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1956
1957
             
In Russia, the biggest highlight of the year was the Sixth World Youth Festival in Moscow.
The brainchild of Communist ideologues, the awe-inspiring forums of socialist-minded young people were held in the Warsaw Pact capitals once every two years and it was now Moscow's turn to play host to about 34,000 guests from 131 countries. Never before had the Russians seen so many foreigners who were so surprisingly different in their tastes and manners, were more open and relaxed, who dressed, sung and danced differently…
There were lots of contests unfolding on the fringes of the Sixth Youth Festival, the most representative being the singers competition with the formidable Italian tenor Tito Schipa presiding over the jury. The gold medal went to the 23 year old Tamara Milashkina who was still studying at the Moscow Conservatory.
The lucky owner of a very beautiful soprano, Tamara Milashkina made a head-spinning career joining the team of Bolshoi lead singers, winning the music-lovers' hearts in Milan, Paris and New York and, lavishly decorated, departed the stage forty years after…
The 28-year-old bass singer Nikolai Gyaurov joined the Bolshoi Opera company. The Sofia-born conservatory graduate, he came to the country of the great Fyodor Chaliapin and studied in Leningrad and Moscow. After winning a major singers' competition in Paris, Nikolai Gyaurov returned to Moscow and signed up with the Bolshoi Theater, which had always been famous for its formidable bass singers…
Nikolai Gyaurov spend only a year at the Bolshoi but he still says it was the pinnacle of his entire stage career. After leaving the Bolshoi, he performed on the best opera stages in Europe and America establishing himself as the world's number one bass singer.
In the same year of 1957, the Bolshoi Opera took on board Galina Oleinichenko whose free-flowing coloratura soprano had just conquered the hearts of the jury at a authoritative singers' competition in Toulouse, France. She was the first Russian to win a Grand Prix there…
Young Russian musicians ruled supreme at other major international competitions too with the 26-year-old Boris Gutnikov winning the gold medal at the prestigious Jacques Tibauld violin contest in Paris…
A real virtuoso, Boris Gutnikov was second to none shining at a string of European competitions from Paris to Prague to Moscow…
The 29-year-old Moscow-based pianist Naum Shtarkman set out for his first competition in Lisbon, dedicated to the famous Portuguese pianist and composer Vian da Mota. Naum successfully sailed through the contest's very challenging program finishing first in a field of about fifty players gathered from all around the world. Shtarkman easily handles Bach's lavish polyphony and Debussis' chantlike presentation of the words, he takes heart in the stirring pathos of Lizst and the poetic lyricism of Schubert…
Naum Shtarkman is still performing stunning listeners with the diversity and excellence of his inimitable playing…
…In November the country was celebrating the 40th anniversary of the October revolution and Dmitry Shostakovich had decided to make his new symphony, already his eleventh, to coincide with the momentous event. Shostakovich said his new work would go back to the days of the first Russian revolution of 1905 which was set off by the bloody massacre of a peaceful rally gathered on St.Petersburg's Palace Square…
There was more to Shostakovich's new symphony that just met the eye though. In a letter to a very close friend, the composer wrote that with his music he was "consigning to perdition the bloodsucking butchers of the distant and not so distant past…" - a clear reference to Stalin's henchmen who had caused such an irreparable damage to Russian culture…
Preparing the Leningrad premiere of the 11th Symphony was Shostakovich's good friend, conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky. The authorities believed, however, that the capital was the only right place for the first performance of such an ideologically correct composition. In Moscow, Natan Rakhlin conducted the premiere on October 30 and, four days later, Yevgeny Mravinsky finally took over in Leningrad offering a textbook interpretation of Shostakovich's timeless masterpiece…
The Soviet newspapers offered glowing reviews heaping praise on the 11th symphony. It was the first such show of such overwhelming recognition of anything that had ever been written by Dmitry Shostakovich…
In 1957 the 40 year old Israel Gusman took over the Gorky Symphony Orchestra. An amazingly gifted musician, Gusman took a mere few years to turn the lackluster provincial outfit into one of the country's best orchestra which he led for nearly 40 years…
It was the time when the name of Georgy Garanyan, a self-taught sax player well heeled in jazz standards, started appearing on Moscow's billboards. No one played this music like the way he did… Garanyan had learned the art of jazz playing, of all places, at the Machine Tool Building Institute which then boasted an excellent jazz band. Many of band members eventually dropped the math to become leading jazz players…
In 1957 there came out The Height - a lyrical comedy about the life of high-rise builders. The film's title song written by Moscow Conservatory graduate Rodion Shchedrin immediately caught on with the public. It was a rare deviation from the classical format for Shchedrin who has since become one of Russia's foremost composers...
 
THE RUSSIAN MUSICAL HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 20TH CENTURY is prepared for you by Olga Fyodorova.


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