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1971
             
Flying like a bird, at least once in a lifetime, this dream has been haunting the people's imagination since time out of mind. Many songs and legends have already been written about this primordial urge. The ancient Greek myth about Ikarus who made himself a pair of wings and flew too near the sun inspired a ballet of the same name by the 38 year-old Leningrad composer Sergei Slonimsky. The music caught the fancy of the well-known Moscow dancer Vladimir Vasilyev who not only desired to dance the lead part but also to stage the new ballet. The rehearsals were in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses whose sprawling stage had been the venue for Bolshoi Theater operas and ballets for several years now. The new production made in collaboration with set designer Valery Levental and conductor Eri Klas was a very colorful and inspiring extravaganza...
"A wonderful production!" raved the Bolshoi's chief choreographer Yuri Grigorovich. "We're happy to see the birth of a new and very talented dance-master and we are sure that Vladimir Vasilyev will prove this over and over again…" Vladimir Vasilyev perfectly lived up to the expectations pinned on him by the great choreographer…
Another Leningrad-based composer, Andrei Petrov, sick and tired of years of writing film music, was trying desperately to break free from what had become a drag and get back to where he started - ballet music. Finding an appropriate theme was a major problem. One day, thumbing through an album of Jean Effel's funny drawings where the French artist painted a hilarious picture of the Biblical Creation story with equally amusing characters of Adam and Eve, of God and the Devil. "Man, these could make real great characters for a new ballet!" Andrei thought and immediately got down to work…
In Moscow, choreographers Natalya Kasatkina and Vladimir Vasilyov wrote the original libretto of Genesis and then put it on stage at Leningrad's Kirov Opera and Ballet Theater. The new ballet opening on March 23, 1971 was a great success…
In Moscow, they were holding a national competition of conductors. Inspired by the earlier winners' successful stints at the head of the country's best orchestras and music theaters, the contestants were trying hard to showcase their skills. From the very outset, Moscow Conservatory student Alexander Lazarev leads the field of 63 young musicians...
Conducting was Alexander's second specialty. Once a very promising accordionist, he eventually opted for the difficult job of an orchestra conductor. Alexander Lazarev proved his bona fides at the Bolshoi Theater where he later became an artistic director only to leave the post in the wake of a spate of painful setbacks…
All that came later, and in 1971 Alexander Lazarev was in seventh heaven winning the top prize of the national conductors' competition and hailed by experts as one of the most promising Soviet musicians…
In Moscow, Conservatory undergraduate Valery Polyansky and friends set up a chamber choir. Because to join in you didn't necessarily have to have a remarkable voice, many pianists, musicologists and choirmasters signed up with the new choir, all eager to delve into the church music theretofore little known to the young in a rabidly atheist country where religious music was a virtual taboo. Valery Polyansky did a lot of looking up to find the sheets of the choir concertos by outstanding 18th and 19th century Russian composers. A proponent of everything that was sound and authentic, he never did what other choirs usually engaged in adding secular words to inherently religious music.
The very first performance of the new student choir was held to a full house of followers and Alexander Polyansky had to answer many unpleasant questions asked him by communists apparatchiks manning party committees all across the nation… But, against all odds, the choir managed to stay afloat and eventually even gained professional status.
In Leningrad, they opened a museum of the great 19th century Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov at 28 Zagorodny avenue. Everything was like it was during the life of the great master who lived there fifteen years. Including the large expandable table members of the Great Five which, besides Rimsky-Korsakov, also included Cui, Mussorgsky, Borodin and Balakirev, once used to sit around… There also were the portraits of Rimsky-Korsakov's great-grandfather, uncle and his elder brother - naval officers all, the desk on which he wrote his last operatic masterpieces, the baby-grand that once provided accompaniment to Fyodor Chaliapin and other great singers…
The cozy museum soon became a cultural high point where they held all kinds of conferences and concerts, a place where music lovers came from all across the nation trying to comprehend the mysterious inner world of the composer who wrote such unforgettable music…
The cultural exchanges were going strong and Moscow plays host first to the Vienna Opera company led by Karl Boem and the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by the venerable composer Benjamin Britten…
Meanwhile, Russian singers and conductors were having the music world abuzz with Yelena Obraztsova singing in London, Irina Arkhipova in Milan, Gennady Rozhdestvensky conducting in Stockholm and Washington and the famous Soviet Army Dance and Song Ensemble, named after its founding father Alexander Alexandrov, entertaining a 100,000 strong crowd in East Germany and wowing the French for already the fifth time now…
The composer Alexandra Pakhmutova and her poet husband Nikolai Dobronravov write a series of songs commemorating the world's first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin who tragically died when the fighter plane he piloted crashed in 1968. Singing the song cycle, aptly titled The Gagarin Constellation, was Yuri Gulyayev, a close friend of Gagarin's…
Arno Babadzhanyan's song Wedding inimitably performed by Muslim Magomayev, shot up the Soviet charts with the whole nation singing along with the popular singer…
Jazz singer Larisa Dolina was creating quite a stir, but before very long she opted for the more tried and true pop music format which quickly made her popular and rich… But never again will she be able to measure up to the dream-come-true finesse she once experienced singing jazz…
 
THE RUSSIAN MUSICAL HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 20TH CENTURY is prepared for you by Olga Fyodorova.


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