Tamara Grum-Grzhimailo



Soviet Music




CONTENTS

The Mighty Roots
"One Sound Is Quite a Lot"
Melodism Triumphs Over Time
A Conception of Optimism
Dedicated to the People's Feat of Arms
"Listen. Comrade Descendants"
A Panorama of the Day
Rhythm and the Times
A Self-Portrait of the Epoch

The Mighty Roots

"The October Revolution was the decisive factor in the life of my generation.
It determined the style of creative work. its themes and its language. And
above all, it brought about an upsurge of emotional power and set that
special spiritual 'temperature' which always raises creative activity above
the routines of everyday life," wrote Dmitri Shostakovich.

As the powerful torrent of revolutionary transformations swept through all
spheres of life, a broadly democratic and truly innovatory process of
developing a new culture which would direct all of its spiritual values
towards the people was taking place. The searches which people from the arts
at that time were making were full of profound social meaning.

Who exactly founded the traditions of Soviet music?

One's thoughts involuntarily turn to musicians of the great "linking
dynasty", who were already skilled professionals at the time of the October
Revolution. The significance of their creative work, be it in the musical
"centres" or on the "outskirts", was immense. For example, in Transcaucasia a
most valuable foundation stone was laid by the classics of Georgian and
Armenian music Zakhari Paliashvili and Alexander Spendiarov, whose period of
activity ended rather early, between the '20s and '30s. As far as the
founders of Russian Soviet music are concerned, such outstanding masters as
Reingold Gliere, Nikolai Myaskovsky, Yuri Shaporin, Vissarion Shebalin, and
Sergei Prokofiev continued working well into the '50s and '60s, instilling
the finest old-time traditions into new Soviet music.

There is no doubt that Prokofiev's name stands out, as it were from the list.
For one associates the name of Prokofiev with great changes in 20th-century
music. In his day he was reputed to be one of the most daring in
"overthrowing" old forms. But today, viewed from an historical perspective, a
different picture of the relationship between innovation and tradition in the
art of that period can be seen: we are aware that genuine discoveries can
only be made on the basis of profound inner ties with the culture of the
entire past, and not just of eras immediately preceding. Those who were
already able to tell the "perennial" from the "momentary", and not "deniers"
throwing over- board everything that had been accumulated before they arrived
on the scene, were the ones who built up a new Soviet musical culture.

Sergei Prokofiev was one of these. He created true masterpieces in all
musical genres. He created a new musical language, a new aesthetics, and new
traditions. Prokofiev's traditions mean chaste lyricism devoid of any
sentimentality, the Russian epic scope, clarity, harmony, and a keen sense of
humour.

Says conductor Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, one of the finest living interpreters
of his music:

"I have had quite a few opportunities to conduct the ballets Romeo and
Juliet, Cinderella and Tale of the Stone Flower, the operas War and Peace and
The Gambler, all the symphonies, concertos, and other works by Prokofiev. And
every time I go back to them I get a feeling of wonderful freshness and
brightness from his music. The Russian poet Konstantin Balmont once called
Sergei Prokofiev a "man rich in the sun". Indeed, his music is as bright and
warm as the sun, and it has embraced the globe the way the sunrays embrace
it."...

Dmitri Shostakovich was called the "musical conscience" of the period and a
"true chronicler" of his times. There was not a single composer living at the
same time who could hear more keenly and feel more deeply the meaning of the
rapid changes in the life of humanity; no one could express in music the
social picture of the world with such penetration and civic intrepidity.

"What is happening and what is being accomplished in Shostakovich's
symphonies," wrote Academician Boris Asafiev, "is a living reflection of the
storms and tempests of today, and he himself, like Shakespeare's Prospero, is
turning what he sees into a sound picture which is being electrified to an
unprecedented level, as though it is some high-tension nervous current and
not just music."

It is generally accepted that the series of great symphonies of the century
was opened by Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony known in the musical world as the
Hamlet Symphony. The Fifth Symphony was the precursor of the famous Seventh
(Leningrad), Eighth and, subsequently, Thirteenth and Fourteenth Symphonies
and other works which were filled with wrathful protest against cruelty and
the forces of war, violence and death, which are inimical to man. But we also
know the overpowering force of the meditative, contemplative aspects of the
composer's symphonism that led him to the classically limpid and elevated
language of the Fifteenth Symphony, his last one, in which the "later"
Shostakovich, who had squandered nothing of his former treasures,
demonstrated the power of triumphant feeling over time.

It is to Dmitri Shostakovich that the symphonic genre itself in its true
artistic and philosophic sense is indebted for its existence in the 20th
century. He restored the profundity of psychology and the vivid multifarious
dramatic content which had long been undergoing a crisis in the West. He laid
down new traditions in symphonism, and, although the noted American composer
Leonard Bernstein once ex- pressed confidence that Shostakovich had "put a
period" to the development of that genre, the reality has refuted this
opinion. It is being developed successfully in the creative work of all
living generations of Soviet composers some of whom are disciples and close
associates of the great musician. Symphonies by Tikhon Khrennikov, Boris
Tchaikovsky, Moisei Vainberg, Rodion Shchedrin, Boris Tishchenko, and Alexei
Nikolayev are very famous. And this is not to mention numerous interesting
symphonic works produced by composers in the Union republics such as the
brilliant concertos for orchestra by Kara Karayev, who died so suddenly, the
Symphony in Memory of Nizami by Fikret Amirov, a whole series of symphonies
by Gia Kancheli that have won the listeners' hearts, and many others.

The greatest achievements in operatic art are also linked with the names of
Prokofiev and Shostakovich. The scores from such operas as Katerina Izmailova
and The Nose by Shostakovich and Semyon Kotko and War and Peace by Prokofiev
are some unsurpassed examples. Incidentally, only recently Soviet television
presented the TV film Unfinished Masterpieces in which, along with
Mussorgsky's Marriage, the unfinished opera Gamblers by Shostakovich (based
on the comedy of the same name by Gogol), conducted by Gennadi
Rozhdestvensky, was shown on the screen for the first time. Millions of
television viewers could experience the hypnotic power of the great
musician's operatic style in which the symphony orchestra plays such an
exceptional dramaturgical part.

It is no accident that the process of symphonisation of the operatic genre,
which Mussorgsky first developed in Boris Godunov and Tchaikovsky in The
Queen of Spades, has become one of the fruitful traditions of Soviet music.
This process is also characteristic of modern ballet whose birth was a result
of joint searches made by composers and ballet masters. The history of the
three productions of the ballet Spartacus by Aram Khachaturyan directed by
such outstanding ballet masters as Igor Moiseyev, Leonid Yakobson, and Yuri
Grigorovich is a most graphic example of this. It is noteworthy that, when
the 200th anniversary of the Bolshoi Theatre was being celebrated, its chief
ballet master Yuri Grigorovich spoke in an interview about the "experience of
comprehending dance symphonism", which determined the features of the new
aesthetics of the Soviet ballet theatre symbolised by Spartacus.

Thus, we have touched upon the creative work of yet another outstanding
personality of the "classical period" of Soviet music, Aram Khachaturyan. His
music is the finest among everything that the peoples of Soviet Transcaucasia
have contributed to world musical culture. This music, which reaches people
of the most diverse musical tastes, strikes the listener with a dazzling
palette of all the colours of life; it is a feast of light, sunshine,
sensuality, and strong unconcealed passions. According to Academician Boris
Asafiev, "there is something of Rubens in the magnificence of its melodism
and the splendour of the orchestral sound". "Rubens in music"—a truer word
about Aram Khachaturyan can hardly be spoken!

For the first time in history the rich and whimsical world of "pictorial"
songs and pungent Oriental dance rhythms found monumental musical forms on a
par with the finest classical specimens. Yet, having acquired this "European"
professional brilliance, Khachaturyan's music has pre- served its profoundly
national core. It is not only the distinct intonations, but also the ardent
and mighty spirit inherent in the musical creativity of the peoples of the
Caucasus that permeates these compositions which are so full of life. making
them popular and international in the best sense of the word.

It is no accident that the genre of concerto for solo instrument and
orchestra, which made his name famous as early as the end of the '30s, was so
near to the composer's heart. He admitted more than once that he had a
natural bent for the concerto, for virtuosity and festivity in music. Dmitri
Kabalevsky said about his three well-known concertos for piano, violin, and
cello and three rhapsody concertos composed in the '60s: "These are six
bright and gay musical feasts..."

Tragedy entered the artist's music during the Great Patriotic War: first, in
the ballet Gayane and, subsequently, in his Second Symphony (1943), which is
filled with the most dramatic contrasts.

His searches for the dramaturgy of the new "theatrical" symphonism eventually
led the composer to his principal work, the ballet Spartacus. The tragic and
heroic theme of the slave revolt in ancient Rome became the element in which
his temperamental and romantically elated thought found ample scope for
"improvisation".

"As a composer," admitted Khachaturyan, "I have always been drawn to heroic
characters, the truth of passions, and great social conflicts".

He created an inspired musical score about death for the sake of freedom.
"The rare harmony of form, the intensity of action, and the naturalness of
the symphonic development," Dmitri Shostakovich wrote about the ballet, "make
this canvas an outstanding achievement in Soviet music..."

