DescriptionA powerful look at the extraordinary healing effect of music on sufferers of mental illness, including author Stephen Johnsons struggle with bipolar disorder. BBC music broadcaster Stephen Johnson explores the power of Shostakovichs music during Stalins reign of terror, and writes of the extraordinary healing effect of music on sufferers of mental illness. Johnson looks at neurological, psychotherapeutic and philosophical findings, and reflects on his own experience, where he believes Shostakovichs music helped him survive the trials and assaults of bipolar disorder. There is no escapism, no false consolation in Shostakovichs greatest music: this is some of the darkest, saddest, at times bitterest music ever composed. So why do so many feel grateful to Shostakovich for having created it--not just Russians, but westerners like Stephen Johnson, brought up in a very different, far safer kind of society? The book includes interviews with the members of the orchestra who performed Shostakovichs Leningrad Symphony during the siege of that city.About the AuthorStephen Johnson has taken part in several hundred radio programs and documentaries, including Radio 3s weekly series Discovering Music. He is also a presenter on the Classic Arts podcast series Archive Classics. He contributed as a commentator and narrator to Tony Palmers controversial film about the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, O Thou Transcendent, and to Palmers Holst: In the Bleak Midwinter. He lives in England.