Word: shostakoviches
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...closed tightly around Soviet composers. The hand was that of Andrei Zhdanov, cat-cruel Politburo careerist whose ear for music had been destroyed long before by the din of dialectical crossfire. Zhdanov in effect put all Russian composers on trial, including the three modern giants-Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitry Shostakovich and Aram Khachaturian. The charges: "formalism" (i.e., art for art's sake, individuality, experimentation) and lack of "socialist realism...
...unlike most other concertmasters in the U.S., Polish-born Richard Burgin gets two or three weeks a year on the podium. Last week he led the Boston Symphony at Manhattan's Carnegie Hall, in a concert of Vaughan Williams, Beethoven and Shostakovich, which he delivered with craftsmanship and no melodrama whatever. "I know what I want, I know how to tell them what I want, and they give it to me," he said, adding as an afterthought: "just as they give it to any other conductor, only maybe to me a little quicker...
...week's end, the orchestra went on to wow Moscow with the same program. Joining in the frenzy of enthusiasm were such musical greats as Violinist David Oistrakh, Composers Dmitry Shostakovich. Dmitry Kabalevsky and Aram Khachaturian. Said Khachaturian: "Marvelous, marvelous...
...Shostakovich: Violin Concerto, Opus 99 (David Oistrakh; New York Philharmonic-Symphony, conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos; Columbia). The finest moments of Soviet Violinist Oistrakh's recent visit to the U.S. (TiME, Jan. 9) sound even better on records. Reason: in this concerto, the violin's rhythm often runs against that of the orchestra; in a large hall with a full orchestra, the violin part is sometimes buried, but studio technicians, who can magnify small sounds, restore the balance...
...deserved it. For Shostakovich's Op. 99 is a composition that abandons the brooding effects, dark colors and heavy textures of traditional Russian orchestral music and his own brassy idiom for a broader expression that puts him firmly among top 20th century composers. It is a position he has been promising to occupy ever since his Symphony No. i crashed onto the scene in 1926, when he was 19. During the '20s and '30s, his work was notably uneven, as he tried to follow the musical party line. In the early war years -when he made headlines...