The influence of Aram Khachaturyan's traditions upon the musical world can
scarcely be overrated. Even works produced as recently as in the last few
years testify to this. Thus, for example, the programme of the Second Moscow
International Music Festival of 1984 included the symphonic fantasia In
Memory of Those Who Fell in the Struggle for Truth by the Chinese composer
Zhu Sdianer, which was described in the press as romantic music that had
absorbed "lessons" from Tchaikovsky, Gliere, and Khachaturyan...

A Western journalist once asked Dmitri Kabalevsky, "What tradition is most
highly respected among Soviet musicians?"

"The tradition of respecting traditions," answered the composer.

And this is absolutely true. For all the achievements of the contemporary
Soviet school of composition are organically linked with the profound
creative comprehension of the inexhaustible legacy left by its outstanding
founders: Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Khachaturyan.


"One Sound Is Quite a Lot"
This music penetrates the soul like the voice of the native land. It is full
of lucid colours as clear as crystal. Intonations of the present day and
motifs of olden times exist within it in striking harmony. Within it, there
art- symbolic images of the road and the intoxicating gaiety of folk
festivities and an inspired dialogue with nature and the impassioned voices
of the leaders of the revolution...

The Russian classic composers Mikhail Glinka, Modest Mussorgsky, and Sergei
Rakhmaninov are named among the forerunners of Sviridov. When he was studying
at the Leningrad Conservatoire, he was strongly influenced by his teacher
Dmitri Shostakovich, who wrote later about his outstanding disciple: "He has
always been aware of the great ethical significance of our art. And he is
intolerant of any... meaningless sound-seeking."

Georgi Sviridov is a master of vocal music. He has made poetry his main
source of musical creativity and song cycles are his favourite genre. When
there was a general enthusiasm for instrumental music he was loyal in a
knightly manner to music with lyrics. And he has remained loyal to this day.
Someone has estimated that he has drawn inspiration from the creative efforts
of 35 poets from various countries.

He is called a classic composer of the Soviet chamber- vocal and choral
style. This is because he has not only restored the links which vocal music
has with classical Russian art, but has also given it a fresh artistic form
and has raised it to a new spiritual height.

"Nowadays 'condensed' symphonism is penetrating the song form," says
Sviridov. "I am for the condensed form in which the specific weight of each
note is increased... One sound is quite a lot."

"That sound," says Valeri Gavrilin, one of the composer's younger
contemporaries, continuing the same idea, "is sometimes worth a whole
symphony, a whole novel, a whole dramatic composition. 1 see Sviridov's music
as a thousand diamond arrows aimed right at the listener's heart, and the
composer himself as a kind of jeweller... He is always radiant with light.
Sviridov is a brilliant poet. We have quite a few excellent composers who are
masters of tragedy, drama, and novel, but, I think, he is the only one who is
a poet."

The composer is linked in a most profound way with folk creativity and old
Russian art. This can be seen with particular clarity in such well-known and
popular works by the composer as Snow Is Falling to the words of Boris
Pasternak, The Springtime Cantata to the verse of Nikolai Nekrasov, and his
choral compositions of recent years such as Pushkin's Garland. The Concerto
in Memory of Alexander Yurlov written as a vocalise, Alexander Blok's Night
Clouds and Songs of Troubled Times, and the in inimitable choruses for the
drama Tsar Fyodor loannovich by Alexei Tolstoy staged at the Maly Theatre in
Moscow. These are works in which profound spirituality is clothed in a form
of rare beauty. The same could also be said for the famous Kursk Songs, which
are known all over the world and which were composed by Sviridov as far back
as the '60s. Marrying spontaneous folkloric thought with his own austere
universal skill, the composer showed himself to be a worthy successor to
Glinka's principles of "co-authorship" with the people. As one composer put
it, "in the Kursk Songs beautiful folk tunes, while remaining unchanged, were
elevated with few, and yet very strong and precise, touches from the author's
own hearing and perception".

The creation of a refined folk style in the Kursk Songs met with tremendous
response among composers of the various Union republics such as the republics
of Transcaucasia, the Baltic republics, the Ukraine, and the republics of
Central Asia. The aphoristic quality, clarity and sublimity of this cantata
of Sviridov's provided a model to be followed in continuing and developing
the tradition for such different composers as the Georgian Otar
Taktakishvili, the Daghestan Shirvani Chalayev, and the Estonian Veljo Tormis
who admitted: "Sviridov—the most Russian among Russian composers—helps me be
an Estonian composer with his creative work."

Sviridov's music amazes the listener with its incredible simplicity. Amazes
is the right word, because this simplicity exhibits a mysterious power over
one's feelings and imagination. The composer himself says:

"I like simplicity in art. But what kind of simplicity? There is the
simplicity of a symbol which emerges as a result of a tremendous selection.
This is a deceptive simplicity! Folk songs are made this way. The more
serious a work of art is, the simpler its language should be. Everything
great is simple. That's an old truth..."

The composer's early cycle My Father Is a Peasant to lyrics by Sergei Yesenin
includes the solemn dithyrambic song Rus Fills the Heart with Light. It seems
that today the light of love for the Motherland and the people is burning
even more brilliantly in Sviridov's music. In his new vocal poem Rus Bygone
he reverts once more to Yesenin's verse and writes two versions of the
composition—one for tenor and one for mezzo-soprano. The outstanding
vocalists Vladislav Pyavko and Yelena Obraztsova were the original performers
of the poem.

Throughout his entire life Georgi Sviridov, a composer and a performer—he is
an excellent pianist!—has maintained creative ties with vocalists and choral
companies. Such talented singers as Alexander Vedernikov and Yevgeni
Nesterenko (singing bass) and Alexei Maslennikov (singing tenor) have become
his permanent companions and partners in concert performances. A passionate
enthusiasm for folk art united Sviridov with the prominent choirmaster
Alexander Yurlov, who died a premature death, and his cappella choir, and now
it has led him to work with the Moscow Chamber Choir headed by Vladimir
Minin. The celebrated singer Yelena Obraztsova has devoted a considerable
part of her recent chamber music programmes to Sviridov's music, often
appearing together with the composer.

Some critics abroad maintain that Sviridov stands outside any school, outside
contemporary musical trends and, even, "outside our epoch". But this shows a
lack of understanding. And it is being dispelled as time goes by. Now that no
one any longer denies the right of "synthetic" musical genres to exist and
that the artistic function of words and of vocalism, the choral element, even
in instrumental genres, be it the symphony, the concerto or the ballet, has
grown to such a degree, the role of Georgi Sviridov as the originator of the
epoch of "great vocality" in this country is obvious, indisputable and
unique.

"Sviridov's school" has yielded major original talents such as Roman Ledenev,
the author of beautiful choruses;

Vladimir Rubin, who is not only a choral, but also an operatic-oratorial
composer; and Alexei Nikolayev, a master of the chamber vocal genre, whose
vocal cycles to words by Marina Tsvetayeva, Yevgeni Baratynsky, Antal Hidas,
and Alexander Tvardovsky have won wide recognition from the public.

"As early as the '50s, Sviridov's songs to words from Robert Burns made a
most vivid and unforgettable impression on me," says Alexei Nikolayev. "His
poetic world has become an integral part of my own soul ever since..."

The style of Nikolayev's vocal lyrics has exerted considerable influence on
the dramaturgy and the musical language of his operas. His manner in the
operatic genre is distinguished by laconism, clarity and a consistent
elegance, and his witty dialogue with classic composers serves to strengthen
his contacts with modern audiences. The scores of his latest one-act operas
based on Pushkin—A Feast in the City of the Plague and Count Nulin—are also
distinguished in the same way.

Characteristic of Alexei Nikolayev is a rare sensitivity not only to
language, but also to the intonations of the times which have brought forth
that language. That is why one can speak with confidence about the historical
veracity of his musical interpretations of poems, dramas, comedies, and
novels of various periods and peoples. This can be said about the characters
from old-time Spanish life of the Lope de Vega period in all their victorious
romantic theatricality, acting in his operetta Hispaniola, or the main
characters from his opera The Defeat after Alexander Fadeyev's novel of the
same name, describing the hard daily round of the revolutionary years. This
can even be said about a portrait—psychological and philosophical—of a poet
whose verse inspired the composer. Thus, for example, from the pages of the
score of his seven choruses there emerges a portrait of Alexander Tvardovsky,
a prominent Soviet poet.

"His poetry is filled with a most profound philosophical content," says the
composer. "The sound of a single solo voice now seems to me insufficient to
depict a personality of such depth. Following a song cycle for bass I began
writing choral compositions, which, in my view, lend a more generalised and
elevated sound to Tvardovsky's lyrics. In recent years I have written a large
composition for reciter, soloists, chorus and orchestra after his poem A
House by the Road. whose performance lasts for an entire concert..."

