Word: shostakovich
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Feature of Stokowski's return was the first performance outside Russia of the sixth and latest symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich, at 34 the No. 1 Soviet composer. The Philadelphia Orchestra got first crack at No. 6 as it might have arranged for a ton of caviar: by negotiating with Amtorg Trading Corp., paying a fee so stiff (amount kept secret) that it had to be specially approved by the Philadelphia Orchestra directors...
...Composer Shostakovich has been on & off the careening bandwagon of the Soviet music party line. When he was off, his work was denounced as "un-Soviet, unwholesome, cheap, eccentric, tuneless and Leftist" by Pravda, which probably spoke for Musicritic Stalin. Shostakovich's fifth symphony, a thoughtful and tuneful glorification of the October Revolution, got him back on the bandwagon. Since then (1937) he has worked in the Leningrad Conservatory. The symphony which Philadelphia heard last week sounded as if Shostakovich's seat were secure-even though the symphony lacked a choral apotheosis of Lenin which the composer...
...fuzzy platinum hair gleaming like an oriflamme, he led the youths through a spirited charge on Bach. The violins, on their feet and playing as one man, rattled off one piece, a Preludio, so brilliantly that the audience roared bravos. After the Bach came the Fifth Symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich, melodiously and pompously hymning the Bolshevik October Revolution. By strictest Carnegie Hall standards, the cheers showed that the Youth Orchestra had passed with honors...
...Soviet Russia, sudden key changes in the musical party line have put such living composers as Dmitri Shostakovich in & out of the official doghouse. In modernist days, some Soviet critics denounced Peter Ilich Tschaikowsky as a sentimental bourgeois. The Soviet line is now 100% melodic. Last week the Government sweetly celebrated the 100th anniversary of Melodist Tschaikowsky's birth...
...Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5 (Philadelphia Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski conducting; Victor: 12 sides). In the doghouse of official Soviet displeasure since 1936, when Joseph Stalin cracked down on modernistic music (TIME, Feb. 24, 1936), 33-year-old Dmitri Shostakovich climbed out again by writing this symphony in honor of the October Revolution's 20th anniversary (1937). The symphony, finest work to date by Soviet Russia's No. 1 TIME, January 8, 1940 composer, shows Joe Stalin to have been a sound music critic. In it, Composer Shostakovich leaves all clattering tricks behind, works fine melodies up into surging climaxes...