A firsthand account of the musical life and the plight of artists in the Soviet regime, by famed conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky.

During long conversations with Bruno Monsaingeon, Gennady Rozhdestvensky (1931-2018), one of the most eminent Russian conductors, recounted his childhood, his debut at the Bolshoi Theater, and a wealth of delightfully witty anecdotes about Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and his friend and protégé Stravinsky, a number of whose works he would premiere. Gradually, Rozhdestvensky came to build an impressive symphonic repertory of unmatched scope. This colorful account of one man’s life and the tragic history of an entire people also tells of the hardships faced by artists in Stalin's Soviet Union: repression, bureaucratic hassles, and schemes to circumvent them.