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Time, Forward!

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Neil McGowan
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« Reply #15 on: November 09, 2011, 04:58:19 pm »

I have to say that it was easy to think like that if you were average Soviet citizen. He was sanctioned composer after all, state supported etc and he went abroad.

Although DSCH went on foreign trips - mainly organised by the Culture Ministry to promote soviet music abroad - he always came back at the end of them, and he never emigrated as others did.  Nor did he have his citizenship or passport cancelled while he was abroad - as happened to Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya.

In the end I think DSCH was a patriot, and that he instinctively believed in Socialism - but not the corrupt form of Socialism practiced under Stalin. Gerard McBurney quotes Rostro on this topic, although I don't know McBurney's source for the quotation:

Rostropovich: "I has sitting having tea with Dima one afternoon - we'd been playing some music, and then listening to records. We were having a nice chat but then the telephone rang. Dima's face went white, and he sat down with telephone. He covered the receiver and whispered "It's the operator, from the Kremlin. She says to hold the line - Comrade Stalin is coming on the line!".  And then Dima began to speak with Stalin -or rather, to listen to him. "Yes, Comrade Stalin, it's me, Dmitry Shostakovich...  Yes, Comrade Stalin. Yes, of course. It is a great honour for me. But when I go to America, how shall I explain that my music is played there, and not here?  I see, Comrade Stalin.  Yes, of course, I agree with you, Comrade General Secretary. I shall do as you recommend.  I am grateful for the personal call, Comrade Stalin. Thank you. Goodbye.". Then he sat down, like a man whose soul had been torn out of him. They were sending him to America to rubbish his own music.  He had to go, of course.  He knew what would happen to his family, if he disobeyed in any way."
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« Reply #16 on: November 09, 2011, 06:49:11 pm »

It is great that Rostropovich left his memories.

I heard in an interview with his wife that they have founded a opera school and theater in Moscow.

I was very impressed with the hall. Also they were talking about Mussorgsky museum and that he left his archive to the museum. Do you know anything about it.
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« Reply #17 on: November 09, 2011, 07:45:43 pm »

It is great that Rostropovich left his memories.

I heard in an interview with his wife that they have founded a opera school and theater in Moscow.

I was very impressed with the hall. Also they were talking about Mussorgsky museum and that he left his archive to the museum. Do you know anything about it.

Ah yes, they built a big opera centre and theatre, right on Ostozhenka - the priciest real estate in town!  I have no idea who paid for it - I doubt it was them personally.  But I'm not at all impressed with the work of the opera centre.  I've seen some of their productions - a particularly bad performance of THE TSAR'S BRIDE (R-K) which was so dull I fell asleep. I don't think Vishnevskaya is personally involved in the teaching there.  But I know the theatre - our orchestra played for performances of Schedrin's NOT ONLY LOVE, although the production was miserably weak too - luckily I was not involved personally.

NOT ONLY LOVE is archetypal soviet realism - a story about a female Collective Farm Manager, who falls in love with one of the workers... but he's a drinker and a gambler, and finally she is forced to fire him, although she loves him... she puts her duty to the Five-Year Plan before love.  :D  Plisetskaya came, but she was clearly very unimpressed.  But the theatre is fantastic, it has superb facilities for staging opera - a big orchestral pit large enough for all but the more outrageous R Strauss operas, a big deep stage, modern computerised lighting, a computerised hydraulic rig (!), all kinds of trap-doors and special gear.  But I think there are about 8-10 performances there per year - the rest of the time it sits dark.  This could only really happen in Moscow :(  It's very depressing, really.

I'm afraid I don't know anything about the Musorgsky Museum - it must be in St P, I suppose? 

I feel sorry for Schedrin.  Everywhere he goes, people ask him what it's like to be married to Maya Plisetskaya  ;D  And never anything about his work as a composer! On the other hand, I have sat through his rotten schlocksploitation opera LOLITA, and I'm not surprised people don't want to talk about it!  :D
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« Reply #18 on: November 09, 2011, 08:12:56 pm »

I didn't think they perform operas like that anymore.
I found several fragments.

There is another opera I never heard about. It is based on well known Gogol’s play.



It is fascinating to me to know what they are staging there. I didn't think that they would still stage operas with plot like in Not only love.   
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Neil McGowan
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« Reply #19 on: November 09, 2011, 10:23:00 pm »

I didn't think that they would still stage operas with plot like in Not only love.   


I think it was mainly staged for Schedrin's 70th Birthday celebrations :)

His opera LOLITA gets staged even in W European countries - but I suppose the plot-material makes it easier to sell than NOT ONLY LOVE? 



