Death of Russia’s doyen composer, 92
balletThe Bolshoi has announced the death of Rodion Shchedrin, Russia’s most successful composer of the late and post-Communist eras. Although open to modernist ideas in his composition and teaching, and refusing to join the Communist Party, Shchedrin held the state post of president of the Composers Union from 1973 to 1990.
He enjoyed a long marriage with the ballerina Maya Plisetskaya, for whom he wrote an internationally renowned and brilliantly orchestrated Carmen Suite. He delighted the Kremlin with an oratorio titled, Lenin in the People’s Heart.
He also wrote five operas and many more ballets, along with much concert music which his friends Mstislav Rostropovich and Valery Gergiev performed widely outside Russia. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Shchedrins lived in Munich. Plesitskaya died ten years ago.
The Bolshoi said: ‘Rodion Shchedrin is a unique phenomenon and era in the life of world musical culture. His operas, ballets and symphonic works have been performed with great success on all the world’s largest stages for many decades. Shchedrin’s priceless creative legacy invariably finds a response in the hearts of the public. This is a huge tragedy and an irreparable loss for the entire art world.’
UPDATE: Friends remember the Shchedrins
An excellent composer. RIP.
R.I.P.
An excellent and always, imho, interesting composer.
A gentleman of great integrity and decency.
It was a privilege for me to have dined with him three times and to know some of his music when in Russia.
Sarah Caldwell performed him in Boston. Good for her. Otherwise he is sadly unknown in the USA. I don’t know about the UK.
I’ve played some of his solo piano works. Terrific pieces. He also composed the commissioned piece, an etude, for the Tchaikovsky competition the year that Trifonov won.
That ‘Carmen Suite’ is a piece of unlistenable kitsch.
It is Shchedrin’s serious works that should be referred to here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8yFgfizGws&list=RDT8yFgfizGws&start_radio=1
Great piece.
Here is his 1st piano concerto, taking his cues from Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev and yet very different in character:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSbsRGG3m-Q&list=RDpSbsRGG3m-Q&start_radio=1
Especially its 2nd movement is great scherzo music.
Here is a portrait of Shchedrin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrDwXoWMwJ0
Shchedrin is drawing on the obligated state traditions of ‘Russian Soul’ and dito folklore, all to be ‘understandable to the people’ who have been elevated to the Ideal State of Communism. That he still could create true and original music is a tour de force and witness to his enormous talents. It is very likely that his works will survive Russia.
That he also wrote an oratorio titled ‘Lenin in the People’s Heart’ is very suspicious and one only hopes he was forced to write it, or that circumstances pressured him to lick the regime’s boots.
In case innocent SD readers have forgotten what ‘Leninism’ means, I quote from an article in Lapham’s Quarterly:
‘In his “Hanging Order” telegram of August 11, 1918, Lenin instructed communists to execute refractory peasants by public hanging: “This needs to be accomplished in such a way that people for hundreds of miles around will see, tremble, know, and scream out.” From its beginning and throughout much of its existence, the Soviet state relied on fear for its hold on power. The show trials of the 1930s continued a Bolshevik pedagogy that inculcated obedience by way of spectacular terror.’
http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/disaster/anomaly-barbarism
Memory Eternal.