Music archive entry

While working on this piece I was reading 'Testimony', the memoirs of Shostakovitch. It threw light on his personality as expressed in his music, and on how both man and music were changed by Stalinism.

How priviledged I am to live and compose in the West, and how humbled by knowing it. I work without compromise, unaffected by political acceptability. We who have not lived under it have no idea how totalitarianism affects the life of the individual. You cannot escape it by fading into the backgrounbd, nor can fame make you safe.

So, Dmitri is Shostakovitch and his train is Russia, 'Testimony'; describes Stalin's reaction to the train scene in the film 'The Unforgettable Year 1919', with music by Shostakovitch. 'Dmitri's Train' is the train that was always waiting for him, but miraculously didn't take him away to the gulags. It is all the trains in Dr. Zhivago, in Solzenitsyn, in James Bond. It is all the trains in Russia.