David Fanning is a professor of music at the University of Manchester

University of Manchester

The University of Manchester is a public research university located in Manchester, United Kingdom. It is a "red brick" university and a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive British universities and the N8 Group...

. He is an expert on the music of Dmitri Shostakovich

Dmitri Shostakovich

Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....

, Carl Nielsen

Carl Nielsen

Carl August Nielsen , , widely recognised as Denmark's greatest composer, was also a conductor and a violinist. Brought up by poor but musically talented parents on the island of Funen, he demonstrated his musical abilities at an early age...

 and Soviet

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 music. He is the author and editor of a number of books, collaborating with wife, Michelle Assay, on a book about Mieczyslaw Weinberg

Mieczyslaw Weinberg

Mieczysław Weinberg was a Soviet composer of Polish-Jewish origin....

.

As well as being a musicologist, he is also the pianist with The Quatuor Danel and a reviewer for the Daily Telegraph, Gramophone and BBC Radio 3

BBC Radio 3

BBC Radio 3 is a national radio station operated by the BBC within the United Kingdom. Its output centres on classical music and opera, but jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also feature. The station is the world’s most significant commissioner of new music, and its New Generation...

.

Major publications

• The Breath of the Symphonist: Shostakovich's Tenth (London, 1988) ISBN 9780947854034
• Expressionism Reassessed, ed. (Manchester, 1994)
• Shostakovich Studies, ed. (Cambridge, 1995) ISBN 0521452392
• Nielsen Symphony No. 5 (Cambridge, 1997) ISBN 0521446325
• Nielsen Aladdin - critical edition (Copenhagen, 2000)
• Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 8 (Aldershot, 2004) ISBN 0754606996
• Nielsen Piano Works - critical edition (Copenhagen, 2006)
• The Cambridge Companion to Shostakovich (Cambridge, 2008) ISBN 9780521603157
• Mieczyslaw Weinberg: In search of freedom (Hofheim, 2010) ISBN 9783936000917