Today composers of all consecutive generations are carrying the torch of
"great vocality" lit by Sviridov. Their active imagination brings into
existence synthetic genres affirming the form-building role of music with
words and the expressive force of the human voice, of vocal-choral colours.
Nowadays no one will be surprised if musical works are called a
vocal-symphonic poem, or a symphony-cantata as the composer Oleg Yanchenko
defined his new major composition Belaya Vezha based on Byelorussian
folklore, or, say, a vocal-choreographic symphony—as the Leningrad composer
Andrei Petrov defined the genre of his new work Pushkin which is intended for
a musical theatre. Or take a completely unprecedented case: a choral
symphony-happening for grand choir, soloists, oboe and percussion in 16
movements. The title is Peals of Bells. The subtitle, Upon Reading Shukshin*.
Playing time, an hour and a half. Its composer is Valeri Gavrilin, one of the
most talented and original Soviet composers today of the middle-age
generation.

He is so close to the life of song in the everyday life of the people today,
his intonation and poetic language are so authentic, and the characteristic
features of the folk singing style are described so carefully in his vocal
compositions— down to such minute details as sighs, interrupted phrases and
words, free transitions from singing to reciting, vocal representations of
facial expressions, etc.—that some people call him a "folklorist" or, even, a
"creator of contemporary musical folklore".

No, the composer does not share pessimistic views with regard to the fate of
folklore. He travels extensively across the country; he is capable of seeing
and hearing what others cannot, and is absolutely confident that folklore is
alive and continues to be created even today.

"Folk creativity now lives a life full of ferment," says Valeri Gavrilin. "It
was the first to receive the impact of modern civilisation and is now
actively assimilating fresh nutritious juices... It is precisely this process
that interests me because it is an expression of the life of modern man. I
cannot think how I could work if I did not know the latest stories prevalent
among the people, as well as today's humour, self-made or paraphrased songs,
and the ways that professional music exists in the conscience of the
people..."

It is this life in the present-day folkloric environment that has created
this composer and poet. Gavrilin writes most of the texts for his musical
compositions himself. Thus, for example, the large choral score for the Peals
of Bells includes only two texts of genuinely folk origin. All the others
were written by the composer on the basis of folk verse. "And this does not
go unnoticed," stated the critics. "For this special merger between the
musical structure and verbal images—words that are character sketches in
sound—cannot be imagined if they had not been written by the author himself."

Music lovers in this country remember Valeri Gavrilin's stunningly successful
debut back in 1965 when his vocal cycle Russian Notebook was warmly welcomed
by Shostakovich, Khachaturyan, Kabalevsky, and Sviridov. Then followed other
vocal cycles and instrumental compositions—lyrical, tragic, and comical.
There appeared Wandering Minstrels, a "spectacle and songs from old-time
Russian life"—a sample of sharp social satire in which the life of
pre-revolutionary Russia was reconstructed as if through the eyes of a
wandering minstrel. Several fragments from the Wandering Minstrels were
subsequently used in the score of Gavrilin's sensational ballet for
television Anyuta.

Gradually, Gavrilin's unique musical-poetic "theatre", which combined within
itself the spontaneous element of a popular musical entertainment and the
psychological exquisiteness of professional chamber-vocal forms, began to
take shape. The composer names works of this concert-theatrical genre, which
he has discovered, "happenings". Examples are The Wedding based on Viktor
Astafiev's short novel A Shepherd and a Shepherdess and, of course, the
wonderful Wartime Letters well known to a large number of listeners in the
Soviet Union from a television film of the same name. And still earlier, this
music amazed the viewers of the play Three Sacks of Weedy Wheat staged by the
outstanding stage director Georgi Tovstonogov at the Leningrad Bolshoi Drama
Theatre. The wild and tempestuous musical score for the play depicting the
hard life endured by village people during the war was filled with the bells
of destinies and long journeys, the hum of the people's inexhaustible memory
and the lamentations of bereaved women. The music sang the eternal themes of
love. parting, and faithfulness... And above the stage hovered an exalted
love dialogue clothed in the sounds of marvellous folk songs: " '0 my love,
where are you going?'/ '0 my love, I'm going to war.'/'Will you write me just
one letter?'/'Not just one, but many more'..."

Because of the universal "theatrical" properties of his music Gavrilin
attracts the attention of a considerable number of theatre and television
personalities. Having finished staging the play Stepan Razin, which is
devoted to the leader of the 17th-century peasant war and which he did
together with the composer, the actor and stage director Mikhail Ulyanov
wrote: "Gavrilin's music, which is both distressing and mischievous, reckless
and sarcastic. loud and piercing as a human cry, has introduced something
truly Russian, something powerful, something of Razin into the play..."

Gavrilin's Peals of Bells also centres round a vivid and integral popular
male character. The score of the composition captures one's hearing and
imagination with the broadness and intonational originality of the sound
gamut, the precise technique of modern choral composition, and ' the beauty
of the Russian style. Rich folk fantasy and the inimitable colouring of
"spontaneous" oral folk art are I translated by the author into musical and
verbal images in , the Peals of Bells. This unique score is dedicated to
Professor Vladimir Minin, leader of the Moscow Chamber Choir, who was its
first interpreter.

Gavrilin has produced the opera The Story of Vanyusha the Fiddler, a number
of pieces for orchestra and piano, literary-musical fairy-tales for children,
and even the comic cantata We Were Speaking About Art to his own words... The
composer's range of genres is very extensive.

In each one of his creations Valeri Gavrilin shows himself to be a popular
artist who shows filial loyalty and love towards his Motherland and the
treasures of her national traditions which form the basis of today's
spiritual life. He continues the principal theme of the Russian classic
composers—from Glinka to Sviridov—in a way befitting an outstanding talent.

Melodism Triumphs Over Time
Tikhon Khrennikov can hardly be called a veteran of Soviet music despite the
fact that the world heard his first compositions half a century ago. We have
before us a rare example of "eternal youth" in creativity and of a complete
devotion to the loftiest ideals of one's youth.

The power of temperament, the wealth of emotions, the richness of fantasy,
and the great virtuosity of his style—all these features of the composer's
open-hearted talent with which he attracted attention from the moment when
his First Piano Concerto and First Symphony were performed—are still part of
his creative work today. And the success scored by the 20-year-old
Khrennikov's first compositions was so immense that he was even called
"Moscow's Shostakovich".

His First Symphony soon won recognition abroad as well, where such prominent
musicians as Leopold Stokowski, Eugene Ormandy and Charles Munch conducted
it. One German newspaper wrote at the time: "In this symphony is the pathos
of socialist construction, the strength of the new flourishing generation,
and confidence in the country's future."

At Tikhon Khrennikov's concerts today, when People's Artist of the USSR
Yevgeni Svetlanov gets up on the conductor's podium and the composer himself
sits at the piano, the same youthful spirit of Soviet art fills the concert
hall. And although a new laconism, a new polyphonic way of thinking, new
rhythmic formulas, and a new style of instrumentation have appeared in his
compositions, the sunny, joyous, overflowing melodism of the "younger"
Khrennikov triumphs over time.

The music of his instrumental compositions such as his latest Third Symphony
and his violin and piano concertos contains a sense of real life.

His Second Concerto for Violin, which is dedicated to the outstanding
musician Leonid Kogan, its first performer, has become an integral part of
the repertory of Soviet violinists. Says Grigori Zhislin: "When playing this
music. I invariably feel some inner elevation. The concerto is very vivid in
terms of its pictorial sphere. What is required of the performer here is
strong sound, a full cantilena, a mastery of the whole gamut of sound
colouring, and extreme emotional intensity." "The concerto has not a single
superfluous note," adds Igor Oistrakh. "In the entire violin repertory it is
difficult to recall anything which would be similar in character to its first
movement with its aphoristic terseness and to the captivating melody of the
lyric Adagio that hovers 'high up in the sky'." This is what Mikhail
Khomitser, a well-known interpreter of the composer's only Cello Concerto,
has to say about it: "This music is as concentrated and intense as a coiled
spring... It somehow wins one's heart right away with its infinitely
melodious sound and loftiness of feeling."

The best pages in the history of the Soviet song are linked with the name of
Tikhon Khrennikov. The fate of his timeless melodies written for the cinema
and the theatre, especially that of his music for Shakespeare's comedy Much
Ado About Nothing, which gave its version staged at the Vakhtangov Theatre an
unprecedented run, is truly enviable. The composer subsequently used this
theatrical music as a basis for writing his comic opera Much Ado Because
Of... Hearts and the ballet A Love for a Love. The fact that Daring the Storm
has been staged by a number of theatres and for so long is yet one more proof
of its great popularity. It is the best of the composer's operas and contains
a large number of rich folk-song melodies. The complicated social and
psychological clashes characteristic of the stormy era of the revolution come
to the fore with outstanding dramaturgical skill.

The prominent stage director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, the first
producer of the opera, wrote: "Khrennikov has embodied the idea of the opera
in a simple and profound way... The composer has introduced contemporary
thought into the opera, and the force of tragic intensity into its tender
lyricism. As a result this work has rid the theatre of common cliches and
moved it towards an ever greater poetic clarity and austere beauty without
which a Soviet operatic production is impossible."

Today one can say with confidence that no other Soviet opera has been staged
in this country so often and with such enormous success. The opera has been
staged by almost all major musical theatres in the Soviet Union. It has also
been quite a success in a number of foreign countries.

