Deep Beatle and Shostakovich listener Ian Macdonald passes: "I consider there are no experts on Shostakovich. The subject is too vast, our present knowledge too partial, and the requisite state of sympathetic insight into his life and work too underdeveloped for anyone to claim to be, or be regarded as, an expert on him . . . I certainly wouldn't, being at best an ephemeral agitator in the cause of truth . . ."