The Sound of Utopia : Musicians in the Time of Stalin

With the advent of the Soviet Union, Russian music changed.

Composers now had to create work that served the socialist state, and all artistic production was scrutinized for potential subversion. In The Sound of Utopia, Michel Krielaars offers a group portrait of the musicians struggling to create art in a climate of danger, suspicion and fear.

Some successfully toed the ideological line, diluting their work in the process; others ended up facing the Gulag or even death.

While some, like Sergei Prokofiev, achieved lasting fame, others were consigned to oblivion, their work still hard to find. As Krielaars traces the twists and turns of these musicians' fortunes, he paints a fascinating and disturbing portrait of the absurdity of Soviet musical life - and of the people who, despite it all, crafted sublime melodies under the darkest circumstances.