Post by erik on Feb 26, 2022 13:23:12 GMT -5
This week's Classical Works Spotlight looks at the first post-Stalin symphony to come out of Russia, and it is from one of that nation's most prominent composers.
Shostakovich: SYMPHONY NO. 10 IN E MINOR, OP. 93
Even though they were on totally opposite sides in the Cold War, both the United States and Russia were prominent forces when it came to 20th century classical music. But whereas American composers such as Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, and Samuel Barber pretty much had free reign to create the kind of music that came to be seen as The American Sound, just the opposite was true in Russia—or the Soviet Union, first under Vladimir Lenin, then, most infamously, under Joseph Stalin. Two of Russia’s pre-eminent composers of the century, Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich, suffered the most under the assault of Communist leaders who, when it came to music, had tin ears. Shostakovich, though, like Prokofiev, was pretty much forced to make very nationalistic music just to keep Stalin out of his hair; but once Stalin was safely in the grave and on the ash heap of history (though not without taking Prokofiev with him on the same day [March 5, 1953]), he went back to experimenting. Indeed, he also became the first major composer to compose more than nine symphonies since the deaths of Beethoven and Schubert in 1827-28 when he unleashed his Tenth Symphony onto an unsuspecting public in the fall of 1953. Although Laurel Fay, one of the composer’s biographers, claimed that Shostakovich had no stated program in mind, the composer himself implied that this forty-seven minute work of his, with typically large and dramatic orchestration, was in truth about Stalin and the Stalinist years in Russia. The legendary Russian conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky, long one of the composer’s major champions on either side of the Iron Curtain, premiered this work with his Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra on December 17, 1953 to great acclaim from the Russian people (though no word as to how the Soviet Communist Party reacted has ever been parsed), while its American premiere most likely took place either in the hands of Eugene Ormandy or Leopold Stokowski a few short years later.
Dallas Symphony Orchestra/ANDREW LITTON (Delos)
Included (2-CD set):
SYMPHONY NO. 6 IN B MINOR, OP. 54
Shostakovich: SYMPHONY NO. 10 IN E MINOR, OP. 93
Even though they were on totally opposite sides in the Cold War, both the United States and Russia were prominent forces when it came to 20th century classical music. But whereas American composers such as Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, and Samuel Barber pretty much had free reign to create the kind of music that came to be seen as The American Sound, just the opposite was true in Russia—or the Soviet Union, first under Vladimir Lenin, then, most infamously, under Joseph Stalin. Two of Russia’s pre-eminent composers of the century, Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich, suffered the most under the assault of Communist leaders who, when it came to music, had tin ears. Shostakovich, though, like Prokofiev, was pretty much forced to make very nationalistic music just to keep Stalin out of his hair; but once Stalin was safely in the grave and on the ash heap of history (though not without taking Prokofiev with him on the same day [March 5, 1953]), he went back to experimenting. Indeed, he also became the first major composer to compose more than nine symphonies since the deaths of Beethoven and Schubert in 1827-28 when he unleashed his Tenth Symphony onto an unsuspecting public in the fall of 1953. Although Laurel Fay, one of the composer’s biographers, claimed that Shostakovich had no stated program in mind, the composer himself implied that this forty-seven minute work of his, with typically large and dramatic orchestration, was in truth about Stalin and the Stalinist years in Russia. The legendary Russian conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky, long one of the composer’s major champions on either side of the Iron Curtain, premiered this work with his Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra on December 17, 1953 to great acclaim from the Russian people (though no word as to how the Soviet Communist Party reacted has ever been parsed), while its American premiere most likely took place either in the hands of Eugene Ormandy or Leopold Stokowski a few short years later.
Dallas Symphony Orchestra/ANDREW LITTON (Delos)
Included (2-CD set):
SYMPHONY NO. 6 IN B MINOR, OP. 54