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Rodion Shchedrin talking about Tikhon Khrennikov

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Author Topic: Rodion Shchedrin talking about Tikhon Khrennikov  (Read 613 times)
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Gauk
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« on: February 14, 2015, 02:48:04 pm »

This may be of interest.

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ahinton
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« Reply #1 on: February 14, 2015, 03:26:03 pm »

This may be of interest.

It certainly is of interest, although it has to be remembered that Shchedrin's implicit attempts at the rehabilitation of Khrennikov do emerge from someone who was just 15 years of age at the time when Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Khatchaturian were officially denounced and he himself understandably admits that he was not a part of that scene at the time; the régime's treatment of Roslavets in particular before then and the fear in which Shostakovich, his protégé Weinberg and others lived from time to time both before and after that event are hardly without truth or substance. Yes, I've never believed that composers were routinely press-ganged by the authorities into writing movie music during those Soviet years - especially not hostakovich, whose international reputation (arguably greater than that of all of his colleagues except Prokofiev) was such as possibly to enable him to excuse himself from such duties had he so wished (which evidently he didn't, as he no doubt relished at least some of that work just as he did most other things on which he worked), but I find it hard, even from a distinguished Russian composer such as Shchedrin, to accept the almost whiter-than-white reputation with which he seeks to credit Khrennikov - it just seems to ring somewhat hollow to me. Above all, perhaps, such as I have heard of Khrennikov's work seems characterised by more blandness and ineffectuality than almost anything else, for all its occasional superficial attractions and the thought that someone of his calibre once held office in which he had the power to participate in the denunciation of a composer of the order of Shostakovich - surely one of the greatest Russian composers since Tchaikovsky - remains an uncomfortable one, despite Shchedrin's efforts at reputational restitution. Shchedrin might have done better instead to bang the drum for Weinberg, whose remarkable work is only recently beginning to attract due appreciation in the West.
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tapiola
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« Reply #2 on: February 14, 2015, 07:49:31 pm »

Shchedrin is re-writing history as is the norm these days.  It makes my disrespect for Shchedrin even greater.
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Toby Esterhase
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« Reply #3 on: February 14, 2015, 11:11:26 pm »

IMHO it should be better distinguish between political and aesthetics  judgments and place Khrennikov and Schedrinin in 1950's historical context.



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tapiola
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« Reply #4 on: February 15, 2015, 06:59:50 am »

Why was my post so heavily edited?
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ahinton
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« Reply #5 on: February 15, 2015, 12:26:17 pm »

Why was my post so heavily edited?
I don't know; mine should have been, because there were quite a few mistakes in it (which I've now corrected)!
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« Reply #6 on: February 15, 2015, 10:09:54 pm »

. . . Shostakovich - surely one of the greatest Russian composers since Tchaikovsky . . .

There is no "surely" about it Mr. H. One of our greatest critics once wrote that "S is incapable of writing even a simple melody" and I agree with him - that is my own reaction to his meaningless note-spinning. Quite literally I have never been able to listen to any of his stuff for more than a minute before turning away/off in disgust. The high praise that comes to him from some quarters has for many years been a source of wonder to me. I can conclude only that those doing the praising

a) are insincere and have some unstated agenda; or

b) have little experience of real music; or

c) lack the musical sense altogether; or

d) possess some concept of the art of music incomprehensible to me.

He deserved all the denunciation he got!
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Neil McGowan
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« Reply #7 on: February 15, 2015, 10:55:05 pm »

Well-well!  This is certainly an edifying discussion, isn't it??

 ::)

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tapiola
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« Reply #8 on: February 16, 2015, 12:14:02 am »

Gerard, there is simply no way to respond to a post like that. Surely it's a spoof right?
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ahinton
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« Reply #9 on: February 16, 2015, 10:44:59 am »

. . . Shostakovich - surely one of the greatest Russian composers since Tchaikovsky . . .

There is no "surely" about it Mr. H. One of our greatest critics once wrote that "S is incapable of writing even a simple melody"
Which one was that and when? Surely you could have named him or her? ANd on what grounds is/ws he/she one of "our" critics and what qualifies him/her as one of the "greatest"?

and I agree with him - that is my own reaction to his meaningless note-spinning. Quite literally I have never been able to listen to any of his stuff for more than a minute before turning away/off in disgust. The high praise that comes to him from some quarters has for many years been a source of wonder to me.
Well, that's your problem and no one else's; if you don't like his music - any of it - then so be it, I guess, but your reaction to it does not turn it into "meaningless note-spinning" - indeed, I don't ever recall hearing any of that from him.

I can conclude only that those doing the praising

a) are insincere and have some unstated agenda; or

b) have little experience of real music; or

c) lack the musical sense altogether; or

d) possess some concept of the art of music incomprehensible to me.
The fact that this is all that you conclude says more for your deductive powers than it does for Shostakovich, his music or its widespead acceptance. Why and on what perceived grounds you might assume a) is entirely unclear, the suggestion in b) and c) that the many so many musicians who have a deep admiration of and appreciation for Shostakovich "have little experience of real music" and "lack the musical sense altogether" beggars belief (whilst at the same time giving no clue as to what you think you mean by "real music" or "musical sense"), so we are left with d), in which, at last you do what Sorabji once accused the English music critic Martin Cooper of doing - you "lapse into sense".

