Track the murderous postwar purges by the Soviet government, Shostakovich’s second political condemnation, and the writing of the Tenth Symphony in the wake of Stalin’s death. In the symphony’s metaphoric confrontation between the artist and the despot, experience Shostakovich’s self-revelation in the first movement, his wrenching depiction of Stalin, and the poignant recurrence of his own musical “signature”—its implacable, visceral proclamation that, after everything, “I am alive!”