A prominent figure for music in the 20th century as well as Russian culture, Dmitri Shostakovich was a brilliant musician who deftly mixed tonal music prevalent in the Romantic period along with the modernistic movement of atonality and chromaticism (the balance of all 12 tones in a musical scale). After watching his opera, The Nose, at the Middlebury Theatre this weekend, this video interested me because it is hard to find videos of him dissecting performances due to his conflicts with the Soviet government. Moreover, his music is particular because of the various layers of tonality that expresses his view of the world around him (as shown by the opera rehearsals), especially that about the Soviet regime.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjK7Hnxpmsg