Free Republic

"The people controlling Joe Biden have just erased the Constitution for good. All that is now required for a citizen to lose all rights to own property or conduct business in any way is a simple accusation of Russian ‘involvement.’ The American Thinker explained: Executive Order Canceling the Constitution On April 15, President Biden signed an Executive Order on Blocking Property with Respect to Specified Harmful Foreign Activities of the Government of the Russian Federation. Contrary to its title, this EO is not about Russia. It is designed to allow the Biden administration to deprive American citizens and organizations of...

Monday, 25th September will mark the exact centenary of the birth of Dmitri Shostakovich, who has latterly become one of the most influential and most performed composers of his generation - second only, perhaps, to Stravinsky. Anniversaries make life easy for concert promoters and record labels, their itineraries handed to them on a plate. Inevitably this year the focus has tended to fall on two of the great bodies of work of the twentieth century - Shostakovich's symphonies and string quartets, fifteen of each...

MOSCOW, September 22, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Russian audiences next week will get the chance to rediscover Dmitry Shostakovich and his music with a series of new recordings, concerts, and films to mark the centenary of his birth. Born in St. Petersburg in 1906 to a family of Polish origin, Shostakovich remains one of the 20th century's most popular composers -- and also one of the most prolific. He composed 15 symphonies, two operas, six concertos, 15 string quartets, three ballets, as well as film music. Oksana Dvornichenko met Shostakovich in 1974, one year before his death, while shooting a documentary...

...Shostakovich's music stands as a sharp contrast to that of this year's other celebrated musical birthday boy, Wolfgang Mozart, whose hummable strains have drenched the airwaves in observance of the 250th anniversary of his birth. Though Shostakovich's oeuvre isn't without merriment, his most noted works can be forbidding — with dissonances, sometimes-jagged rhythms and flirtations with avant-garde techniques — and they are awash in the troubles that plagued the man and his native land...