Vladimir Vyatkin, Associated Press Dmitri Shostakovich in 1975 ... he led a dual life in order to compose. Pittsburgh Symphony Vassily Sinaisky, conductor; Vladimir Feltsman, piano. Program: Suite from "The Bolt," Piano Concerto No. 1 and Symphony No. 5. Where: Heinz Hall, Downtown. When: 8 p.m. Friday and 2:30 p.m. next Sunday. Tickets: $17-$72; 412-392-4900. Listen in Short excerpts from Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5, Mariss Jansons conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, EMI. The opening strains ... The end of Symphony No. 5

Duplicity, codes, death threats, propaganda, the U.S.S.R. vs. the West -- composer Dmitri Shostakovich's life had all the elements of a Cold War spy drama. And the intrigue continues more than three decades after his death in 1975.

Actually, it is Shostakovich's birth that is the focus this year: 2006 is the 100th anniversary of his birth, on Sept. 25, 1906, in St. Petersburg, Russia. Orchestras, operas and other ensembles around the world, including the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, are celebrating with performances of his vast repertoire.

But far from being a cut-and-dry commemoration of some distant figure, Shostakovich's centennial has given a sharp crescendo to the controversy surrounding his participation in the oppressive Soviet system.

At first, Shostakovich blossomed as a prodigy composer in the early years following Lenin's 1917 Revolution, including attaining international fame for his Symphony No. 1 of 1925. It appears he ardently believed in the ideals of communism. The measure of his high standing in Russia can be seen in the fact that the state commissioned him to write his Second Symphony, "To October," for the 10th anniversary of the revolution.

The shifting political scene, however, led to withering attacks on his art and his life in the next decade. It came to a head when Stalin became displeased with his provocative opera "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District." Even though it had nearly 200 stagings by 1936, when Stalin saw the opera, the state-run newspaper Pravda immediately ran a now-infamous review. Titled "Muddle instead of music," it decried the opera as "leftist," "formalist" and generally not fit for the Russian people.

"The shock to the cultural establishment was profound, and Shostakovich was toppled almost overnight from his position as the leading light of Soviet music," writes the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Although the condemnation is now thought to have been primarily to reduce Shostakovich's stature, which was still growing internationally, there's little doubt his life was at risk. It's said the composer kept a packed suitcase by the door in the event he was deported to Siberia.

That never occurred, but Shostakovich was certainly shaken. He worked to regain his status, starting in 1937 with one of the works that the PSO will perform this weekend, his Symphony No. 5. On the surface, it was a passionate mea culpa in that it looked to celebrate the heroic aspects of Soviet socialism, the victory of the people over adversity in nature and abroad. A newspaper commentary called the work "the creative response of a Soviet artist to justified criticism."

But was it true? Years later, in 1979, a curious book called "Testimony" was published, professing to be the memoirs of Shostakovich as told to Russian journalist Solomon Volkov. It gave the most solid indication of what many of Shostakovich's friends and compatriots already suspected: that in his works, the composer often had a secret agenda, highly critical of the regime.

For instance, the Shostakovich of "Testimony" has surprising things to say about Symphony No. 7, "Leningrad."

The Soviets touted the Seventh as a great war symphony, heroically written during the Siege of Leningrad. It was even said to depict the Nazi invaders in a banal march. It became a sensation when a score was smuggled out of the city and Toscanini's NBC Symphony Orchestra introduced it to millions.

Yet in "Testimony," Shostakovich says, "The Seventh Symphony had been planned before the war and consequently it simply cannot be seen as a reaction to Hitler's attack. The 'invasion theme' has nothing to do with the attack. I was thinking of other enemies of humanity when I composed the theme."

Volkov's claim is that Shostakovich operated like a yurodivy, or a Russian "holy fool." Under the surface of obedience (though sometimes poking out in plain view), his life and works are awash in irony and hidden criticism of the regime that, other than a few public slapdowns, afforded him respect and even privileged circumstances.

The book has been discredited in part. Maxim Shostakovich, the composer's son, has repeatedly stated that "Testimony" is Volkov's book about his father, not actually his father's words.

Yet the essence of the Shostakovich in "Testimony" has been corroborated by many, especially emigre Russians and even Maxim, to some degree. The contention is that anyone who wanted to write great art and remain a "loyal son" of a brutally oppressive regime had to operate with some mendacity, and those who knew Shostakovich felt he occasionally did so.

The conductor this weekend at Heinz Hall, Vassily Sinaisky, saw Shostakovich on several occasions when he was older and is close to many who knew him. He, too, views the composer as having lived a dual life.

"He was doubled-faced," Sinaisky says. "He came to a conductor after a performance of one of his symphonies and said that it was great, then later said it was a disaster." But Sinaisky thinks that not only was this duplicity necessary to survive in the U.S.S.R., but also that it helped Shostakovich do what he most needed to do in life: compose.

"It was official life where he must do something, but for him it was not important," he says of the composer, who even eventually joined the Communist Party. "His evening and night hours were more important, when he wrote music for himself."

Nowhere is the composer's perceived duality stronger than in the Symphony No. 5. Many scholars and friends of Shostakovich contend that the composer undercut the supposed and overt reformed effort, that he thumbed his nose at Stalin even as it appeared he was falling into line. Although the party line published in a newspaper preview was that the Fifth Symphony begins with "a man in all his suffering" that resolves in a "joyous, optimistic fashion," it is hard to believe in the almost hollow, forced feel of the finale.

"The final 15 minutes are something strong and not so optimistic as official propaganda told us," says Sinaisky. "As the trumpet and timpani play loudly, in the very last bars, the side drum begins to beat. This is like terrible shock, like he is killing the trumpet and timpani. Sometimes conductors think it is only color. Yes it is -- but terrible color."

Other compositions, such as the Eighth String Quartet's use of quotation, a coded musical signature and a dedication "to the memory of the victims of fascism and the war," point even more firmly to the likelihood of subtexts in Shostakovich's music.

At the end of the day, the real meaning may never be completely known. But a work such as Symphony No. 5 -- full of struggle in its first movement, achingly nostalgic in the dance-like second, sorrowful in the dirge of the third and brilliant in the finale -- can serve not just the duplicity of Shostakovich, but also a multiplicity of readings by the listener. Not unlike another Fifth Symphony we know. And in this celebratory year, it's becoming obvious that Shostakovich was a Promethean figure as well.

His symphonies can be seen not only as his own suffering, Sinaisky says, and at "the same time, it is such strong music that one could tell it was a picture of the whole country or even more, like humanity."