Dvořák's Seventh

How free are art and culture in totalitarian systems? Can subtle criticism of the regime be voiced through musical means? Witold Lutosławski's Cello Concerto, composed in 1970 by the Polish composer, seems to raise these questions: even today, the brutality with which the collective (orchestra) confronts the individual (soloist) in Lutosławski's Cello Concerto at times is interpreted in the light of communist rule in Poland in the 1970s.