Khrennikov has produced a whole series of various works for the musical
theatre, including the operetta A Hundred Devils and One Girl, the opera
Mother on a heroic revolutionary theme and which is based on Gorky's novel of
the same name, and the comic opera Frol Skobeyev, or the Lowborn Son-in-Law
based on an "adventure" from 17th-century Russian life, as well as ballet
scores based on his music for theatre productions.

Students of the composer's creative work are absolutely right in noting that,
as long ago as the '30s, he developed a musical theatre within the drama
theatre, that is, he entered the theatrical world as a genuine innovator. He
also continued this innovatory line in the cinema by composing entire musical
comedies featuring his inimitable song intonations. The radiant comedy The
Pig Tender and the Shepherd directed by Ivan Pyryev, which was released in
the difficult year of 1942 and which was subsequently shown all over Europe
and the Americas, was such an innovatory film.

Essentially, Khrennikov has never parted with his favourite theatrical
melodies. Thus, the musical film Hussar Ballad and, later, the ballet of the
same name were based on his famous music for the stage version of the heroic
comedy in verse A Long Time Ago by Alexander Gladkov, which was produced in
the '40s. And his music for the television film Duenna based on a work by
Richard Sheridan developed into the comic opera Dorothea, which was staged at
the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theatre in Moscow in 1983
and met with enormous response from the public and the critics. Thus the
composer returned once more to the theatre of his youth.

The theatre just seemed to have been waiting for the moment when it could
again "drink in" Khrennikov's melodies!

Of course, the secret of Dorothea's success is, more than anything else, in
the sheer theatricality of the music, its melodies and rhythms, in the high
tension of its dramatic culminations, and in the festive nature of its vocal-
symphonic colours. The production director loakhim Sharoyev admitted: "I hold
Khrennikov's dramaturgic gift in very high esteem. He is a dramatist even in
the song— this condensed and simpler form. And it is fertile ground for an
operatic producer."

The composer's liason with the theatre continues. Work on his new comic opera
Twelve Chairs, which is based on the highly popular satirical novel of the
same name by Ilf and Petrov, is now in progress.

A Conception of Optimism
Dmitri Kabalevsky holds a special place among Soviet composers of the first
generation. These composers have carried the inexhaustible enthusiasm of the
builders of a new musical culture for the people through a period of several
decades. Kabalevsky, who has composed numerous works in all genres, is also
an enlightener, critic and public figure, and has devoted the finest
creations of his shining talent to young people. One of the students of his
creative work wrote: "Dmitri Kabalevsky is a fortunate man who has succeeded
in accomplishing a great deal over the time that has passed since the distant
year of 1925 from which dates his modest Opus No. 1 (Three Preludes for
Piano). Since then quite a few generations of young people have grown up in
possession of, besides other values of the cultural world, the finest pages
of his music."

And, perhaps, among these finest pages is the opera Colas Breugnon after the
short novel by Romain Rolland, which is the composer's most important
accomplishment. The music, sparkling with mirth, breaking out into wreaths of
smiles and radiant with light and joy, has become part of the most popular
concert repertory. However, 30 years after he had finished it, the composer
turned back to this particular opera, being convinced that it had to be
"turned even more to Rolland and led along the line of enhancing light and
joy". For the French novelist had said that the main point of the novel and
the very meaning of its existence was to show how to retain high spirits in
spite of everything.

Kabalevsky produced a work which was tremendous in its conception of
optimism. The hero of the opera, a folk master craftsman, an artist and an
old Burgundian gay spark, and his fellow-villagers of Clamecy overcome every-
thing: the barbaric behaviour of the arrogant duke and his soldiers, the
horror of the plague and even death itself. Love of life in all its
manifestations and laughter in response to destruction and humiliation of
people's pride constitute the pathos of this romantic composition.

Every time the undying overture to the opera Colas Breugnon is played in a
concert hall the listeners' hearts open to this sunny music which is filled
with tenderness, subtle humour, and the refinement and nobility of soul.

This overture by Dmitri Kabalevsky was performed on the memorable occasion of
the opening of the Second International Music Festival in Moscow in May 1984,
and the discriminating audience gratefully welcomed the 80-year-old
white-haired Maestro at the conductor's stand...

It should be noted that there have been a number of other instances when
Soviet composers have come into contact with French literature in their
creative work. For instance, interesting one-act operas—Tenderness by Vitali
Gubarenko after the short story of the same name by Henri Barbusse and Pierre
and Luce by David Krivitsky based on the anti-war novel by Romain
Rolland—have been staged quite recently.

However, the development of the musical theatre in this country has been
linked, more than anything else, with the search for plots and characters in
Soviet prose and poetry, although, at the same time, its contacts with
classical Russian and West European literature have never been severed and
continue to this day. Suffice it to name here such masterpieces of operatic
music as War and Peace and The Gambler by Sergei Prokofiev based on the
novels by Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and one of the most remarkable
operas of recent years—Rodion Shchedrin's Dead Souls based on the poem by
Nikolai Gogol.

Soviet opera has been in search of a contemporary hero for a long time in
spite of the "retrospectivity" of the genre as such. It has been a
contradictory and thorny path full of errors and artistic losses and yet
marked by undoubted gains. The searches in the field of the "song" opera,
which is linked with the mass musical genres of the '20s and the '30s,
resulted in the production of scores which are significant, although
different in style, such as the already mentioned opera Daring the Storm by
Tikhon Khrennikov, Ivan Dzerzhinsky's And Quiet Flows the Don based on the
novel by Mikhail Sholokhov, and Sergei Prokofiev's Semyon Kotko.

The fact that these works have had such a happy stage life and are still
running in different theatres throughout the country confirms the
fruitfulness of the searches of those years.

Today among musical compositions for the stage there are already a good
number of operas from a later period produced by composers in the various
Union republics: the Ukraine, Byelorussia", and the Transcaucasian. Baltic
and Central Asian republics of the Soviet Union.

Especially significant and remarkable for their artistic merits are the
operas by the Georgian composer Otar Taktakishvili. The main theme of his art
is the link between past and present and the folk-memory which binds the
present day with the ancient past.  His various compositions—romances,
oratorios, concertos, choral cycles, operas, symphonic works, and chamber
pieces for piano and string quartet—make up a picture glowing with rich
colours. It is an image of Georgia herself sung by her talented son.

Taktakishvili's way of thinking is mostly "oratorial". He is particularly
convincing and strong in the "static dynamism" of detailed choral scenes with
which he lavishly furnishes the scores of his operas. No sooner has the
action broken away from the sphere of the plot and everyday life and been
transferred into the philosophical, contemplative, symbolic sphere than the
music acquires a special vigour and expansiveness and begins to shine with
all the colours of song which are genuinely rustic in origin. And at such
moments inspired operatic choruses are born. An example is the song about the
native land Cornfield. Sunny Cornfield—the patriotic climax of the short
story The Fate of a Soldier, which is part of the opera-suite Three Lives. We
hear the proud and gentle intonations of Georgian polyphonic singing a
cappella: basses sustain the lower fifth, first tenors sustain the highest
note, while second tenors lead the elegiac melody between them like a stream
winding its way between rocky banks. Inexpressibly beautiful singing...

Taktakishvili's opera The Stealing of the Moon finished in 1977 and staged at
Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre is an impassioned narrative about the fates of his
own people and about the struggle for a new world and a new man. It
captivates the heart with the truly romantic elevation and epic power of the
music. The words of the composer in which he thus expressed his artistic
credo come to mind: "To keep the human soul in purity, to keep it in a kind
of 'uplift'. This is an almost impossible task. Yet one must set about it
with great industry and self-sacrifice, while regarding it as entirely
feasible."

In composing The Stealing of the Moon. the composer did not limit himself to
the resources of a traditional operatic choir; instead, he supplemented it
with a folkloric male octet which became a collective personage of the opera
which was extremely important in terms of its dramatic content. The composer
hit upon this original method of combining a folkloric ensemble with a full
choir and orchestra in his beautiful cantata Gurian Songs.

Over the last few years Taktakishvili has written a large number of vivid
instrumental compositions, including the Concerto for Violin whose finest
interpreter was the prominent Georgian violinist Liana Isakadze, and the
String Quartet, a genre to which the composer turned for the first time.

After The Stealing of the Moon, he produced two comic operas: Mususi, a rural
comedy of manners, and The First Love or Odd People, a lyrical comedy with
elements of the fantastic. They are running with great success in many
theatres in the Soviet Union. Musical critics have described these operas as
a kind of "Georgian neoclassicism" and "one of the composer's most charming
discoveries".

Dedicated to the People's Feat of Arms
Great artists have creations in which all the threads of their creative work
are interlaced as if in a single crown. This is certainly the case with
Sergei Prokofiev's opera War and Peace to which he devoted the last ten years
of his life. What had led to it was, on the one hand, the direction of his
searches in symphonism which linked his musical youth with a wise epic, with
the heroic style which expressed Prokofiev's love of Russian history (The
Scythian Suite, Alexander Nevsky, and Ivan the Terrible). And, on the other
hand, it marked the culmination of the search for a new operatic melody which
the composer and dramatist had been making for many, many years: from the
recitative operas Love for Three Oranges and The Gambler to the melodic
richness of Semyon Kotko and Betrothal at the Monastery and further on to the
validity of the living intonation of musical speech, which turns into
singing, of War and Peace...

