Erde by Mahler.”
BD: I see, the “desert island” question.
RS: Yes. And I was in his dacha, his house, two month before he died in ’75. I took my coat, and last moment suddenly I ask him, “You remember our conversation in Armenia? You change your opinion about Mahler?” And he told, “No. And you changed your opinion about Bach?” I say, “No.”
Full interview here.
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