Word: dmitri
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...When Dmitri Shostakovich died in 1975, his music was dismissed by many in the West as hopelessly oldfashioned. With his unabashed melodies and basically conservative harmonies, the Soviet composer was a misfit in an age that prized innovation above all, and he was often unfavorably compared with his more radical contemporaries Schoenberg and Stravinsky. Who would have predicted, then, that a cycle of Shostakovich's 15 string quartets by Britain's Fitzwilliam Quartet would turn out to be the instrumental highlight of the New York season...
...possible changes in the pecking order. Konstantin Chernenko, 70, took his usual place at Brezhnev's right side, indicating that he was still the heir apparent. On Brezhnev's left was another strong candidate, Grishin. Then came Prime Minister Nikolai Tikhonov, 76, Andropov and Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov, 73, who are all contenders. Conspicuously absent was Andrei Kirilenko, 75, the former No. 2 man in the Politburo, who is believed to be ill or in disfavor, and has not been seen for the past three months...
With the rows of medals on his full-dress uniform gleaming under the television lights, Soviet Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov stepped to the podium in the Kremlin's modernistic Palace of Congresses late last week to report on the state of the country. In his address, delivered on the eve of a national holiday marking the 64th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, Ustinov lectured Washington on its belligerent rhetoric. Charged Ustinov: "Its high-ranking representatives declare with cynical disregard for the destinies of peoples that 'there are things more important than peace' and that a so-called...
...border villages. New MiG-25 and Sukhoi Su-20 fighter planes were delivered earlier this year to Tripoli, where the docks are dotted with unopened crates of Soviet arms. Another major Soviet client is Syria. Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass visited Moscow last month to meet with his Soviet counterpart, Dmitri Ustinov, and the country's top weapons designers. Tlass discussed the purchase of more MiG-25s and a group of T-72 and T-80 tanks, the most sophisticated in the Soviet arsenal...
...another candidate must be added to that list: Dmitri Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, which resurfaced last week in San Francisco. The composer's second and last opera - his first was the bitingly satirical The Nose (1928), based on a story by Gogol - has had a checkered history. Completed in 1932, hailed as a major achievement at its premiere in 1934, condemned by Stalin in 1936 and sanitized 20 years later as Katerina Ismailova, the opera electrified its first audiences in both Russia and the West with its sexual frankness. One early critic, referring to the lascivious...