Shostakovich also showed his to Vainberg, whom he held to be one of the very best Soviet composers. When Vainberg in 1953 was arrested on a false charge as an enemy of the people, Shostakovich courageously intervened for him with the secret police, but in the end it was Stalins death that saved his life.

In a letter dated 1960 Shostakovich wrote to his friend Isaac Glikman: I am very impressed by M.S. Vainbergs Violin Concerto, superbly interpreted by the Communist violinist L.B. Kogan. It is a magnificent work. And I am weighing my words. The epithet Communist was an allusion to the dedicatee Kogans well-known sympathy for the rgime. (The work was not given its first performance until early 1961, but it is possible that Shostakovich had heard it being played at the Composers Union.) This was at the beginning of Vainbergs most successful period as a composer. He never joined the Party and as an immigrant he was no favourite of the authorities, yet the foremost artists of the country were queuing up to perform new works by him, and the vast majority of his compositions were indeed performed at the most famous venues in Moscow and elsewhere.

Vainberg had a strong sense of the dramatic, but it was equally his mild sense of humour that helped him through the difficulties of life. Vainberg related Myaskovskys reaction when they were standing together at a meeting where the 1948 Party Decree against formalists among them Myaskovsky himself was being discussed in a venomous atmosphere. Vainberg, in jest, whispered: This is a historical Decree!, but in response Myaskovsky hissed: Not historical. Hysterical. In all, Vainberg composed over One-hundred and fifty songs and twenty-six Symphonies. He also composed nineteen sonatas, seventeen string quartets, seven seven operas and many other works. He died in Moscow on 26 February, 1996, at the age of 76.

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