Of interest is the opera's style which highlights the unity between lyricism
and heroics, that is, the marriage of traditions originated by Pyotr
Tchaikovsky and Modest Mussorgsky. And, accordingly, two cycles of scenes are
intertwined: intimate lyricism (the world of Natasha Rostova and the story of
her love for Prince Andrei Bolkonsky) and mass heroism (scenes from the
Battle of Borodino, the fire of Moscow, and the inglorious retreat of
Napoleon's troops). How infinitely wide is the amplitude of this unique drama
which comprises thirteen scenes! How diverse is the gamut of colours of the
author's fantasy: from pastel shades in portraying the pulsating world of a
young love to fresco painting, using "Surikov's" colours*, in depicting the
people's war, the hard military effort, and the heat of the battle.

Being convinced that "putting Tolstoy into rhyme is impossible", Prokofiev
developed his own style of operatic "dialogues" reproducing natural everyday
conversation. These captivating scenes of a declamatory nature create a
feeling of vivid dynamism and a feeling that the narrative is saturated with
action. And the few "static" scenes—such as Prince Andrei's delirium on his
death-bed, Kutuzov's patriotic aria-monologue, or the popular-choral
epigraph-prologue and apotheosis—develop into dramatic culminations of
tremendous scale.

War and Peace was the artist's patriotic contribution to the cause of the
Soviet people's struggle against German Nazism. Prokofiev worked on it
throughout the war. It captured the essence of the hard days of war, the
atmosphere of terrible trials, unflinching courage and the great joy of
victory.

The opera made a great impact on the development of the genre in the decades
following, and the interest in it continues to grow; it finds more and more
new embodiments on the stages of many theatres throughout the country.

The theme of the last war has never ceased to arouse the feelings of our
contemporary composers. However, today's musical theatre, as it strives to
keep pace with the times, is expanding its arsenal of expressive means. Using
the achievements of the related arts, it solves the problems both of operatic
conventionality and of operatic realism in a different way, moving farther
and farther away from the realism of "daily life and events" towards
significant, symbolic, multifaceted realism which offers ample scope for
complex associative thinking characteristic of today's audience.

Even if one compares Kirill Molchanov's opera The Dawns Are Quiet Here after
the well-known war novel by Boris Vasilyev staged at Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre
in 1975 with the new work The Path of Life by the Byelorussian composer
Genrikh Vagner dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the liberation of
Byelorussia from the Nazi invaders. an enormous difference will be revealed.

The operatic version of The Dawns Are Quiet Here presents a somewhat
simplified solution to the problem of musical-scenic dramaturgy.

One gets a different impression from seeing The Path of Life: an attempt is
made not only to show the life of the "ordinary heroes" of the partisan war,
but also to create a feeling that these fallen heroes live on in the
conscience of our contemporaries. This link between two periods which are
separated by decades and the integration of the real and the unreal planes
are the basis of the opera's dramatic framework predisposing one to
innovatory staging solutions.

Beautiful districts of Minsk, the capital of Byelorussia, are shown on stage,
and then, all at once, we see the landscapes of boundless marshy forests
before us. First we meet with the central character, former partisan Levchuk,
in our own day, and then, together with his memory of the flaming years, we
are sent flying into the past... "I beg of those of you who have not known
war," sings Levchuk, "to keep a memory of it for evermore." And the
contemporaries respond to his appeal, setting out, together with Levchuk's
memory, on a journey along the roads of the events of those hard times...
This results in a kind of double conventionality of the scenic action and of
the existence of the opera's characters in it. However, this complicated
temporal conventionality is "neutralised" by the presence of contemporaries
commenting on, and showing empathy for, the unforgettable past in beautiful
ballads. This makes the episode of the "reviving" music of the burnt-down
village in the scene of the canon choir We Have Been Turned to Ashes, when
dozens of people in grey robes silenty "enter" our own day to "lift up their
voices" on behalf of all those who perished and were tortured to death, seem
completely credible and even inevitable...

Thus the complex truth gains a victory in modern operatic art. Thus the high
poetry of a symbol, carried both by music and by its embodiment on stage,
comes into being.

It should be noted that the way to such artistic solutions in opera has been
paved by the "synthetic" genres of vocal-symphonic music. In this connection,
Vladimir Rubin's musical tragedy Sunday in July (Sevastopol), whose literary
basis comprised the prose of Leo Tolstoy and Andrei Platonov* and the poetry
of Alexander Tvardovsky**, as well as documents and letters belonging to the
fallen heroes, must be mentioned. It is possible that it was precisely this
composition with its original conception and dramatic content, first staged
in Novosibirsk in 1970, that brought into life a new symbolism of the
operatic style and expanded the limits of the "permissible" in the world of
stage conventionalities of today's musical theatre.

The four parts of the tragedy are devoted to just one day of the war, July 3,
1942, which was the last day of the heroic defence of Sevastopol. It is a
documented fact that on that day a platoon of soldiers died a heroic death
under the caterpillar tracks of German tanks while repulsing the enemy
onslaught. Yet it was not the thought of this particular feat alone that
stirred the composer. He was staggered by the power of the spiritual
tradition of that land, he saw in Sevastopol a symbol of the firmness of the
Russian fighting spirit. He thought of the tragedy of the war and the way it
was reflected in folk songs and legends and in folk memory. Thus the figure
of a narrator telling about the defenders of Sevastopol in the two wars in
the language of Tolstoy and Platonov appeared in the tragedy, and its music
was a combination of old Russian ritual folk songs and contemporary comical,
lyrical and soldiers' marching songs.

The main idea of the opera-oratorio (we can describe it in that way) and the
expressive nature of its music is in showing a heroic feat as the highest
manifestation of the spiritual nature of man and as something that purges and
elevates his personality. A heroic feat worthy of Man who was being waited
for. by Mothers, Wives and Brides whose love was still blossoming. A heroic
feat performed for the sake of those who would survive...

The tragedy is unravelled as a legend, as a folk tale, and each of its scenes
is laid under the sign of its own symbolic Woman. Quite a meaningful
discovery on the part of the composer! In it the perspective of the two
planes of action—the  eventual  and  the  psychological—manifests itself and
warrants the stage longevity of the composition.

Only three of the heroes are concrete stage characters: they are personages
of the "eventual" plane. All the rest are symbols. The arias, ariosos, dirges
and laments of the Women are unforgettable. Their intonational structure
features mostly old Russian modes, and the composition of individual parts,
the techniques of folk musical form-building. Thus, for example, the third
part of the tragedy is built as a grandiose lament-refrain from Mother who
utters the incantation: "0 my soul, my bright candle, my raging blood, my
handsome one!"

One of the strongest features of the musical tragedy is its genuinely
vernacular language and style. The final death "couplets" of one concrete
character, pilot Georgi Moroz, which are performed in a wild dance rhythm and
show a characteristic state of a Russian man who has made up his mind to take
the last desperate step, are an excellent example of artistic truth.

But perhaps the most moving melody is given to a son responding to the voice
of his Mother. It penetrates the final pages of the tragedy like a ray of
light: "The star out in the fields, the star above my home, and Mother sadly
waving a farewell..."

Now, on the 40th anniversary of the victory over Nazism, Vladimir Rubin's
musical composition has acquired a new sound which has become enriched with
time. The composer produced a new concert version of an excerpt from his
musical tragedy—the lament scene Son and Mother (Sevastopol 1942), which was
performed successfully within the framework of the concert programme of the
Moscow Autumn Music Festival in 1984.

This traditional festival of new music produced by Moscow composers featured
quite a few scores elaborating upon the theme of a feat of arms. This is
quite understandable, for, as Tikhon Khrennikov said, "the theme of the Great
Patriotic War will never be exhausted artistically, just as we will always
remember those who gave their lives in the revolutionary struggle for the
happiness of the people. Composers of various generations again and again
kindle the eternal flame of musical monuments."

"Listen, Comrade Descendants"
Some twenty years ago at was said about Andrei Petrov: "Here is a new
Dunayevsky."* People had a great liking for the lyrical world of his songs,
light music and music for the cinema. But the composer steered a steady
course towards the shores of musical universalism. In his creative laboratory
there has always burned an experimental fire, emitting unexpected
"prominences". Thus the Poem in Memory of Those Who Perished During the
Leningrad Blockade and the symphonic cycle Songs of Our Day, which are highly
up-to-date in terms of their language, appeared. And later on, the composer
produced a ballet based on The Creation of the World, a series of drawings by
Jean Effel, which presents a facetious combination of the biblical account
and modern grotesque. The composer's co-authors in staging the ballet were
the well-known choreographers Natalya Kasatkina and Vladimir Vasilyov. It was
this professional cooperation that gave birth to the ideas of Andrei Petrov's
subsequent compositions for the theatre.

The composer's turning to opera was not unconnected to his conviction that
this genre was the only one that could cope with a large-scale
heroico-patriotic theme centring round a prominent historical personality. He
had long been attracted by the figure of Peter the Great, the great reformer
of 18th-century Russia.

Andrei Petrov's bold intellect and creative versatility helped him to create
an original score combining musical styles from periods standing very far
apart from one another: from old Russian liturgical chants and official
festival hymns of the period of Peter the Great to intonations of French
chansons and from simple soldiers' chastushkas (topical humorous songs) to
highly sophisticated symphonic episodes of modern "sonorous" sound. At the
same time, the opera Peter the Great continues and develops the great
traditions of the Russian historical operas by Mussorgsky and Prokofiev.

The staging of Peter the Great was a landmark in the life of the famous Kirov
Leningrad Opera and Ballet Theatre and the triumphant debut of Yuri
Temirkanov, who made his first appearance as the theatre's chief conductor...

To make a poet speak in an operatic voice is a daring idea indeed! And what
if the poet himself wrote his poems "with the rough tongue of posters"
featuring "unmusical" ladder verse and "reared-up" oratorical rhythm? What if
he rejected the old-time theatre, the sweet singing which is so gentle on the
ear and the stereotyped and stilted operatic style? In a word, what if that
poet was Vladimir Mayakovsky?

The thought of such a production had long been stirring the creative
imagination of Andrei Petrov, who was enthusiastic about creating a series of
large-scale canvases to illustrate the history of Russia. The composer and
his followers—the ballet masters and conductor who had already staged his
vocal-choreographic symphony Pushkin by that time—had the idea of
highlighting the most momentous events in the country's history by portraying
the life of a great creative personality. The new production took shape as a
heroic musical drama of the birth and development of the great poet of the
revolution. Its hero himself— the creator of the poetics of universal
images—dictated the use of innovatory theatrical forms.

The glimmering stars of the dipper of the Great Bear can be seen above the
stage. Space is swirling in the labour pains of bringing the global-scale
poet out into the world. "Listen, comrade descendants!" And now he himself
emerges out of the starry abyss—the "hole" which symbolises the all-seeing
eye of History.

Within this symbolic "pupil" a torch and red banners soar upwards, then the
double-headed eagle—the grim symbol of tsarist autocracy—is to be seen,
followed by the image of the Beloved created by the poet's imagination
appears in a halo of gentle light, and then a man in a black beret
mysteriously appears with a human skull in his hands—Prince Hamlet...

The authors of the production took the risk of bringing together the herald
of the proletarian revolution Vladimir Mayakovsky and the heroes of great
literary works of the past—Hamlet, Don Quixote and Raskolnikov—in the
dialogues. The poet asserts his ideas of lofty humanism and finds the way to
his own self in a perpetual dispute about the meaning of existence.

The opera does not have the usual smoothly unravelling plot. The scenes that
are symbols of historic events and of the poet's own life, marrying fantasy
with everyday reality, change as fast as in a motion picture. The images of
the poet's friends are transformed into his "literary" antipodes. The poet's
"First Beloved" keeps changing her appearance, first presenting herself in
the romantic garments of Ophelia or Dulcinea, and then in the role of the
unfortunate Sonyechka Marmeladova.* And the poet's many-faced Muse—the
mysterious "girl of nine faces"—acts throughout all the scenes, weaving a
choreographic lace...

An opera-feerie close to such works by Mayakovsky as the play Mystery-Bouffe
and the poem 150. 000. 000 in its stylistics, a spectacle full of vivid
hyperboles, allegories, bouffonade, and daring combinations of operatic and
ballet plastic movements and elements of drama, pantomime, singing, reading,
and declaiming—these are the distinguishing features of the stage version of
Mayakovsky Is Beginning.

The composer has provided rewarding material for the producers and musical
performers, all of whom were inspired by conductor Yuri Temirkanov. He has
shown himself to be sufficiently courageous to bring different musical styles
into a sharp clash so as to convey the high tension of feeling in
Mayakovsky's poetry and the contrasting nature of the phenomena brought about
by the revolution. Military bands march across the stage blaring out anthems
and marches; fashionable music and the languid sound of cello playing at
decadents' salons can be heard; there is the hum of the town street folklore
of the period; popular revolutionary songs ring out... And above this great
multitude of sounds reigns the voice of the Poet going into the revolution,
singing his inspired aria-monologues addressed to the people, the stars, and
the posterity of all the earth. Andrei Petrov succeeded in creating a new
original blend of musical lyricism and a large-scale heroic theme in operatic
art.

A Panorama of the Day
When reflecting upon contemporary music, one comes to the conclusion that
today there are and can be no unlinkable "poles" and unsurmountable barriers
between musical genres: they are coming towards one another, as it were,
renewing themselves and acquiring hitherto unknown features. All their bounds
are elastic and mobile. The symphony influences the genre of the concerto,
and vice versa. The colours of vocal and choral music adorn the scores of
"purely" instrumental compositions. The bass choir in the Sixth Symphony
Passione by the Georgian composer Sulhkan Nasidze, in which verse by Vazha
Pschavela* sounds like a philosophical commentary to dramatic "events", is an
impressive example of this. On the other hand, the style and principles of
instrumental music penetrate the flesh and blood of vocal genres. Here the
magnificent choral Vocalises by Roman Ledenev spring to mind. Composed
according to the rules of instrumental dramaturgy, they ring out so
expressively alongside traditional "textual" choral compositions in concert
that one can almost hear the "words".

Contemporary choral scores often have elements of symphonic-jazz and light
music and—this is particularly interesting—elements of active "theatrical
thinking". For example, the children's choral suite Sunny Oath by Yuri
Chichkov requires choreographic theatricalisation of individual movements. In
Vladislav Agafonnikov's Ballad of a Slain Violin the "characters" of the
musical-scenic dialogue are a boys' choir and a solo violinist (the story is
about a unique wartime episode when the Nazis, having missed their target,
"slew" the violin instead of the soldier-violinist who was carrying it). As
regards the creative work of the noted Estonian composer Veljo Tormis, one
can easily say that it is theatricalised to the core. His cantata The Spell
of Iron for choir, soloists and shaman's timbrel, or the nine-movement choral
cycle Ingermanland Nights towards the artistic experience of "old" European
and world culture and a search for support in the eternally alive art of the
classical epochs have been observed.

Some ten years ago conductor Gennadi Rozhdestvensky wrote in his book
Thoughts About Music: "I will say a couple of words about the future of the
musical language which people have sometimes asked me about. I foresee, along
with the continuation of the so-called 'experimental line', a move towards
the romanticisation of music. 1 am also convinced that the interest in folk
art in its pure form as well as in the combination of folkloric elements with
the most up-to-date techniques of compositional writing will continue to
grow."

These predictions are coming true before our very eyes. The thesis about the
move towards romanticism is most vividly illustrated by the creative work of
the talented composer Nikolai Sidelnikov. His cycles Romanceros of Love and
Death to verses by Federico Garcia Lorca, and Sichuan Elegies to the poetical
cycle Thoughts About My Own Self by the 6th-century Chinese poet Du Fu
radiate youthful spirituality. Critics have noted the composer's brilliant
choral writing ensuring the "preservation" of each word. In this, the author
is provided reliable support by the skill and inspiration of the performers
of the cycles—the State Chamber Choir and its conductor Valeri Polyansky.

As far as the judgements about folklore are concerned, their validity is
attested by the creative activity of the Leningrad composer Valeri Gavrilin,
whom we have already mentioned, as well as by the works of the widely popular
composer of the Moscow school Andrei Eshpai. This musician is very closely
connected with the folk art of the Maris, an ethnic minority of the Volga
basin; it has coloured the finest pages of such excellent compositions as his
Second and Fourth Symphonies, the Concerto for Orchestra, and the Violin
Concerto. And in the last few years Eshpai's "folkloric" style has
perceptibly moved towards an even greater profundity and exquisiteness in
treating the folk melos. This is testified by his Improvisation for Solo
Flute, Concerto for Oboe and Orchestra, and Songs of the Highland and Lowland
Maris.

There is no real need to speak about the vernacular basis of the music of the
vast number of composers from different republics, who are now entering the
international arena as highly cultured professional musicians. During one of
its concerts, the Chamber Orchestra of the Lithuanian SSR led by Saulius
Sondeckis, known for his flawless taste and uncompromising attitude to
selecting the repertory, performed works by the Turkmen composer Chary
Nurymov. The audience was astounded by the richness and refinement of the
gamut which is in no way inferior to the finest specimens of the instrumental
art of the European schools. It is no accident that Ghazals, his exquisite
miniatures for oboe, piano, percussion, and string orchesta, were a great
success in France.

It is interesting to note that new works by the Moscow composer David
Krivitsky illustrating the "dialogue" with the period of musical baroque,
which is so characteristic of modern instrumental genres, were performed
during that same concert. To expand this dialogue, Krivitsky even took the
half-forgotten viola d'amore (the predecessor of the viola) from the past and
placed it among the modern family of stringed instruments, thus giving it a
voice in the orchestra.

