A must-follow Twitter account for Russian music fans

 

Caption for the above photo, taken from Twitter, "The infamous Tikhon Khrennikov (10 June 1913-2007) with the famous Sergei Prokofiev."

The photo is from the myaskoviev 2 Twitter account, which is run by a gentleman from Australia named Melvyn Madigan. The name of the account refers to Nicolai Myaskovsky and his pal Sergei Prokofiev. The current account is a successor to the myaskofiev Twitter account, where Mr. Madigan states his musical preferences: "TCHAIKOVSKY & PROKOFIEV are justly the most performed Russians. Also love Myaskovsky and others. (But, not Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Rachmaninov)."

This is half a loaf from my point of view, as I like Shostakovich and Stravinsky, but it's a very tasty half loaf, as I love Prokofiev and also enjoy Myaskovsky. But in fact, photos related to Shostakovich and Stravinsky do crop up. Below is another photo from the account I liked (I've copied Mr. Madigan's captions):

Prokofiev diary (Moscow), 16 April 1933: "Shostakovich, just back from Sverdlovsk, called in. He wanted me to take a score of his to Lenfilm. I told him about performances of his works in the West I had attended. We went to the Central Telegraph with his wife, charming woman."

The little guy is Vissarion Shebalin (11 June 1902-1963).

 [And that's Prokofiev in the middle].

Marina Frolova-Walker on 1948 in Soviet music

1948 was a dramatic year in Soviet music; it saw the condemnation of Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Khachaturian, Myaskovsky, Popov, Shebalin and Popov. As Russian music specialist Marina Frolova-Walker notes in the interesting video lecture, above,  the condemnation damaged all of the top composers at the time.

While some elements of the story did not surprise me, I learned many interesting or amusing details. For example, it's well-known that Shostakovich wrote the Song of the Forests to please Stalin, but I did not know that a tune from the work is a popular children's song in Japan. The remarks on what officials had to come up to award the Stalin Prize with so many top composers essentially ruled ineligible also was interesting. I have the video above, but for a transcript and other information, go here. Frolova-Walker is a Russian native but now a professor of music history at Cambridge University. 

I would love to see a full list of the works condemned and banned from performance in 1948. I could not find it, the best I could do was this: "A signifcant part of denounced composers and their works are as follows: Shostakovich’s opera The Nose, Symphony Nos. 2, 3, 8, 9 and Second Piano Sonata; Prokofiev’s ballets The Prodigal Son, On the Boristhenes, Pas Dacier and his operas The Flaming Angel, War and Peace, Symphony Nos. 3, 4, 5, 6, Piano Concerto, Fifth Piano Sonata, and a number of piano works; Khachaturian’s Symphonie-Poeme; Mossolov’s Iron Foundry, Newspaper Advertisements; Knipper’s opera North Wind, Tales of a Porcelain Buddha; Shebalin’s Lenin Symphony, Symphony No. 2, the Quartet and String Trio; Popov’s Symphony No. 1; Liatoshinsky’s Symphony No. 2 and songs; Boelza’s Symphony Nos. 1, 2 and songs; Litinsky’s: Quartets and Sonatas; Shcherbachev’s Symphony No. 3, Popov’s Symphony No. 3, Miaskovsky’s Symphony Nos. 10, 13, Third Piano Sonata, Fourth Piano Sonata, etc." (Source).

The video lecture is part of a series although I can't find a handy playlist on YouTube, but this list of videos seems to do the job. There's much of interest at the  official website for Professor Frolova-Walker, although the videos section needs to be updated. 

Apparently her books are must-reads (she even wrote one on the Stalin Prize) and I will hunt them up soon. 

An interesting Riccardo Chailly album

 

Riccardo Chailly is a big name Italian conductor, and he's done the sort of projects you'd expect from an important conductor: A Brahms symphony cycle, the Mahler symphonies, etc.

But he's also demonstrated an ability for interesting programming on his recordings, and I wanted to call attention to his Prokofiev/Mosolov/Varèse album, pictured above, which puts mid-1920s compositions in dialogue, and which also counts as a (mostly) Russian Futurist album.

The album features a good performance of Prokofiev's Third Symphony and also includes Alexander Mosolov's Iron Foundry and Edgard Varèse's Arcana. 

Prokofiev composed his Symphony No. 3 in 1928, Iron Foundry was written in 1926 or 1927 and Arcana was written 1925-1927, so all of the music dates to about the same period. And it's good that Chailly took the occasion to introduce Mosolov to listeners who might only have known about Prokofiev and  Varèse.

Other good Chailly albums include two Shostakovich recordings: The Jazz Album and The Film Album.