Word: leningrad
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Exuberant & Witty. Performed by Russia's eminent cellist, Mstislav Rostropovich, and the visiting Leningrad Symphony Orchestra, the 28-minute concerto emerged as a work of compelling rhythms, long, curving lyric lines, exuberantly witty folklike figurations. Although its technical demands were tremendous ("If Shostakovich had written two more bars for the cadenza," said Rostropovich, "I could not have played them"), the acrobatics were not merely contrived, as has been true of so much of Shostakovich's recent work, notably his vapid, bombastic Eleventh Symphony. The concerto, wrote the Sunday Times, presented "a real conflict and a final solution...
Shostakovich's popular triumph was matched by that of Cellist Rostropovich, whose virtuosity and richly burnished tone invoked comparisons with Casals. As for the 106-member Leningrad orchestra, it was the hit of London, which has no first-rate symphony of its own. The oldest orchestra in Russia, it is also Russia's best. Under Conductor Eugene Mravinsky, 57, the orchestra plays a generous number of modern works by composers like Hindemith, Stravinsky, Britten, Copland. In London it played mostly Russian works-although it learned Benjamin Britten's The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra...
Brisk & Martial. The Leningrad's greatest strength is its string section, which plays with a precision and dynamic range beyond the ability of most Western orchestras. The brasses are bright-almost too much so. Reported Critic Desmond Shawe-Taylor: "They are encouraged to play like cavalry on the line." But the Leningrad's most distinctive feature is the way in which it separates the various sections of the orchestra: instead of aiming for a thickly blended sound. Conductor Mravinsky emphasizes differences in coloration. The tempos, even in romantic composers, are brisk, martial-and not to every taste. Said...
...such projects as the African student scheme under which, last week, arrangements were made to send 150 Congolese youths to Moscow's new Friendship University in the autumn. And at least 1,000 African students have already been installed in schools in Moscow, Kiev, Odessa and Leningrad under the crash program begun three years...
...Louvre has scoured the world to collect 120 drawings and 120 of Poussin's 180-odd known paintings. The U.S. sent 14 canvases; others came from as far away as Australia and from such diverse repositories as Windsor Castle and Leningrad's Hermitage Museum. The Louvre cleaned many of its own 37, often revealing an intensity of color never before suspected. Yet, when the Louvre's chief curator of paintings, Germain Bazin, sat down to write his introduction to the catalogue, he still had his doubts. "Will the crowds," he asked, "show an interest in this artist...