Brussilovslky Symphonic Poem "Dudaray?"

[Toby Esterhase]

[Neil McGowan]

These kids do a grand job of projecting the big emotions in this music. It's a pity, however, that we only know this music through a youth-orchestra performance, sadly.

Brussilovsky is an amazing musician - I know him primarily as a violinist. He is also a conductor, as well as a composer and arranger.

It would be marvellous to hear this music played by a top-end orchestra.

[Holger]

Thanks for posting this link! It's a great piece, very enjoyable and colourful music, a pleasure to listen to.

Neil, the composer of this piece is in fact Evgeny Brussilovsky (1905–1981). The violinist and conductor you mean (at least as I guess) is his son Alexander / Alexandre (* 1953). Evgeny Brussilovsky, thus the composer, was a very skilfull Russian composer who spent many years of his life in Kazakhstan to promote music life of Western type there. He was the teacher of many Kazakh composers of later generations (Kuzhamyarov, Rakhmadiyev, Mukhamedzhanov and others).

Melodiya released two of his (altogether nine) symphonies (Nos. 5&6) on LP plus at least two other works, i.e. his piano concerto and the lyrical poem "Lonely Birch" (for orchestra). I once uploaded the latter on some forum, it might still have been UC, anyway the link must still be somewhere in our archives or even directly in this forum.

"Dudarai" is called an overture by the New Grove and it was composed in 1953. There is an opera of the same name from the same year, so it seems reasonable to guess this might actually the the overture to that opera or a concert version of it. I don't think this was issued on LP but I am glad to have it now. It once again confirms my opinion that Brussilovsky composed some very attractive music.

[Neil McGowan]

Neil, the composer of this piece is in fact Evgeny Brussilovsky (1905–1981). The violinist and conductor you mean (at least as I guess) is his son Alexander / Alexandre (* 1953). Evgeny Brussilovsky, thus the composer, was a very skilfull Russian composer who spent many years of his life in Kazakhstan to promote music life of Western type there. He was the teacher of many Kazakh composers of later generations (Kuzhamyarov, Rakhmadiyev, Mukhamedzhanov and others).

Aha! Thanks for that information :))

[Gauk]

There seem to be quite a lot of these youTube clips of Russian orchestras filmed from the audience. I presume that in Russia you can get away with it, whereas in the West you would be thrown out of the hall in short order.

[Holger]

There seem to be quite a lot of these youTube clips of Russian orchestras filmed from the audience. I presume that in Russia you can get away with it, whereas in the West you would be thrown out of the hall in short order.

Maybe, however in case of the present Brussilovsky video the uploader is in fact the conductor himself, so all should be OK here.

[Neil McGowan]

There seem to be quite a lot of these youTube clips of Russian orchestras filmed from the audience. I presume that in Russia you can get away with it, whereas in the West you would be thrown out of the hall in short order.

I think this particular clip was a Youth Orchestra concert - where the hall staff tend to be a bit more forgiving towards doting parents with video cameras :)  It seems to have been filmed in Azerbaijan (?), and at a school concert hall.

Here in Russia (ehem) things are very tough indeed at concert halls, and you can't take a video camera into the hall - even in your bag, and even if you have no intention of using it. Hall staff descend very rapidly on camera-users, and will chuck them out right in the middle of the performance if need be. (It's an interesting Hegelian dilemma which of these misdeeds causes more disruption for the paying public...  ???)

I was at the Bolshoi last week and I saw one man ejected after Part One - he was too 'deeply embedded' to be oustered mid-music - very severely indeed. No amount of promises 'not to do it again' would suffice. As far as I could see (and hear), he was a tourist from some country in SE Asia, and was clearly not familiar with European norms. They told him he could watch the rest of the show on the relay screens in the lobby.

* new ballet of HAMLET by Declan Donellan & Radu Poklitaru - allegedly to music from the DSCH 1969 film score. But it wasn't. It was a rather messy pot-pourri of music from Symphony No 5, Song of the Forests, and Symphony No 15. And a tiny bit of the 1969 Hamlet  Suite, but far from all of it. It didn't really hang together musically at all, although the 'joins' had been handled with extraordinary care (including transposing sections which would have 'clashed' otherswise). The dance was quite good, but the flaws in the dramaturgy of the piece (several scenes made-up by Donellan which don't belong in the play) was too off-putting for me.  It was more of a 'reflection on ideas in Shakespeare's Hamlet' than the actual piece  >:(

[guest145]

It would be marvellous to hear this music played by a top-end orchestra

Actually, there's another performance on YT, by a professional orchestra (Kazakhstan State Academic Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Kanat Akhmetov). Not a world-class orchestra, but more polished nonetheless: