Testimony (1988 film)

Testimony: The Story of Shostakovich is a 1988 British musical drama film directed by Tony Palmer and starring Ben Kingsley, Sherry Baines and Robert Stephens. The film is based on the memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) as dictated in the book Testimony (edited by Solomon Volkov, ISBN 0-87910-021-4) and filmed in Panavision. Some consider the book to be a fabrication.

Awards

• Winner of the Gold Medal for Best Drama - New York International Film Festival
• Winner of the Fellini Prize - UNESCO
• Winner of the Critics Prize - São Paulo International Film Festival

Cast

• Ben Kingsley as Dmitri Shostakovich
• Sherry Baines as Nina Shostakovich
• Magdalen Asquith as Galya Shostakovich
• Mark Asquith as Maxim Shostakovich
• Terence Rigby as Stalin
• Ronald Pickup as Tukhachevsky
• John Shrapnel as Zhdanov
• Robert Reynolds as Brutus
• Vernon Dobtcheff as Gargolovsky
• Colin Hurst as Stalin’s Secretary
• Joyce Grundy as Stalin’s Mother
• Mark Thrippleton as Young Stalin
• Liza Goddard as The English Humanist
• Peter Woodthorpe as Glazunov
• Robert Stephens as Meyerhold
• William Squire as Khachaturian
• Murray Melvin as The Film Editor
• Robert Urquhart as The Journalist
• Christopher Bramwell as Vanya
• Brook Williams as H. G. Wells
• Marita Phillips as Madam Lupinskaya

Music

• London Philharmonic Orchestra
  • Leader: David Nolan
  • Conductor: Rudolf Barshai
• The Golden Age Singers
  • Chorus Master: Simon Preston
• Chilingirian Quartet

Soloists

• Margaret Fingerhut
• Yuzuko Horigome
• Felicity Palmer
• Howard Shelley
• John Shirley-Quirk

See also

• Stalinism
• Testimony (book)
• Solomon Volkov

Further reading

• Volkov, Solomon: Shostakovich and Stalin: The Extraordinary Relationship Between the Great Composer and the Brutal Dictator; Knopf 2004. ISBN 0-375-41082-1
• Fay, Laurel: Shostakovich versus Volkov: Whose Testimony? – The Russian Review, vol. 39 no. 4 October 1980 pp. 484–493.

External links

• Testimony on IMDb
• Testimony at Rotten Tomatoes