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1946
1947
             
In 1947 this country was celebrating the 30th anniversary of the 1917 revolution... It was a kind of holiday everyone was expected to celebrate with labor achievements. Workers were overfulfilling their plans, scientists were dedicating their work to the upcoming event and composers, poets and writers extolling the socialist way of life.
Composer Sergei Prokofyev was writing an appropriately-titled cantata to lyrics by Yevgeny Dolmatovsky. The composition premiered on 0ctober 3rd 1947 in the Big Hall of the Moscow Conservatory.
But even in a time-serving and over-the-top composition like this, Prokofyev still remained the great composer he was inviting a wave of spiteful criticism encouraged by the totalitarian state which never acknowledged him as one of its own...
The year 1947 was a very busy one for Prokofyev who was working on several major pieces, like the Ninth Piano Sonata he was writing especially for Svyatoslav Richter.
"This one is for you," he told Richter. "There are no finger-twisting runs here though, and I'm afraid it will not boggle the minds of those who come to hear it in the Big Hall of the Conservatory..."
Simple and unsophisticated as it initially seemed to him, Richter eventually fell in love with the music...
"It is so awash with light, it even has an intimate ring to it," he confessed, "the more you listen, the better it sounds..."
On April 20th a young violinist with a familiar name came out on the stage of the Big Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. Yes, it was the son of the great David Oistrakh and the father and son partnered on stage that night playing the Concerto for two violins by Johann Sebastian Bach.
Igor Oistrakh took up the violin at the tender age of six, but the sounds he extracted from his instrument were so unlike the divine music he could hear coming from his father's room... Frustrated, the boy decided to give up and it took his father's teacher Pyotr Stolyarsky a whole week to get him practicing again. The seasoned teacher helped the boy to overcome the painful initial stage and the 15-year-old lgor Oistrakh was now standing on stage by his father's side and it was really hard to tell who of them was more nervous...
From that day on, the father and son often played together. The record they jointly released in France in 1961 won the Grand Prix of the year instituted by the Charles Creau Academy.
On December 3rd people flocked into the Big Hall of the Moscow Conservatory to enjoy the performance by the outstanding Russian pianist Konstantin lgumnov who was playing sonatas by Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Chopin and pieces by Schubert and Rubinstein.
"lgumnov was really inspired that night," went one rave account. "His playing was so overflowing with noble simplicity and pristine modesty; It's hard to imagine how one's refined performance can be taken to even higher levels of mastery. Each nuance is an example for emulation, every tiny detail deserves admiration..."
It was lgumnov's last performance. Three months later he died not living to celebrate his 75th birthday...
In summer they were holding in Prague, Czechoslovakia, the First World Youth Festival where the Russian composer Anatoly Novikov won the highest award for his Democratic Youth March. The march was later used to open all the subsequent youth festivals held biannually in one of the Warsaw Pact capitals.
In 1947 Moscow was celebrating its 800th birthday. Dozens of new songs had been written to glorify Russia's biggest city and the best ones have happily lived to these days...
The popular composer Vasily Solovyov-Sedoi wrote a song for the World War Two veterans. Memories of the war were still fresh and the beautiful song struck an immediate chord with the people. It can still be heard at veteran reunions and during traditional Victory Day celebrations.
In 1947 The outstanding Hungarian composer, folklore enthusiast and teacher Zoltan Kodaly was making his first tour of Russia conducting recitals of his own works...
They opened a conservatory In Gorky, the biggest city on the Volga. Leading professors had come in from Moscow and Leningrad to teach in this country's fourth institute of higher musical learning.
In Kazan, the capital of the Tatar autonomous republic, Oleg Lundstrom formed a jazz orchestra consisting mostly of the children of Soviet specialists building the East China Railway. The orchestra had initially played in Harbin and were now taking their act to Russia...
In 1947 Lyudmila Zykina joined the famous Pyatnitsky Folk Choir. Her singing revealed a voice that was amazingly warm and tinged with the heart-rending sadness so characteristic of the Russian vocal tradition.
Soon after Zykina became Russia's best-loved singer, sweeping the country's highest awards and entertaining audiences all around the world. She is still going strong and admired by her listeners.
In 1947 they released the screen version of Cinderella set to music written by Antonio Spadavecchia. The story by Charles Perrault about a hard working maiden-turned-princess was very consonant with the communist dream. The Soviet girls were now trying the Cinderella story on themselves, imagining themselves dancing with the King and singing a happy song...
 
THE RUSSIAN MUSICAL HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 20TH CENTURY is prepared for you by Olga Fyodorova.


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