People in America do not understand the Soviet Union – what started it, its initial promise and its swift degeneration into nightmare, the way its thought evolved over its history – much at all. Which is understandable: we don’t know ANY history, thanks in large part to a de-emphasis on civics and history instruction in public schools (which is certainly by design!) But beyond that the USSR was, for seventy years, the Bogeyman or Nemesis, a dark shadow that consumed half the globe. Its name was spoken with a shudder. And justifiably so: Lenin used state terror to galvanize his new country, while his successor Stalin was genocidal – against his own people. (The current Putin intrigues represent an inflatable backyard swimming pool to the Black Sea of Leninist/Stalinist evil…) And it was literally and metaphorically impenetrable in its darkest hours – the Soviets controlled the media and who could leave and for how long. When George Orwell wrote Animal Farm to cast light on the horrors of life in Stalinist Russia, many Western leftists had drunk the vodka-laced koolaid and were having none of it. They could later apologize, and get a bit of a pass, that they simply hadn’t known.
In short, I think the USSR should be studied for what it can tell us about political leaders’ worst impulses gone unchecked. It was reading about the Soviet Union in the Stalin years and listening to Dan Carlin’s podcast series about the Eastern Front in WWII (which was a 3-pronged Nazi attack on Stalin, and where the war, for Hitler, was lost…) that got me to listen to Shostakovich in the first place.
I’m not saying that I understand the USSR in any meaningful sense, and my knowledge five or ten years ago was extremely embarrassingly limited. But I’ve read a lot and listened to a lot in the last couple years. This mixtape is the first of a trilogy (presuming I don’t die first) on the classical music of the Soviet Union, and it focuses on the period immediately after the Revolution in 1917. It might be news to you – it was to me to a large extent – but the period from the 1917 Revolution up until Stalin had eliminated enough of his perceived enemies that he turned to aesthetic criticism in the mid-’30s was one where artistic experimentation and freedom prevailed. The music on this tape represents some of the avantist of the avant garde in the 1920s, aligned with artistic movements like Constructivism and Futurism.
It didn’t last. If you had to pick an unequivocal endpoint to artistic optimism in the Soviet Union, it would be the 1936 Pravda denunciation of Shostakovich – and anyone with genius or imagination – two days after Stalin saw Lady MacBeth of the Mtensk District (which debuted in 1934 and was more or less an established hit). The second-to-last track on this mixtape is the opening to that great opera, Shostakovich’s last. A lot of the music on this mixtape was lost or barely survived. So thorough was Stalin’s need to control every aspect of the narrative that many, if not most, of the 1920s works by the composers included here were “disappeared” in post-facto purges in the ’30s. Most of the composers themselves were censored, removed to far-flung specks The notable exception is Shostakovich, whose international fame was too great for Stalin to quash outright and whose ’20s opi remain intact. Without exception, though, the composers included here were constrained to the point of ruin or near-ruin in the late ’30s and beyond. More on that next time.
I announce the tracks this time around; complete track info can be found by scrolling up the blog and, abridged somewhat, on the Mixcloud site. The music playing behind the narration is from Alexander Scriabin, an inspiration for young Soviet composers who died just before the Revolution. The show closes with his Black Mass Sonata. Subsequent tapes will focus on later periods – from the “Muddle Not Music” Pravda review of Lady Macbeth in ’36 up to Stalin’s death in ’53, and from the glimmer of hope that arose after the funeral up to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989.
1. 00:51
Alexander Mosolov (1900-1973): The Iron Foundry, Op. 19, from the ballet Steel (1927)
Johannes Kalitzke: Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin (Capriccio)
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2. 04:25
Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915): Piano Sonata No. 7 “White Mass” (1911)
Peter Donahoe (SOMM)
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3. 08:39
Mosolov: “Four Newspaper Announcements,” Op. 26 (1926)
Natalia Pschenitschnikova, soprano (Capriccio)
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4. 13:40
Nikolai Roslavets (1881-1944): “Meditation for Cello and Piano” (1921)
Lachezar Kostov, cello; Viktor Valkov, piano (Naxos)
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5. 21:47
Gavriil Popov (1904-1972): Chamber Symphony in C Major, Op. 2; 1st mvmnt (1926-27)
Alexander Lazarev: Bolshoi Theater Soloists Ensemble (Musica Non Grata/Melodiya)
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6. 29:43
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975): Two Fables of Kirov, Op. 4a (1922)
Virpi Räisänen, mezzo-soprano (Youtube)
18-year-old Dmitri Shostakovich in June, 1925.
7. 38:04
Shostakovich: Music from The New Babylon (1928)
Reel 6, The Barricade: The 49th day of defence
James Judd: Berlin Radio SO (Capriccio)
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8. 51:22
Alexei Zhivotov (1904-1964): “Fragments For Nonet” (1929)
Alexander Lazarev: Bolshoi Theatre Soloists Ensemble (Musica Non Grata/Melodiya)
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9. 59:43
Boris Lyatoshynsky (1895-1968): “Reflections”, Op. 16 (1925)
Boris Demenko, piano (Taras Bulba Entertainment)
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10. 1:14:49
Arseny Avraamov (1886-1944): Symphony Of Factory Sirens (Public Event, Baku 1922)
Leopaldo Amigo and Miguel Molina (dir.) (ReR Megacorp)
Symphony of Sirens, Moscow performance on November 7, 1923. Conductor visible on the roof.
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11. 1:46:36
Shostakovich: Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District; Act I, Scene 1 (1930)
Galina Vishnevskaya, soprano, w/ Rostropovich: London PO (EMI/Melodiya)
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12. 1:53:43
Scriabin: Piano Sonata No. 9 “Black Mass” (1914)
Peter Donahoe (SOMM)
Concentration Camp 