In February, 215 young musicians from all across the country
were in Leningrad for the final round of the Second National Competition
of Young Musicians. Only two years had elapsed since the first such contest
unveiled a veritable constellation of young talents and many experts doubted
that two years were enough for new talents to emerge. Professor Alexander
Goldenveizer from the Moscow Conservatory, who was on the pianists' jury,
wrote:
"Contrary to all expectations, the quality of this year's
competition was virtually as good as what we had two years ago. Moreover,
the jury had problems finding enough prizes and diplomas to adequately
commend the winners. We named 48 laureates many of whom I'm sure are world-class
musicians."
Well, Professor Goldenveizer certainly knew what he was talking
about. We're now going to present three of those laureates whose names
eventually became known to the whole world…
In the piano competition, first prize went to the 23 year-old
Moscow conservatory graduate Yakov Fliyer. Fliyer was not one of those
up and coming young prodigies who become famous even before their musicianship
really deserves their popularity. Yakov Fliyer started playing concerts
when he was still a student, but each new performance was better than the
previous one underscoring the quick progress being made by the young musician.
After his first big win at the Second National Competition of
Young Musicians, Yakov Fliyer triumphed at a piano contest in Vienna and
two years later, he became a laureate of the prestigious Queen Elizabeth
competition in Brussels where they called him "the knight of romanticism."
Another sensation was caused by the 25 year-old harpist Vera Dulova whose
excellent technique and sparkling inspiration bespoke a sense of musicality
which can only be found in great masters at least twice her age. Vera Dulova
eventually became the first Russian harpist to win European acclaim. Moreover,
the President of the International Harp Players' Society Pierre Jamais
hailed her as the world's best player.
Russia's very best composers were writing pieces especially for
Vera Dulova who was also working hard to expand her repertoire by making
her own arrangements of popular classics.
In the violin section of the 1935 competition, the 27 year-old
David Oistrakh led the pack from day one. A native of the Black Sea port
city of Odessa, Oistrakh was virtually an unknown entity in Leningrad and
Moscow…
The year 1935 was a real windfall for Oistrakh who followed up
his triumph in Leningrad with an equally stellar performance at the Wienijawski
competition in Warsaw and during his first-ever European tour.
"Back in those days, the Europeans looked at us, Soviet
musicians, as if we had come from another planet. Newspapers provided detailed
accounts of how we played, dressed and talked. Because the Western press
had been picturing the new Russia as a cultural wasteland, people there
were really surprised by what we did and we really enjoyed the good impression
we made there…"
In December, composer Georgy Sviridov finished the score of a
vocal cycle based on poems by Russia's greatest poet Alexander Pushkin
who had inspired some of this country's foremost composers. Which means
that the 20 year-old aspiring composer from a small provincial town had
virtually taken on the greatest composer Russia had ever had. A task all
the more challenging since the cycle was actually the first major composition
written by the aspiring author.
When, a few months later, Sviridov presented his composition
during his entrance exams at the Leningrad Conservatory, it won him easy
admittance to this country's oldest musical institution. Those love songs,
hailed as "the veritable gems of 20th century classical music,"
were eventually performed by many leading Russian singers. The Leningrad
Opera Theater, formerly the Mariinsky, was given the name of the city's
assassinated communist party leader Sergei Kirov. One could only wonder
why one of the country's oldest theaters, which had seen the premiers of
the greatest Russian classics and graced by performances of such all-time
luminaries as Fyodor Chaliapin and others, was named after a Communist
leader and not the people who had made the Mariinsky world famous… Justice
prevailed in 1996 when the Mariinsky was given back its original name.
On October 24, 1935 the State Opera and Ballet Theater in Gorky,
now Nizhny Novgorod, began its first season with a production of Alexander
Borodin's opera Prince Igor. The 250-strong company, led by the well-know
director Appoliary Lossky, presented five more operas and a ballet, all
played to capacity audiences that thronged the theater's 1000-seat hall.
In Moscow, the Bolshoi Theater came up with two premieres. One
was Lady Macbeth of Mzensk by Dmitry Shostakovich. The opera was played
for the first time two years before at Leningrad's Maly Opera and at the
Moscow Nemirovich-Danchenko theater. After seeing the Bolshoi's production,
the respected critic Boris Asafyev extolled Shostakovich's opera as "a
phenomenon of truly Mozartesque scope."
A few months later the Bolshoi presented a new version of the
opera Sadko by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakoff. The opera's fairy-tale theme came
alive in the richly-textured sound of the choir, orchestra and solo singers
conducted by Alexander Melik-Pashayev who just recently had joined the
Bolshoi company. In 1935 the already famous black singer of chamber music,
Marian Anderson gave a series of concerts in Russia.
In the same year the famous French cellist Maurice Marechal performed
in Moscow and Leningrad.
In 1935 the self-taught balalaika virtuoso Pavel Nechiporenko
began raising critical eyebrows and, two years later, he won the first
prize at a national competition. Already an acclaimed musician, Pavel Nechiporenko
graduated from the Moscow Conservatory where he eventually had a class
of his own.
Pavel Nechiporenko is the founding father of modern balalaika
playing which he enriched immensely adding certain elements of guitar playing.
He was one of the first balalaika players to perform classical pieces .
THE RUSSIAN MUSICAL HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 20TH
CENTURY is prepared for you by Olga Fyodorova.
