The career of Shostakovich is an instructive commentary on the life of an artist of the highest calibre in a society in which everything was officially controlled.

His first symphony was one of epic proportions, won him wide acclaim during the 1920's, thanks to the Association of Contemporary Music. Works from composers such as Schoenberg, Berg and Hindesmith were allowed to be heard in Soviet Concert halls, with Shostakovich first symphony which shows little evidence of his Russian national school clearly affected composers like Berg, Hindesmith and even effected the late Romanticism of Mahler.

One thing is for certain his love for Russia and his commitment to Soviet society remained central to his outlook, nor did he find the notion of ideologically directed state art absurd. He was often attacked by certain official critics for various elements of his compositions as not following soviet art outlines.

Shostakovich introduced model elements to his harmony and also made use of dissonance within his compositions, but he never abandoned basically tonal language for other techniques such as twelve tone or polytonalism composition.

Among his many works are his Ten Sympony 1953, Eleventh Symphony based on the theme of the 1905 Revolution, he also wrote piano works which included his twenty-four Preludes and Fugues (1951) which came under criticism for having dissonantal techniques.