Word: mtsensk
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Shostakovich: Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (Soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, Tenor Nicolai Gedda, Bass Dimiter Petkov, Ambrosian Opera Chorus, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Mstislav Rostropovich conductor, Angel; 3 LPs). Soviet critics thought they heard a masterpiece when this, Shostakovich's second opera, was premiered in 1934. Then Stalin walked out of a performance and they listened again. This time they heard "din, gnash and screech" (Pravda). The work was withdrawn, and Shostakovich pursued more orthodox ways. A sanitized version, unveiled in 1963, found its way to the West on records, but this is the first recording of the original score. Harsh, erotic...
...when he was 18, revealed such mastery of orchestration and startling harmonic originality that his reputation was immediately established. He believed in the ideals of the Revolution and did not intend his music to be subversive. But the career of his second opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, was typical. At its premiere in 1934, critics called it a masterpiece, "the first monumental work of Soviet musical culture." So it remained for two years -until Stalin took in a performance and found the opera wanting. Pravda reacted quickly: "The music quacks, grunts, growls." Lady Macbeth was shelved...
...young man of 27, Dmitry Shostakovich treated the Soviet Union to a feast of sex, murder and dissonance in his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (revised in 1962 and retitled Katerina Ismailovd). At its first performance in 1934, Joseph Stalin loathed every note of it. He and the Communist Party denounced Shostakovich for his bourgeois musical tastes and, ever since, the composer has been sliding in and out of party favor. Too talented and far too famous to be squelched, he produced symphonies, ballets, choruses, chamber music. He alternately soothed the ultraconservative ears of the commissars with "music...