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 | 1952 | 1953 | 1954 | 1955
1956 | 1957 | 1958 | 1959 | 1960
1961 | 1962 | 1963 | 1964 | 1965
1966 | 1967 | 1968 | 1969 | 1970
1971 | 1972 | 1973 | 1974
1975
             
The whole country was celebrating 30 years since the great Allied Victory over Nazi Germany. The Composer's Union and the National Choral Society held a nationwide contest for the best song about the war. Hundreds of applications were made. David Tukhmanov's Victory Day was a hands down winner, but the jury was not sure the tango format was best suited for a song remembering the bloodiest war ever fought… And still, the majority of jury members voted for Tukhmanov's entry…
The choice proved absolutely right. The Victory day immediately caught on with the people, especially the war veterans in whom it was bringing back the faraway Forties when they were so young and danced tango which was so popular back in those days… For them the happy Victory day in May 1945 forever remained a celebration with tears in the eyes, a day where joy and grief come together in a powerful outburst of emotion which is so hard to hold back…
Before long, the song became a must feature of each and every Victory Day celebration marked in a country which lost 30 million people to that terrible war…
Many theaters offered new productions of plays recreating the events of the Second World War. In Moscow the Bolshoi Theater was showing The Sunrises Are Quiet Here opera written by the theater's managing director and composer Kirill Molchanov. The opera based on Boris Vasilyev's eponymous story where a small team of Russian anti-aircraft gunners - girls all - engage a gang of German commandos parachuted behind the Soviet lines and heavily outnumbered all die in that uneven battle…
The opera, just like the book it's based on, provides a loving description of the girls, each dreaming about love, happiness and victory. One of them, Zhenya Komelkova, sings a romance she wrote to Konstantin Simonov's hugely popular wartime poem where the author asks his beloved to wait for him and not to believe those who say he's been killed in action…
Kirill Molchanov's The Sunrises Are Quiet Here is one of the best Russian operas about World War Two…
The composer Dmitry Shostakovich marked the 30th Victory Day celebrations in his native Leningrad where on May 10 he attended a chamber performance of his music. Still suffering from his many diseases, he had entrusted his health problems to the best doctors and even psychics. Shostakovich was fighting desperately to stay alive but was gradually succumbing to his many ills. And still the genius kept working on writing a sonata for viola and piano. He kept writing even bedridden in hospital… On August 4 and 5 Shostakovich was putting the finishing touches to the score and told his friends he would definitely be out on the 10th. But, shortly before that self-imposed deadline, his heart stopped beating…
Even though the city was largely deserted just like it always is in summer, thousands of people turned out to bid their last farewell to Dmitry Shostakovich who was more than just a composer, he was a symbol of the Russian nation…
Two months later, the Sonata for viola and piano - Shostakovich's final piece - premiered at the Philharmonic's Small Hall in Leningrad. Playing the viola was Fyodor Druzhinin, the man to whom Shostakovich dedicated the sonata, with Mikhail Muntyan playing the piano part.
The Bolshoi Opera company leave for their first tour of the United States where Russia's oldest musical theater performs an extensive repertoire of 19th and 20th century Russian classics by Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky and Prokofyev on the stage of America's venerable Metropolitan Opera. The very first performance, it was Boris Godunov by Modest Mussorgsky, brought the house down with the audience applauding fervently and the following day's newspapers coming out with splashy headlines extolling what they said was an absolutely stellar performance by the Bolshoi singers which suited just perfectly their theater's grand name…
On March 20 Svyatoslav Richter turned 60. Long the darling of music lovers everywhere, the great pianist had reached the peak of his musical career, with people on all continents bowing their heads in reverence for the man's larger-than-life talent.
Never a fan of grand celebrations, Richter tried hard to avoid the unavoidable anniversary pomp and circumstance, but his effort notwithstanding, all Soviet newspapers came out that day with glowing reviews extolling the great master whom they said was the pride and glory of Soviet pianism and even the world's best player. And still, all that praise that was being lavished on Richter was only meant to fit perfectly into the tried and true cliche of a successful Soviet musician and the true son of the Communist party. What Richter's art is really all about is very hard to comprehend though, because it takes time and distance to really appreciate great people and great musicians…
In the very middle of Richter's birthday celebrations there came the news that he had just been awarded the much-coveted title of Hero of Socialist Labor… A few months later, the same honor was bestowed on another outstanding Russian musician, the composer Georgy Sviridov who was also marking his 60th birth anniversary.
With Dmitry Shostakovich gone, Sviridov had taken over as Russia's foremost composer. Once the most gifted student of the great maestro, Sviridov had long been going his own way laying much emphasis on lyrics. Indeed, his love songs, vocal poems and oratorios are all about Russia, about its tragic history filled with human pain and suffering. One of Sviridov's most grandiose compositions - the Passionate Oratorio - was played during the master's anniversary concert in Moscow…
Meanwhile, the Moscow Conservatory's chamber choir established and led by Valery Polyansky, wins the first prize at an international competition of polyphonic choirs in Italy. Polyansky is named the contest's best conductor. In Italy, the Moscow chamber choir performed, among other things, several pieces of Russian church music…
The young and still unknown pop singer Alla Pugacheva wins the Grand Prix of the Golden Orpheus festival in Bulgaria. Boasting a strong and captivating voice and a relaxed, almost Western stage presence, Pugacheva is incredibly artistic, dynamic and infectiously joyous on stage…
Ever since then Alla Pugacheva has been the reigning queen of Russian pop enjoying extensive airplay and countless sold out concerts played in Russia and abroad. The year 1975 saw another groundbreaking event in Russian pop music with the premiere in Leningrad of this country's first song-opera Orpheus and Euridice. Written by the young composer Aleksei Zhurbin, the opera became a veritable breakthrough in the Russian popular music which had long been developing according to its own standards, so different from what they had elsewhere in the world …
 
THE RUSSIAN MUSICAL HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 20TH CENTURY is prepared for you by Olga Fyodorova.


BACK TO MAIN PAGE