Waltz No. 2 is the most elegant lie ever composed. It sounds like champagne and chandeliers and none of the terror underneath, a man writing beauty because beauty was the only safe place to hide his rage. Shostakovich composed waltzes while his friends disappeared, and if you listen knowing that, the elegance becomes unbearable. Every note is a mask. Every rest is what he couldn't say. This is what it sounds like to survive by being lovely.