Word: shchedrin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...SHCHEDRIN: THE CARMEN BALLET (Melo-diya/Angel). Rodion Shchedrin, 35, the current Establishment favorite of Russia's younger generation of composers, wrote this ballet for his beautiful wife Maya Plisetskaya, the Bolshoi Ballet's prima ballerina. Hearing the Toreador Song and the Changing of the Guard freely arranged for strings and 47 percussion instruments is pleasant for the first time, but no more. Shchedrin mistakes brashness for cleverness so often that familiarity with his work breeds boredom...
...even the most jaded ears, and this collection of arias is particularly affecting. While most of the composers (Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev) are familiar, the excerpts are less so. Among the most intriguing is from Not Love Alone, an opera about the love life on a collective farm by Rodion Shchedrin. The youngest composer represented on the album (and husband of Prima Ballerina Maya Plisetskaya), Shchedrin finds room for originality within conventional Soviet Realism-which means late, late, late Romanticism. However superficial, his melodies are refreshingly singable. Mezzo-Soprano Arkhipova renders all with intelligence and virtuosity...