1901 | 1902 | 1903 | 1904 | 1905
1906 | 1907 | 1908 | 1909 | 1910
1911 | 1912 | 1913 | 1914 | 1915
1916 | 1917 | 1918 | 1919 | 1920
1921 | 1922 | 1923 | 1924 | 1925
1926 | 1927 | 1928 | 1929 | 1930
1931 | 1932 | 1933 | 1934 | 1935
1936 | 1937 | 1938 | 1939 | 1940
1941 | 1942 | 1943 | 1944 | 1945
1946 | 1947 | 1948 | 1949 | 1950
1951
             
After three years of being unable to perform their major works in public, some of this country's foremost composers, stigmatized by the Soviet Communist party as "formalists", finally bent under the state pressure and started churning out uninspired but politically correct music and film scores. Their new effort was not lost on the big shots in the Kremlin…
Dmitry Shostakovish was officially nominated for the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation. On February 18, "with a feeling of high responsibility, he took up his parliamentary duties", as the newspaper "Pravda" proudly reported. Besides, the famous composer was continuously asked to attend all kinds of peace forums and make public statements to this effect.
"I'm a musician, but I am also a Soviet citizen," Shostakovich said in an interview with "Vechernyaya Moskva" newspaper. "I would really love to be able to speak to the people in the language of music, but the language of music has no words like "war" and so my conscience obligates me to combine notes with words. That's why I have to detach myself from the notational paper and go where people want to hear words of peace…"
And go he did, leaving behind preludes and fugues - a larger-than-life piano cycle - his tribute to the great Johann Sebastian Bach. Just like his German precursor, Shostakovich was out to write preludes and fugues in all existing tonalities.
On November 18, 1951 Shostakovich performed some of this new music at a rendition held at the Small Hall of the Leningrad Philharmonic. The lavishly polyphonic pieces were a resounding success and have since become modern-time classics played all around the world.
Composer Sergei Prokofyev, still hurting after the thrashings he had suffered at the hands of the Communist party watchdogs, was now fighting a loosing battle with failing health. His doctors kept asking him to take a break, but to someone like Prokofyev, inaction was worse than death itself and, ignoring the doctors' bans, he kept working on. As always, he was writing several pieces all at the same time. One of them was a symphonic overture called "Where the Volga Meets the Don" - a solemn ode to the completion of the construction of the Volga-Don Canal. Obviously made to order, this piece did absolutely nothing to enhance its author's reputation and was quickly forgotten…
The suites from his all new Tale of the Stone Flower ballet, however, made an immediate shortcut to the people's hearts and remain very popular now.
It was the debut year for the popular Russian composer Andrei Eshpai. The 26 year old Conservatory student unveiled his first major works and it became immediately clear that there was a big star rising over the Soviet musical horizon.
Andrei Eshpai comes from the Mari Autonomous republic on the Volga. His father was a composer and a great connoisseur of Mari folk music. "He said his duty was to convey to the people the beauty and magnitude of folk art," Andrei said of his father from whom he inherited a wealth of beautiful Mari folk melodies he so generously shared with the whole world…
Symphonic Dances on Mari Themes is the first major piece written by Andrei Eshpai who has since become one of Russia's foremost composers.
On November 13 there came the sad news of the death in London of the outstanding Russian composer and pianist Nikolai Mettner. An honors graduate of the Moscow Conservatory in 1900, he had his name emblazoned in gold on a marble plaque, alongside other remarkable Conservatory graduates. Later that same year he won accolades playing at the Anton Rubinstein International Competition in Vienna. Acting on the strength of his newly-won popularity, Nikolai Mettner embarked on a solo career often playing his very own compositions. The 1917 revolution cut short this happy streak though and Mettner spent the rest of his life in emigration never losing hope of someday getting back to the country he loved…
Nikolai Mettner left behind more than 60 compositions, most of them piano pieces and old Russian love songs. It's so amazing how this man really managed to stay away from all that crazy 20th century experimentation, avoid the maelstrom of different styles and for a long 70 years to remain his own self…
Meanwhile, Russian violinists created a big stir scooping four of the twelve awards at the Queen Elizabeth Music Competition in Brussels. The highest award went to the 27 year old Leonid Kogan.
Leonid Kogan was already a well known name in Russia. He was the whiz kid who had equally been admired by Conservatory professors and ordinary music lovers. Coming to Moscow from his native Ukraine at the tender age of nine, Leonid was immediately admitted to the class of musically endowed children under the Moscow Conservatory. At the age of twelve, the young violinist had his first solo concert and, four years later, he was already playing Brahms in the Big Hall of the Moscow Conservatory.
Leonid Kogan was a born winner and he reiterated his reputation just fine winning the very prestigious competition in Brussels…
The victory also won him a place among the world's leading musicians.
1951 was also the beginning of the dream-come-true career of conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky. The exceptionally gifted 20 year old musician started out conducting a student orchestra at the Big Hall of the Moscow Conservatory and later moving to the venerated Bolshoi Theater where he had the privilege of steering the house orchestra through Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty ballet.
Over the years Gennady Rozhdestvensky rose to become one of the best conductors alive leading the foremost Russian orchestras as well as the Swedish Royal Orchestra and the BBC Orchestra in London. He performed in the world's very best venues introducing the audiences to many previously unknown and forgotten music.
In 1951 East Berlin was playing host to a World Festival of Democratic Youth Organizations. This political forum, attended mainly by representatives of the Warsaw Pact countries, was traditionally accompanied by a musical competition, this time won, among others, by the 27 year old Russian clarinetist Ivan Mozgovenko. Six years before that he, a Red Army soldier, received a medal for fighting the Nazis in the streets of Berlin, and now he was getting a second decoration in that very same city…
In 1951 Ivan Mozgovenko started teaching at Moscow's Gnessins Music Institute. He is still working there enjoying the well-deserved reputation of one of this country's leading music instructor …
 
THE RUSSIAN MUSICAL HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 20TH CENTURY is prepared for you by Olga Fyodorova.


BACK TO MAIN PAGE