He deserved all the denunciation he got!
In disagreeing wholeheartedly with you, I might ask you just how much denunciation (other than on occasion from certain powers that once were within the Soviet Union) he DID get!
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ahinton
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« Reply #10 on: February 16, 2015, 10:46:36 am »

Well-well!  This is certainly an edifying discussion, isn't it??

 ::)
Point taken - although just one unworthy and wholly gratuitous post doth not an unedifying discussion make!
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ahinton
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« Reply #11 on: February 16, 2015, 10:47:18 am »

Gerard, there is simply no way to respond to a post like that. Surely it's a spoof right?
If only it were...
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« Reply #12 on: February 16, 2015, 12:41:50 pm »

Which [great critic] was that and when? Surely you could have named him or her?

For the record, it was Gerald Abraham in Eight Soviet Composers (1943), page 28 and passim. It cannot be denied that a) he has a name, b) his judgement was reliable, and c) he knew his Russians.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Abraham

The whole book may be read here at the Internet Text Archive:
https://archive.org/details/eightsovietcompo007053mbp

What Abraham says on page 18 is especially enlightening and instructive: "A stranger hotch-potch of commonplace, bad taste and misdirected cleverness has never been called a symphony."

Then on page 28: "The slow movement . . . merely confirms one's suspicion that S. cannot write even a moderately good tune."

One ignores Abraham at one's peril!
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ahinton
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« Reply #13 on: February 16, 2015, 01:37:55 pm »

Which [great critic] was that and when? Surely you could have named him or her?

For the record, it was Gerald Abraham in Eight Soviet Composers (1943), page 28 and passim. It cannot be denied that a) he has a name, b) his judgement was reliable, and c) he knew his Russians.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Abraham

The whole book may be read here at the Internet Text Archive:
https://archive.org/details/eightsovietcompo007053mbp

What Abraham says on page 18 is especially enlightening and instructive: "A stranger hotch-potch of commonplace, bad taste and misdirected cleverness has never been called a symphony."

Then on page 28: "The slow movement . . . merely confirms one's suspicion that S. cannot write even a moderately good tune."

One ignores Abraham at one's peril!
Somehow I suspected that it was that person. I do not doubt a), he gave his own eloquent lie to b) and, whichever Russians he may have known, Shostakovich was not one of them.

I read a book of his called This Modern Stuff (or some such title) many years ago and was astonished at the author's prowess at compiling so many incongruities within a mercifully slim volume about which it might well be said that "a stranger hotch-potch of commonplace, bad taste and misdirected cleverness has never been called a" credible book on 20th century music. Note also its date of 1943. By that time, the author would have been able to hear only six of Shostakovich's symphonies (1, 2, 3, 5 , 6 & 7) and only the first of his 15 string quartets; I neither know nor care to which of those six symphonies he sought to refer in his barb (and have little inclination to look it up, since discovering which of them it was would hardly be edifying), but I know much less about Abraham's own symphonies or, in their presumed absence, on what he reckoned to base his purported symphonic judgement. I accept that the second and third symphonies (as with the twelfth) are not Shostakovich at his best, but Shostakovich at his arguably best of all is found in the fourth symphony which Abraham could not have known. Indeed, I find it hard to imagine what place the words "enlightening" and "instructive" could possibly have in any discussion of Abraham insofar as I know his work.

Your last sentence here is almost correct; it should read either "one reads Abraham at one's peril" (or at the peril of whomsoever or whatsoever might be close enough at the time to be vulnerable to having the book thrown at him/her/it in a fit of enraged irritation) or "one ignores Abraham if one has any sense". Fortunately, these days, he seems largely to be forgotten, which is hardly what anyone could ever say about Shostakovich.

Anyway, I think that we're all agreed that this thread is about Tikhon Khrennikov, not Shostakovich! - and I'm unaware that your Mr Abraham had anything to say about him in his book, after all..
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Neil McGowan
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« Reply #14 on: February 16, 2015, 08:45:59 pm »

surely one of the greatest Russian composers since Tchaikovsky

The irony being, of course, that Dmitry Dmitrievich lived to write 15 symphonies and 15 string quartets, after the naughty old USSR treated him free of charge. He was, it's true, pressured by another composer (Khrennikov) to withdraw and denounce LADY MACBETH OF MTSENSK, and certain other works [astonishingly even the Socialist Realist comedy THE BRIGHT STREAM (SVETLIE RUCHEI)].  And he was chucked out of the Composer's Union, and wasn't allowed the Composer's Villa on the Black Sea.  He died of old age.

Meanwhile Pyotr Ilyich was abducted in broad daylight by Tsarist ultra-conservative loonies, who put him on trial in a kangaroo court made up of extremist Freemasons - and then locked in a room with a loaded pistol.  He had, it's true, been pressured by another composer (Balakirev) to withdraw his opera THE SECRET AGENT (OPRICHNIK) despite its whirlwind success - he then denounced the work in a newspaper article, and even asked the Jurgenson printing house to destroy the plates. Allegedly it was an 'anti-Russian' opera?  Exactly what would later be said about LADY MACBETH. 

But the difference was that Tchaikovsky was done in by lovely capitalist Imperialist nutters, whereas Shostakovich was banned from the composer's villa by saucy Stalinists   ;)
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