Steven Schwartz:

>[Shostakovich' Symphony #15 is] not an "autumnal" work.  In fact, I think
>of it as a new beginning for Shostakovich.

What kind of new beginning? I hear it as as very much a retrospective
glance back over his life and career, from childhood on; and the coda
sounds like nothing so much as a dance macabre.

Jim Tobin