Word: shostakoviches
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...would like to see the Soviet Union's politics confounded, but it likes Russian music. Such contemporary composers as Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Khachaturian and Kabalevsky are frequently played at U.S. concerts. Prokofiev's Love for Three Oranges is one of the most popular hits at the New York City Opera. The older Russians are popular too; no pop concert series would be complete without an all-Tchaikovsky program...
...program ended with an exuberant but not always integrated account of Shostakovich's exuberant but not always integrated Ninth Symphony. Stanger, always at his best in modern works, did a marvelous job of bringing out the sophisticated buffoonery of the score, but the orchestra wasn't always up to it. The strings frequently lost track of each other. The brass section, which has been having trouble all year, missed too many notes. However, the percussion and woodwind sections were at their peaks; a few more rehearsals might have made the performance a total success...
...festival directors thought of performing any Russian music? Director Nicholas Nabokov, Russian-born citizen of the U.S., answered with a story that epitomized the whole point of the festival. Nabokov wanted to present part of Dimitri Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of Minsk, the story of a murderous hussy of Czarist days who winds up in Siberia. But the Kremlin had banned Lady Macbeth in 1937, and for that reason Nabokov ran into trouble with his project. Even though the opera was performed at the Metropolitan in 1935, there was no score available in the U.S. Nabokov cabled Artur...
...Shostakovich: Song of the Forests (Combined Choirs and State Orchestra of the U.S.S.R., Eugene Mravinsky conducting; Vanguard, 2 sides LP). This oratorio, composed in 1949, won back for Shostakovich the Kremlin favor he lost in 1948. The reason is evident in this first recording to reach the U.S. Strictly old shapka, it sounds more like Glinka in an off-moment than the dissonantly powerful Shostakovich of Symphony No. 5. The performance is rousing, the recording fair...
...Juilliard made its first big splash three seasons ago by performing a cycle of the six quartets of Bela Bartok for the first time in the U.S., and playing them in a ruggedly impressive manner. With the last note, Russia's Dmitri Shostakovich, who was in Manhattan for a peace-front powwow, rushed backstage with congratulations. A Columbia Records executive signed them up for recordings...