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1943
             
The year was 1943… The German troops were advancing on all fronts, but, after the disastrous thrashing they got in Stalingrad the year before, it already started looking like the hated enemy would eventually be destroyed and driven out of this country. During that time of trouble, the great Russian art came as a powerful boost to the Russian soldiers' spirit helping to bring nearer the much-awaited victory…
In February they were holding a festival of Russian classical music at the Northern Fleet. Leading musicians from Moscow were treating the sailors to all-time evergreens by Mikhail Glinka, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Alexander Borodin, Modest Mussorgsky and other Russian classics.
Putting their lives on the line, violinist David Oistrakh, pianist Lev Oborin and members of the Beethoven quartet flew from Moscow into the Nazi-besieged Leningrad entertaining the citizens in between artillery barrages. Officers and soldiers of the Leningrad Front, which was running just a few miles away from the city, packed the freezing halls. The concerts were broadcast by radio and people all across the city could listen in through loudspeakers hung up on lamp-posts in every street.
In late-1943 they organized in Sverdlovsk the professional Urals Folk Choir led by Lev Khristiansen, an outstanding choirmaster and a connoisseur of local folk songs. The choir performed mostly for officers and soldiers from the newly-formed regiments.
In Moscow they set up another choir of Russian folk songs most of which were arranged by one of this country's foremost choirmasters, Alexander Sveshnikov.
When it became obvious that the Germans would never come close to Moscow again, musicians started getting back, the first being the State Symphony Orchestra led by Natan Rakhlin. On March 18th they played patriotically uplifting music by Dmitry Shostakovich and Alexander Borodin to an appreciative audience packing the Hall of Columns in Moscow.
In summer, the Bolshoi Opera and Ballet companies returned from Kuibyshev, now Samara, and immediately announced a competition to fill a number of vacancies which had opened since the theater was moved to the Volga city away from the raging war. It was then that the 23 year-old bass Ivan Petrov joined the world-renowned company to eventually sing lead parts there and become a welcome performer worldwide. In Paris they would some day call him a successor to the great Fyodor Chaliapin.
On March 28th came the sad news of the death in Beverly Hills, California, of the great Russian composer and pianist Sergei Rakhmaninoff. Until his very last day his thoughts were with his faraway Russia which was locked in a deadly battle with the Nazis. Rakhmaninoff had closely been watching the events unfolding on the Eastern front and was in seventh heaven learning that the Red Army had routed the Germans in Stalingrad. Throughout the war, Rakhmaninoff made numerous donations to the "Help Russia" fund. Cancer-stricken and unable to play, he suffered immensely at the thought that he was no longer able to help his country…
Rakhmaninoff's demise came as a shock to his many admirers. The more so since only a handful of people knew about the deadly disease which he fought bravely performing until the very last few weeks until death silenced him forever…
Sergei Rakhmaninoff was more than loved, he was literally idolized by his admirers, who extolled him as "the world's greatest pianist" and one of the best composers alive, even though Rakhmaninoff's larger than life talent became fully appreciated only after his death.
The Polish pianist Josef Hofmann wrote a moving obituary calling Rakhmaninoff a man "with hands of steel and a heart of gold." "I always tipped my hat to Rakhmaninoff as a musical genius and loved the human side of his nature," he wrote.
In Russia, Rakhmaninoff's many fans were devastated by the news of his death. Conductor Nikolai Golovanov organized a memorial concert offering the first-time performance of the Third Symphony Rakhmaninoff wrote shortly before his death.
Composer Reinhold Gliere was putting the finishing touches to his Concerto for voice and orchestra which was an absolutely "peaceful" composition bristling with youthful freshness and joy. "I wanted to tell people," he said, "that even at this time of trouble, we need spring, love and hope for a better tomorrow…"
The Concerto, which premiered in the Moscow Hall of Columns on May 12, 1943, was a deafening success and it eventually made its way into the repertoire of more than 70 singers around the world. The composer was awarded the prestigious Stalin Prize for his outstanding effort…
In 1943 there came out the film Two Soldiers with music written by Nikita Bogoslovsky. The songs from the film, however, had become popular long before the film actually hit the screens. The prominent singer and actor Mark Bernes who played the film's main character, had sung them many times entertaining the Red Army soldiers out on the frontlines.
The year 1943 also saw the premiere of several new songs which have since been recorded in millions of copies and are still very popular in this country. One of them, called Wishstone by composer Boris Mokroussov, is about the Red Navy sailors who heroically defended the Black Sea port, Sevastopol. Eventually forced to abandon the city to the enemy, one of the sailors takes with him a little stone vowing to recapture his native city and return the stone to where he took it…
…It's autumn and the birch trees are shedding their leaves onto the ground. Soldiers are relaxing under the trees… Some are slumbering, others are quietly talking over the details of the latest fight or remembering home. One of them, with an accordion, starts playing an old waltz and, for a brief moment, the battle-hardened men forget about the fighting, about blood and death, conjuring up the dear images of their mothers, wives and loved ones…
Matvei Blanter's Singing in the Forest was one of the best-loved wartime songs …
 
THE RUSSIAN MUSICAL HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 20TH CENTURY is prepared for you by Olga Fyodorova.


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