Word: aram
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Onstage after the encore (Samuel Barber's Adagio for String Orchestra) marched three flower-bearing Soviet musicians: Composer Aram Khachaturian, Pianist Emil Gilels, Conductor Alexander Gauk. Khachaturian spoke Russia's praise for the orchestra. "Bolshoye, bolshoye spasibo [Great, great thanks]," returned Conductor Ormandy amid thunderous applause. And even after the players filed out, hundreds of spectators stayed in their seats, still applauding and crying, "Not enough! Not enough...
...Russians regard as their best, dubbed Van "a genius -a word I do not use lightly about performers." In tears of emotion Pianist Emil Gilels grabbed Van as he came off the stage after playing Rachmaninoff's Third Concerto, bussed him soundly on both cheeks. To Composer Aram Khachaturian, Van was "better than Rachmaninoff; you find a virtuoso like this only once or twice in a century." France's Marquis de Gontaut-Biron, a frequent judge of piano contests, found that Van had "almost the technique of Horowitz during his prime, and he has everything Horowitz always lacked...
...critics for the lack of imagination and heaviness of its scattered newer works. Back home, Russian choreographers petitioned the Ministry of Culture for a freer hand, and surprisingly, the Ministry agreed that "the many-sided variety of Soviet life is insufficiently reflected in ballet." Spartacus, music by Aram Khachaturian and choreography by Igor Moiseyev, scarcely intends to hold the mirror up to Soviet life, but it opens the window on a gaudy, gamy world rarely dreamed of by Moscow audiences...
...tightly around Soviet composers. The hand was that of Andrei Zhdanov, cat-cruel Politburo careerist whose ear for music had been destroyed long before by the din of dialectical crossfire. Zhdanov in effect put all Russian composers on trial, including the three modern giants-Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitry Shostakovich and Aram Khachaturian. The charges: "formalism" (i.e., art for art's sake, individuality, experimentation) and lack of "socialist realism...
...First Symphony, in 1949, and Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, in 1952). ¶ Veli Mukhatov, 40, praised by Khachaturian for his oratorios. ¶ Akhmed Gadzhiev, 39, noted for a 1952 symphonic poem, Peace. Other young Russian composers, better known outside the Soviet Union: ¶ Karen Khachaturian, 36. Aram's nephew, whose eclectic, highly rhythmic Violin Sonata in G Minor has been recorded by Russian Virtuoso David Oistrakh. ¶ Andrei Volkonsky, 23, whose works hint at Hindemith; he migrated from France to Russia a few years ago, caused a stir in Moscow last year with a Piano Quintet...