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Hidden passion
Richard Morrison (Opinion, February) almost certainly also knows of Shostakovich’s hopeless passion for one of his students, the Azerbaijan-born composer Elmira Nazirova. The third movement of his Tenth Symphony is full of not only his own monogram DSCH (often used in his other works) but also Elmira’s name in the recurring horn call. What with her name in partly French notation (E-La-Mi-Re-A) and his in German, no wonder the affair was never to be. She kept the secret for 40 years.
Richard Hollinshead, Wirral
Elgar farewell
I read Terry Williams’s on Elgar’s First Symphony (February) with interest. It was in a
