Johan Woods has kindly appended the following comment to an earlier post here about Malcolm Arnold, in the course of which I compared the career and music of Malcolm Arnold with that of Shostakovich.

Are there any particular pieces from both Shostakovich and Arnold that bears any resemblance to each other, or are they only similar in that of their lives?

If one is interested in listening more to Shostakovich (or Arnold for that matter), what do you recommend as a starter?

Paragraph one is quite easily answered. No, I know of no straightforward resemblances. The similarity is more in the way that both wrote very conventional and upbeat film music, and then used the same language to say deeper and more angst-ridden things with their more serious stuff. Also, they are approximate contemporaries. Shostakovich Symphony 9 has an air of circus clown absurdity and angst about it that I also associate with Arnold. My problem is that although I have discovered Arnold, I don't yet know my way around all his works, and know very few of them all that well, yet.

Paragraph two is a swine to respond to. I never know how to recommend music to other people, and when asked to do this I hum and mumble and then offer a very short list of the pieces that first got me interested. But just because I have long loved the First Cello Concerto of Shostakovich, or the First Violin Concerto, or the Second Piano Concerto, or Symphonies 5, 8, 9, 10 and 15, and later 7 and 11, doesn't mean that these are the places for Johan to start. String Quartet 8 is very popular, although I find the final one, 15, a whole lot more moving and intriguing at the moment. I also love the 24 Preludes and Fugues op. 87. As for Arnold, Symphony 5 is a popular favourite these days, but I find 6 more intriguing just now.

I remember once trying to interest a friend at university in classical music. He was a true friend and he was truly showing interest. So I played a succession of pieces that I thought might be accessible, easily "understood", tuneful, approachable, and … nothing. It might as well have been dishwater for all the tastiness he could find in it. Finally I said to hell with it and resumed my listening to Bartok's Fourth String Quartet, which I happened to be playing through at that moment. This is considered fearsomely "difficult" by those who know about these things. And my friend also heard that and loved it, because it was the nearest thing that classical music offers to the kind of drug driven rock and roll he favoured – being violent, rather discordant, full of heavy gypsy rhythms and cross rhythms, especially in the rather dry and edgy sixties CBS recording I had of it by the Juilliards. Indeed he got it a lot better than many people coming to the piece with a background of Beethoven and Mozart listening tend to get it.

In short: sorry mate, pass. Keep your ears open. Buy some cheap CDs, suck, and see. That's what I did.