(I think the Russian cast - who were from Perm' Opera - were better performers than above, especially the amazing Lolita of Tatiana Kuinji - yes, she's the painter's granddaughter, and she is about 4'7" tall, and can jump and turn cartwheels, and sing Schedrin's music too! Oh, and she's a qualified psychologist too.)
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« Reply #20 on: November 10, 2011, 09:14:33 am »

From History magazine's article about Wagner called Wagner and Mathilde.

It is happy confluence of Schopenhauer's inspiration, together with Wagner's erotically charged relationship withMathilde Wesendonck, that eventually led him to Tristanand isolde. For Schopenhauer the sexual act further inflames the passion ,producing moredesire and moresuffering, therby enmeshing the subject in theillusion of particularity. Wagner had created for himself a tense bitter-sweet situation, where thepresence ofthe desired continually inflamed him, yet the bringing of this desire to its climax had to be continuously deferred inthe fashion of Buddhist renunciation.

Isolde(Mathilde Wesendonck) is bequeathed to King Mark (otto Wesendonck) but instead loves Tristan(Wagner).Teh lovers, Tristan andIsolde (Wagner and Mathilde) attempt to achieve nirvana or redemption by feeling the world of day and entering permanently into the world of night.

The philosopher  ROger Scruton recently pointed out that Isolde's final words are inspired by the ancient Indian philosophical works, the Upanishads.

Different time and different take on the same idea I suppose.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathilde_Wesendonck
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Neil McGowan
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« Reply #21 on: November 10, 2011, 06:52:43 pm »

Different time and different take on the same idea I suppose.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathilde_Wesendonck

Personally I'm more inclined towards the view of Nabokov's novel that it's a masterly literary experiment - an exercise in how far we are prepared to believe a narrator?  The narrator Nabokov is reading us the words of the narrator Humbert. But the first thing Humbert tells is that "everything I have ever said is a lie".  And then we are supposed to believe his outrageous stories?  Perhaps it's all an exercise in self-delusion and malicious, vicarious grotesque fantasy? 

And I speak here as someone who has read the novel "in the original" :)

I have to admit to being left on the sidelines by TRISTAN & ISOLDE ;)
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« Reply #22 on: November 11, 2011, 09:40:02 pm »

Yes, my reply wasn't on the subject perhaps.


Now I am reading BBC magazine. There is rising star composer Emily Howard.

SHEis former chess champion, she has undergraduate degree from oxford anditis in Maths and Computing.

I think there are plans to have her opera aboutCzech long-distance runner Emil Zatopek  to be staged.



I am trying to listen to new voices. Does anyone have any thoughts about her music?



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« Reply #23 on: November 12, 2011, 08:36:33 am »


I think there are plans to have her opera aboutCzech long-distance runner Emil Zatopek  to be staged.


I don't see any kind of libretto in his story?  This is a trap a lot of young composers fall into when writing operas.
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« Reply #24 on: November 12, 2011, 09:24:40 am »

It is good subject for Olympic Games and will be premiere as part of the Cultural Olympiad.

I
Her ambitiouns are stated here - If  composer can be writing the music they want to be writing and living off it, then that's a perfect situation. (Interview by Ilizabeth Davis).

 This winter James MacMIllan is conducting premier of her work Calculus of the Nervous System, a title taken from the work of the mathematician and daughter of Lord Byron, Ada Lovelace. Ada is a strange character, she worked with Charles Babbage,who invented the computer, took lots of drugs and died young.

I was curious to read about Czech long-distance runner Emil Zatopek. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Z%C3%A1topek


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« Reply #25 on: November 12, 2011, 04:40:55 pm »


I was curious to read about Czech long-distance runner Emil Zatopek. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Z%C3%A1topek

Hmmm, yes, I looked at that too.  But I can't find an opera libretto in his life, somehow.  "A man runs".  But maybe I'm wrong.  Perhaps there are unknown nuances?   
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« Reply #26 on: November 12, 2011, 04:45:29 pm »

 ???
I am puzzled too.
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« Reply #27 on: November 14, 2011, 10:59:12 am »

Another time forward.

I found new name and wonder if people here know this composer and performer.


I was reading about Halle and Handel festival there. There are more and more pianists that improvise on Mozart or other composers. Here is Uri Caine.
 
Montero would be another example of pianist who improvises.
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Neil McGowan
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« Reply #28 on: November 14, 2011, 03:20:19 pm »

Has it been recorded in slow motion? :))  I couldn't listen for longer than 40 seconds, it was driving me crazu :(
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« Reply #29 on: November 21, 2011, 09:13:36 am »

Time goes forward, but many things stay the same (or similar). This post could be on thread about symphonies that change my life.

There was very interesting program about Shostakovich. They did touch on the subject of complexity of his personality and on fact that he was part of established composers and was for many people part of the ruling class with his dacha and apartment etc.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007g7hp

There is interesting discussion of his symphonies and his life. I think many of us live through times when we just cross each day in calendar thankful that it has passed (he did that in his diaries).
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