It is common knowledge that the level of musical thought is determined by
instrumental genres. This is where experimental work such as the polishing of
new techniques in composition and sound construction is centred. This is
where the artistic evolution of musical devices reflecting the limitless
possibilities of modern man who lives in a world of superspeeds, a violent
stream of information and multifarious impressions of life and art is to be
felt most perceptibly. One can also observe how the composers' concentration
on the psychological problems of cognising the world and on the search for a
new poetry, beauty and truth of musical intonations is manifested in
radically different works such as, for example, the Concerto for Viola and
Orchestra by Alexander Tchaikovsky, the String Quintet by Alexander Lokshin,
and the Variations on a Theme by Haydn for Cello and Orchestra by Edison
Denisov.

What compositions of serious contemporary music are the most popular with the
audience? A definite answer can be given to this question: those in which the
beauty of the main musical themes is supported by a clear, precise and
purposeful dramatic content of the whole, and in which a contemporary
"recognisable" hero is shown in the real and violent whirlpool of life, as it
were. This description undoubtedly fits the Second String Quartet by Alexei
Nikolayev, whose first performance during one of the Moscow Autumn music
festivals was quite an event. Here is an outline of its dramatic groundwork:
the first movement (Sonatina) features a vigorous, "active" allegro and the
second movement, wonderful music in the spirit of old airs taken from masses
finishing with an unexpected genre finale (Toccata) in which a motif of banal
"Odessa" folklore* is suddenly threaded into the sparkling dance into-
nations of the main theme. This mischievous smile from the composer in a work
of a traditional academic genre both delighted and bewildered the public.
"How can this be?" some exclaimed. "Why is there a trite operetta motif of
'Odessa' origin in an austere quartet?" "Why, this is wonderful!" maintained
others. "It revives the almost lost tradition, which was so splendidly
developed by Shostakovich, of including the intonations of the 'street', of
ordinary folklore in the context of serious democratically oriented musical
art."

The imagination of Nikolayev, who does a great deal of work for drama
theatres, permanently lives in the world of "real-life" heroes. The vivid
intonations which he discovers in applied genres are further developed in his
symphonic, chamber and operatic music.

The impressions left by the first performance of the latest musical
compositions convince one that it is precisely those composers who work
successfully in all the genres, including the most democratic ones—such as
operetta, light music, song, music for the cinema and the theatre, etc.— that
do not lose the feeling of the times and create lively works which give
pleasure because of their novelty. This novelty is organically brought out by
its being in touch with life and not artificially invented. Isn't this the
secret of the "communicability"  of the music of Tikhon Khrennikov, Rodion
Shchedrin, Andrei Eshpai and Alfred Shnitke?

Here one cannot help but recall the commotion caused by the performance of
Alfred Shnitke's cantata The Story of Doctor Johann Faust—a work which
captivates the listener precisely by its theatricality and orientation at
democratic musical forms. Its author's striving to avoid traditional
infernality in the scene in which Faust dies compelled him to resort to
lowering the genre, as it were, and create a "tango of death", a sort of hit
tune. Some listeners and critics saw a sample of vocal-symphonic pop music in
this paralleling of features from old German art of the baroque period and
today's "microphone" chic.

Nevertheless, the composer works creatively in a strictly academic style.
Quite recently the first performances of such compositions as his Three Poems
by Marina Tsvetayeva for voice and piano and the Septet for clavicembalo,
flute, two clarinets, violin, viola, and cello were held. But the example of
Alfred Shnitke is very indicative of the modern academic school's moving
towards those intonational layers which have become the most widespread among
the masses: from popular specimens of the baroque period to the most modern
forms of song writing.

And what is happening in the centre of the "musical universe"—in the sphere
of the symphony whose mission is to embody the loftiest ideas of all times
and, above all, the ideas of the spiritual consolidation of mankind? In spite
of the prognostications of certain pessimists who prophesied that this genre
would come to an end. Soviet music has been enriched with a large number of
significant compositions within the last few years. When listening to the
Twelfth, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Symphonies by Moisei Vainberg, the
Symphonietta for Strings and French Horn by Yuri Levitin, or the Fifth
Symphony by Boris Tishchenko, we can clearly see the tremendous role which
the great legacy of Dmitri Shostakovich plays in the search for a new
artistic truth and a new "humaneness". Of course, what really matters is not
that his principles of composition and his favourite intonational and
rhythmic formulas "live" in these works. The chief thing is the preservation
of the holy of holies of the legacy of our great contemporary: the purity,
uncompromising character, searing truth and lofty humanism of his art.

This is particularly true of the symphonic and chamber-instrumental works of
Moisei Vainberg. As the magazine Sovetskaya Muzyka (Soviet Music) wrote, "the
great Muse of Shostakovich has not failed to notice Vainberg; he was among
those whom she has blessed with her immortal banner of the October
Revolution. It just could not be otherwise in the general atmosphere of
Soviet art that Shostakovich has created..."

The symphonic creativity of Gia Kancheli, one of the most talented Georgian
composers of the middle-age generation, has developed in this atmosphere. His
work is characterised by a philosophical style of writing originating in the
particular imagery of old Georgian songs and a capacity for the loftiness of
thoughts and feelings which address the "eternal" themes. It is no accident
that Tikhon Khrennikov made this remark about Kancheli's Fourth Symphony
which is dedicated to the memory of Michelangelo: "In this symphony we can
hear the voice of a contemporary artist inspired by the life of our age and
perturbed by its upheavals, its heroic deeds and its unparalleled dramas."

Gia Kancheli's Fifth Symphony was his crowning achievement. What had been
attained by Shostakovich in working out the conceptions of the life of man
and mankind was "grasped" and transferred by Kancheli into the soil of modern
musical dramaturgy which is even more expressive and laconic and even more
contrasting and multifaceted. This is the symphonic music of our own day.

And here is a symbolic detail: Kancheli is a brilliant composer of light
music. He has composed widely popular songs, operettas and music for the
theatre and the cinema, including the artistically indisputable music for the
Leningrad Bolshoi Drama Theatre's production of the play Khanuma staged by
the prominent director Georgi Tovstonogov.

Rhythm and the Times
Thirty years have passed since Boris Tchaikovsky's music first surprised and
captivated music lovers and "connoisseurs". The performance of his latest
Third Symphony made a real sensation, since it showed the artist's
breakthrough to new worlds of sound. The fanciful orchestration and the
imaginal and metrorhythmic spheres of the symphony seem even mysterious. And
they are not so easy to unravel even with the aid of the composer.

"Yes, I love rhythm," he admits. And, knowing of his taciturnity, the
journalist clutches at these words like a drowning man at a straw:

"When listening to your Third Symphony, one gets the feeling that you love...
clocks."

"But the circulation of the blood also has rhythm," replies Tchaikovsky.

And this sounds like the final chord. His speech shows the same precision and
laconism which are typical of his musical thinking. He does not care for
long-winded verbosity, particularly with respect to art. Nor does he care for
gaudy fashion and cheap success.

"Boris Tchaikovsky is a composer with a distinct voice of his own and with
his own beautiful and meaningful spiritual world," Georgi Sviridov says about
his colleague. "He creates works which are leading Soviet symphonic music
onto new paths."

Boris Tchaikovsky has produced a good number of compositions of the most
varied genres, including the cantata Signs of the Zodiac, the vocal cycles
Lyrics of Pushkin and The Last Spring to verses by Zabolotsky* which was
recently performed for the first time, as well as musical fairy-tales for
children and various scores for the screen. And yet it is only fair to point
out that the thirty years in which he has been very famous have been thirty
years of growing success in the most difficult and noble sphere of musical
creativity—symphonism and chamber-instrumental genres. Each of his steps
along this path is marked by genuine originality, boldness of ideas, and an
uncompromising   artist's   attitude   towards   their implementation.

Some critics note the singular links of the composer with the traditions of
Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Stravinsky and, beside these, his ties with the
baroque and early classical period. Indeed, in his music there are moments of
an unusual blending of styles and a dialogue with the art of previous eras.
Yet he has his own favourite method of "growing" a symphonic whole out of an
elementary melodic "kernel" and his own world outlook and a passion for
unexpected transformations.

"In this music good is not contrasted with evil and light with darkness,"
says Boris Tchaikovsky, in reference to his Theme and Eight Variations
produced at the request of German friends for the 425th anniversary of the
Dresden Staatskapelle, "it is simply that the one merges onto the other. That
is, each image contains within itself rudiments of its opposite, as it
were..."

And the listener witnesses wonderful musical transformations: austerity turns
into tenderness, and violent and resolute rhythms suddenly bring the listener
to the "azure" shores of love lyrics. And this involuntarily brings to mind
the words of the father of Russian classical music Mikhail Glinka:
"Everything in life is a counterpoint, that is, an opposite."

Unlike many of his contemporaries, the composer does not foster the images of
an alienated intellect, an inharmonious conscience, and mechanical forces of
oppression. As the years go by, the ideas of beauty, harmony, and the unity
between the elements of nature and human life are achieving an ever greater
triumph in his music. Boris Tchaikovsky never repeats himself. He is always
searching for a fresh departure. Being a consistent adherent to classical
methods of composition, he also polemises with them. Relying on song
folklore, he nevertheless does not become its "debtor" in composing his
striking lyrical "songs without words". The brilliance of constructive
solutions does not eclipse the sensual, profoundly emotional essence of his
music. For all the sophistication of compositional techniques it never loses
its clarity and keeps the prevalent tendency of moving towards light,
warm-heartedness and the loftiest sense of humanity.

