Robert Craft (1923-2015) was a conductor and a dear friend of Igor Stravinsky. More than just a friend, he was almost like a family member, and often worked directly as Stravinsky's amanuensis, assisting him in numerous important ways including editing, translations, and the like. There's no doubt that there was a great love between Robert Craft and the Stravinskys.
Craft was also a very fine conductor. He never reached the top rank in terms of his own career, but he has left us many, many great recordings, especially of Stravinsky, but also Schoenberg. Importantly, he championed both, bridging the supposed rift that followers of the two great composers had more-or-less enforced.
Craft also championed many less well-known but totally worthy Stravinsky works that most conductors of the 1950s-1980s basically totally ignored, especially the late masterworks.
Unfortunately, haters of 12-tone music, or 20th-c. modern music in general, blame Craft for supposedly turning Stravinsky into a serial composer. Paraphrasing Craft, "as if anyone could lead that particular horse to water and make him drink..." It's beyond laughable to think anyone could compel Stravinsky do anything he wasn't inclined to.
So, of course it's nonsense. The explanation is simple: Stravinsky was interested in his friend Robert Craft's career, and since Craft made a number of first-ever LP recordings of Schoenberg's music, especially from his 12-tone era, Stravinsky was understandably curious to hear it. He subsequently found he liked it and was intrigued by it. People forget that it was pretty difficult to get hold of recordings of Schoenberg back then. And the fact is he discovered Schoenberg's 12-tone system actually overlay rather well the direction his own musical thinking had already been headed for some time, in terms of organizing the accumulation of the chromatic aggregate (a deeper explanation of this is a topic for another time and place.)
As for Craft's disaffection for Shostakovich, it's hardly surprising, especially from a statement made in the 1970s. There is some genuine, warranted criticism there: a lot of Shostakovich's music is quite limited in texture and form, and can come across as one-dimensional. Again, as I wrote above, focusing on that only can cause one to miss the dramatic and expressive directness of Shostakovich's best music, and the depth of achievement he found working within severe, life-threatening, externally-imposed limitations. And there's little doubt Shostakovich, but for the threat of Stalin, would have been a much more adventurous composer.
Everyone has their blind spots. Having them doesn't make someone a bad person.
In the end, how can anyone be surprised that a dear friend and deeply committed devotee of Stravinsky would lack an affinity for Shostakovich?! I mean, really. (I'm shocked, SHOCKED to find that gambling is going on in here!!)
It's pretty forgivable, if you ask me.
In no way was Craft "the worst thing to happen to Stravinsky's music," as someone with appalling ignorance wrote up thread, and he was certainly not in any way "low class musician." He had a quite respectable career, in fact, I suspect one far, far beyond anyone on Talk Classical, certainly including me.
Craft left a truly great recorded legacy (admittedly in a small repertoire.) And there's no doubt he was a genuine friend to Stravinsky.