Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) was the most controversial Russian composer of Soviet times. His music, tonal and expressive, and sometimes highly dramatic, has not always been in line with official Soviet taste. He wrote 15 symphonies, chamber music, ballets and operas, the latter including Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (1934), which was suppressed as too divorced from the proletariat, but revived as Katerina Izmaylova (1963).