Such are the composer's finest works which have won wide recognition from the
public both in the Soviet Union and abroad. They include the early
Symphonietta for String Orchestra; the fundamental Second Symphony; the
brilliant and popular concertos for cello, clarinet, violin, and piano; six
string quartets that strike the listener with the novelty and dynamism of
chamber forms; and finally, the Third (Sevastopol) Symphony—a magnificent
one-movement composition of cosmic breath, a true revelation. It is in the
Sevastopol Symphony that Boris Tchaikovsky's lyrical hero seems to acquire a
feeling of the universe and a sense of historical time.

This feeling is generally characteristic of great artists of the 20th
century—novelists, dramatists, painters and poets. It is no accident that, in
analysing the Sevastopol Symphony, one Soviet musicologist recalls the image
of the "well of time" appearing in the beginning of Thomas Mann's novel
Joseph and His Brothers. Anyone who looks into this well will see in it both
his own reflection and the outlines of the past. To perceive the past in
one's own self, to see the origins of the present in the past, and to unite
in oneself the flows of different historical times—such is the philosophic
implication of this polysemous and profound musical composition.

"I worked on the symphony for a long time," says the composer, "sometimes
putting it to one side, then later going back to it again... The theme of the
symphony, as can be discerned from its title, is pages from Russian history
related to the heroic past of Sevastopol, a great Russian city which has
twice displayed tremendous valour in the struggle against an enemy."

In this symphony comprising contrasting episodes, one can hear the deep
breath of epic tales and elevated chorals with a hint of bitterness—a memory
of faraway and recent tragic years... However, it is ever-present image of
pulsating time, the magic of the main rhythmical theme threading the fabric
of the entire symphony, rather than the groundwork of "events" that creates
the tense atmosphere of the music.

"Boris Alexandrovich, is there an image of time and its grandeur in your
symphony?"

"There is an image of the sea. And it is as majestic and eternal as time."

"Then there is some unworldly feeling of space in it, isn't there?"

"A feeling of space is not necessarily unreal or unworldly. The music of the
symphony is perfectly 'real', but... it is outside time."

The composer dedicated his new symphonic poem The Wind of Siberia to its
first interpreter Vladimir Fedoseyev, conductor of the Grand Symphony
Orchestra of the Central Television and All-Union Radio of the USSR, a
talented propagator of Soviet music. And again we have before us a
composition of high-tension dramaturgy and of cosmic breath that directs the
mind's eye of the listener into the bottomless "well of time"...

A Self-Portrait of the Epoch
This restless and productive "gene" of daring innovation lives in Soviet
music! As the years go by, its eternal youth and permanently agitating and
disturbing presence reveal themselves more and more fully. And then the
moment comes when we become aware of the entire significance of the
mischievous "boyish" pranks that have generated musical processes and
phenomena of an irreversible nature.

For thirty years now the composer and pianist (and even organist too!) Rodion
Shchedrin has been carrying this restless "gene" bequeathed, as it were, by
the greatest musical innovators of our century, Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri
Shostakovich.

Each new composition of his literally explodes old canons.

Thus it was already in his First Piano Concerto in which this final-year
student of the Moscow Conservatoire exploded the academic concerto form with
Semyonovna, a Russian folk chastushka! Thus it was twenty years later in his
Third Piano Concerto in which Shchedrin broke up the traditional logic of the
variational form with reverse movement: from the development section to the
theme, from the intricate to the simple.

As an innovatory artist he has made his presence felt in every musical genre.
He followed up the discovery of the value of the sphere of chastushkas for
professional music in his ballet Little Hunchback Horse and in his opera Not
Love Alone the staging of which marked the founding of the Chamber Music
Theatre in Moscow. And as far as its production at the Kirov Opera Theatre in
Leningrad is concerned, Dmitri Shostakovich himself wrote about it with great
enthusiasm. Nowadays the opera runs in its original two-act version on the
stage of Moscow's Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theatre, and
its continuing success is a victory for the evergreen element of folk lyrical
improvisation and inimitable humour which are so much a part of Shchedrin's
compositions.

And what is to be said about the symphonic Mischievous Chastushkas, which
have become famous throughout the world? Someone made this witty remark: "The
Mischievous Chastushkas became a legend when their young composer was still
in the land of the living."

The composer's experiments in the cantata and oratorio genre resulted in his
producing the unique oratorio Lenin Is in the People's Heart, which is
profoundly vernacular in its spirit and language.

"The literary groundwork of this composition," says the composer, "comprised
texts compiled from the oral transmission of folk dirges by the story-teller
Marfa Kryukova and reminiscences about Lenin produced by his contemporaries.
In the first movement I tried to reproduce a picture of the nationwide
funeral of the dearly loved leader of the revolution, using, in particular,
such techniques as, for example, an imitation of the sound of factory hooters
and railway engine and steamboat whistles—a symbol of mourning which a
musician just could not ignore..."

Rodion Shchedrin expressed his way of conceiving the new tasks of ballet in
three daring scores—Carmen Suite (a ballet transcription of the opera by
Georges Bizet), Anna Karenina (after the novel by Leo Tolstoy), and The
Seagull (based on the play by Anton Chekhov)—staged at the Bolshoi Theatre of
the USSR with the participation of the outstanding ballerina of the day, Maya
Plisetskaya.

What is the secret behind the remarkable success of his music for the ballet
Anna Karenina, which embodied one of the "craziest" ideas of 20th-century
art? It is in the joining together of incompatibles, in the creation of a
unity of opposites. The author, who has shown himself to be a brilliant
interpreter of the psychological pattern of the world-famous novel, puts
forward in the ballet a daring idea of "double music"—two different spiritual
spheres of the development of the action intended to reflect the state of
"duality" characteristic of its heroes. Shchedrin reconstructs the "flavour"
of the Tolstoy period, delicately using melodies and elements of musical
forms peculiar to Pyotr Tchaikovsky, a composer whose creative work, in his
view, "was the nearest to Tolstoy". The integrity of the conception is linked
to the transparent "theme of Anna", desperate, passionate, rebellious,
incomplete—the music of a reckless and fatal "flight" after elusive
happiness...

The natural sense of the stage suggests to Rodion Shchedrin more and more new
forms of self-expression, be it the overture Symphonic Fanfares, the choral
poem The Execution of Pugachov or the symphonic Self-Portrait which was
performed for the first time on the opening day of the Second International
Music Festival in Moscow in May 1984. In this vivid "fresco" marked by an
explosive dramatic content and the confessional intonation of narration the
composer pledged a sort of allegiance to Dmitri Shostakovich's behests and
his mercilessly accurate word about Man.

The composer's turning to relics of the past was quite unexpected. The
performance of his Musical Presentation for organ and wind ensemble in memory
of Johann Sebastian Bach—a composition which astounded virtually everyone,
both laymen and knowledgeable connoisseurs, both friends and enemies—lasts...
two hours and twelve minutes. In it, the composer demonstrated his new
attitude towards the categories of time, memory and history. Alfred Shnitke,
describing his impressions of the author's performance of the Musical
Presentation, said: "As far as I'm concerned, this work is the best that
Shchedrin has ever produced; it opens up an entirely new musical world... He
succeeded in maintaining the level of intonational sharpness from beginning
to end and in achieving, by static means, a tremendous emotional build-up in
his supermonumental composition."

There is always a tense atmosphere of arguments and discussions round
Shchedrin. He has many opponents. Yet he also has admirers who are simply
fanatic about his work.

Among his creations there are specimens of music of "unearthly beauty and
poetry. And yet there are pages which are cool and calculating...

However, everything that he does belongs to Art—that high art whose summits
can only be attained through indomitable searches.

                           * * *

They say that it is not hard to be novel, it is hard to be eternal. The
entire history of Soviet music has been an incessant search for new means of
expressing the reality which is full of unprecedented social accomplishments.
This search has never been a calm one: it has been accompanied by furious
arguments, basic discussions, losses, and defeats. However, this process has
been extremely fruitful  and  has  been crowned  with  truly  remarkable
discoveries.

Not all the "finds" have stood the test of time, which is only natural. What
really matters is that in the finest samples of Soviet music the eternal has
come to speak the only language in which the grandeur and audacity of the
epoch can be expressed.

Soviet music is called to bring the humanistic ideals of our age—the ideals
of peace, goodness and justice—to people. It is precisely on this basis that
its international prestige, fresh evidence of which was the triumphant
success of the Second International Music Festival in Moscow last year, has
become established.

When starting on their unique path in art, young Soviet composers and
performing musicians are armed with the one indubitable principle based on
the experience of past generations: that the means of artistic expression can
and must be extremely diverse, and yet all of them have only one aim—to
foster the best in a human personality. One must remember this today, when
Music has gone beyond the limits of an artistic phenomenon and has acquired
additional social dimensions.

______________________________________________________________________________
(Published with kind permission of Tamara Grum-Grzhimailo)