- His Eighth String Quartet, Op. 110, was written from start to finish over the span of just three days.
- Played piano in movie theaters during the silent film era in St. Petersburg, Russia.
- Had the ability to write music in the midst of a great deal of noise. He would often write in crowded cafés, even when construction was going on outside.
- Was trapped in Leningrad for several months while the German army laid siege to it, but was evacuated before the city was liberated by Russian forces and the siege lifted.
- The father of Galina Shostakovich and conductor Maksim Shostakovich. Grandfather of composer Dmitri Shostakovich Jr.
- First learned piano from his mother. On several occasions, he displayed a remarkable ability to remember what his mother had played at the previous lesson, and would get caught in the act of pretending to read, by playing the previous lesson's music when different music was placed in front of him.
- His opera "Lady Macbeth of Mtensk" was strongly criticized in a review on the Pravda. As a result of this attack, Shostakovich shelved his Fourth Symphony (written at the same time as the opera), and it wasn't premiered until decades afterward. When rehearsals for the premiere began, he refused to have a single note of the symphony altered.
- Father of Irina Shostakovich.
- A fan of the Zenit Leningrad (today Zenit Saint Petersburg) football club. He also had a qualification as a football referee.
- In 1972 Shostakovich attended a performance of the rock opera "Jesus Christ Superstar" on London's West End. He liked it enough to see it again the next evening.
- Visited the United States in 1949, 1959, and 1973.
- Ben Kingsley portrayed Shostakovich in the biopic Testimony (1987).
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