Word: dmitri
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...again after losing both legs. He promised to follow party directives, and use plenty of Russian folk songs. So did the other six composers spanked by the party. (The promise came easiest to Aram Khachaturian, who has always borrowed freely from Russian folk music.) Two other composers-one was Dmitri Kabalevsky -who were not even named in the decree, confessed their errors...
Among the scorched was Sergei Prokofiev, whom many regard as the world's greatest living composer, much of whose music, including his Fifth Symphony, has been heard in the U.S. Two more of world renown were Dmitri Shostakovich (Seventh Symphony), and Aram Khachaturian (whose Saber Dance is a current U.S. jukebox sensation...
...picture-taking in Red Square, he could move about with comparative freedom-and did so. He visited markets (where potatoes were selling for 56 cents a pound) and department stores (where "a pair of shoes was priced at $125"), dropped in on a musicale which turned out to be Dmitri Shostakovich at the piano with his own string quartet, saw a "three-dimensional" movie of Robinson Crusoe, prowled side streets and alleyways...
This week will be the 30th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Russia's composers, who point for anniversaries like greeting-card manufacturers, were ready to supply loud and brave noises. Serge Prokofiev, Russia's best, had prepared a special Holiday Overture. Dmitri Kabalevsky worked on a new opera, The Indomitable, for Moscow's famed Stanislavsky Theater. All in all, the Union of Soviet Composers proudly reported, 1,000 compositions had been specially written for the anniversary...
...because it also goes over well with the crowds. It has, like Tchaikovsky's music, melody, bounce and color-and basically banal themes. Khachaturian's life in a bureaucracy is therefore not as complicated as that of his musical betters, Prokofiev, the sophisticated ex-exile, or jittery Dmitri Shostakovich, whose musical talents are wrenched by ideology. In the most recent sampling of Russian musical tastes, Khachaturian works proved to be the second most frequently performed in the U.S.S.R. (first, Prokofiev; third, Tchaikovsky...