By the time Shostakovich came to write his final and, in the event, longest song cycle in the 1974, he was mortally ill from the heart disease that would kill him the following year.
His thought and music, from which death had never been far, had turned.
By the time Shostakovich came to write his final and, in the event, longest song cycle in the 1974, he was mortally ill from the heart disease that would kill him the following year