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"Composers Soviet Union Biography."
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Dmitry Shostakovich
Dmitry Shostakovich was one of the most successful composers of the twentieth century-a musician who adapted as no other to the unique pressures of his age. By turns vilified and feted by Stalin during the Great Purge, Shostakovich twice came close to succumbing to the whirlwind of political repression of his times and remained under political surveillance all his life, despite the many privileges and awards heaped upon him in old age. Through it all, Shostakovich showed a remarkable ability to work with, rather than against, prevailing ideological demands, and it was this quality that ensured both his survival and his musical posterity. Pauline Fairclough's absorbing new biography offers a vivid portrait of Shostakovich. Featuring quotations from previously unpublished letters as well as rarely seen photographs, Fairclough's book provides fresh insight into the music and life of a composer whose legacy, above all, was to have written some of the greatest and most cherished music of the last century.
eBook
Fear and the muse kept watch : the Russian masters--from Akhmatova and Pasternak to Shostakovich and Eisenstein--under Stalin
\"Can great art be produced in a police state? Josif Stalin ran one of the most oppressive regimes in world history. Nevertheless, Stalinist Russia produced an outpouring of artistic works of immense power--from the poems of Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam to the opera Peter and the Wolf, the film Alexander Nevsky, and the novels The Master and Margarita and Doctor Zhivago. More than a dozen great artists were visible enough for Stalin to take an interest in them--which meant he chose whether they were to live in luxury and be publicly honored or to be sent to the Lubyanka for torture and execution. Journalist and novelist Andy McSmith brings together the stories of these artists--including Isaac Babel, Boris Pasternak, Dmitri Shostakovich, and many others--revealing how they pursued their art often at great personal risk. It was a world in which the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, whose bright yellow tunic was considered a threat to public order under the tsars, struggled to make the communist authorities see the value of avant garde art; Babel publicly thanked the regime for allowing him the privilege of not writing; and Shostakovich's career veered wildly between public disgrace and wealth and acclaim. An extraordinary work of historical recovery, Fear and the Muse Kept Watch is also a bold exploration of the triumph of art during terrible times\"-- Provided by publisher.
BOOK
Shostakovich : a life
For this biography the author has used many primary documents; Shostakovich's many letters, concert programmes, newspaper articles and diaries of his contemporaries. Showing his life as an example of the paradoxes of living as an artist in Russia.
eBook
Shostakovich
For this authoritative post-cold-war biography of Shostakovich's illustrious but turbulent career under Soviet rule, Laurel E. Fay has gone back to primary documents: Shostakovich's many letters, concert programs and reviews, newspaper articles, and diaries of his contemporaries. An indefatigable worker, he wrote his arresting music despite deprivations during the Nazi invasion and constant surveillance under Stalin's regime. Shostakovich's life is a fascinating example of the paradoxes of living as an artist under totalitarian rule. In August 1942, his Seventh Symphony, written as a protest against fascism, was performed in Nazi-besieged Leningrad by the city's surviving musicians, and was triumphantly broadcast to the German troops, who had been bombarded beforehand to silence them. Alone among his artistic peers, he survived successive Stalinist cultural purges and won the Stalin Prize five times, yet in 1948 he was dismissed from his conservatory teaching positions, and many of his works were banned from performance. He prudently censored himself, in one case putting aside a work based on Jewish folk poems. Under later regimes he balanced a career as a model Soviet, holding government positions and acting as an international ambassador with his unflagging artistic ambitions. In the years since his death in 1975, many have embraced a view of Shostakovich as a lifelong dissident who encoded anti-Communist messages in his music. This lucid and fascinating biography demonstrates that the reality was much more complex. Laurel Fay's book includes a detailed list of works, a glossary of names, and an extensive bibliography, making it an indispensable resource for future studies of Shostakovich.
eBook
Russian Composers Abroad
As waves of composers migrated from Russia in the 20th century, they grappled with the complex struggle between their own traditions and those of their adopted homes.
Russian Composers Abroad explores the self-identity of these émigrés, especially those who left from the 1970s on, and how aspects of their diasporic identities played out in their music. Elena Dubinets provides a journey through the complexities of identity formation and cultural production under globalization and migration, elucidating sociological perspectives of the post-Soviet world that have caused changes in composers' outlooks, strategies, and rankings.
Russian Composers Abroad is an illuminating study of creative ideas that are often shaped by the exigencies of financing and advancement rather than just by the vision of the creators and the demands of the public.
eBook
Nikolay Myaskovsky
Gregor Tassie describes Nikolay Myaskovsky as “one of the great enigmas of 20th-century Russian music.” Between the two world wars, the symphonies of Myaskovsky enjoyed great popularity and were performed by all major American and European orchestras; they were some of the most inspiring symphonic works of the last hundred years and prolonged the symphonic genre. But accusations of “formalism” at the 1948 USSR Composers Congress resulted in the purposeful neglect of his music until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Myaskovsky wrote some of the most inspiring symphonic works of the last hundred years and prolonged and extended the symphonic genre. In Nikolay Myaskovsky: The Conscience of Russian Music, Tassie gives readers the first modern English-language biography of this Russian composer since his death in 1950. Tassie draws together information from the composer’s diaries and letters, as well as the memoirs of friends and colleagues—even his secret police files—to chronicle Myaskovsky’s early life, subsequent far-reaching influence as a composer, teacher, and journalist, and his final persecution by the Soviet government. This biography will surely rekindle interest in Myaskovsky’s remarkable body of work and will interest aficionados, students, and scholars of the modern classical music tradition and history of the arts in Russia.
eBook
Dmitri Shostakovich, Pianist
She traces his musical roots, piano studies, repertoire, and concert career through his correspondence with family and friends and his own and his contemporaries' memoirs, using material never before available in English. This biographical narrative is interwoven with analyses of Shoshtakovich's piano and chamber works, demonstrating how he interpreted his own music. For the first time, Shoshtakovich's own recordings are used as primary sources to discover what made his playing unique and to dispel commonly held myths about his style of interpretation. His recorded performances are analysed in detail, specifically his tempos, phrasing, dynamics, pedal, and tonal production. Some unpublished variants of musical texts are included and examples of his interpretations are provided and compared to various editions of his published scores.
eBook
Anton Rubinstein : a life in music
The first modern biography in English of Russian composer-pianist Anton
Rubinstein, this book places Rubinstein within the context of Russian and western
European musical culture during the late 19th century, exploring his rise to
international fame from humble origins in Bessarabia, as well as his subsequent
rapid decline and marginalization in later musical culture. Taylor provides a
balanced account of Rubinstein's life and his career as a piano virtuoso, conductor,
composer, and as the founder of Russia's first conservatory. Widely considered the
virtuosic heir to Liszt, and recognized internationally as an equivalent cultural
icon, he performed with most leading musicians of the day, including Liszt himself,
Joachim, Clara Schumann, Vieuxtemps, Wieniawski, Saint-Saens, and Ysaÿe.
eBook