Few mothers will ever have been as proud of their son as Sofya Shostakovich was at the premiere of Dmitri’s First Symphony. The applause at the end became a tumult the moment the nineteen-year-old composer stepped onto the stage. For Sofya, it was almost impossible to take it all in. For a brief moment, the financial anxieties that had shadowed her life as a young widow with three children fell away. A star was born. Everything seemed possible.