Kabalevsky: Romeo And Juliet / Colas Breugnon / Comedians

Moscow So:Jelvakov

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Cat No: 8553411

Release Date: 12 January 1999

Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 730099441124

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: KABALEVSKY

Description
Dmitry Borisovich Kabalevsky (1904 - 1987) Suite from Colas Breugnon, Op. 24a Suite: The Comedians, Op. 26 Suite: Romeo and Juliet The son of amathematician, Dmitry Borisovich Kabalevsky was born in St Petersburgin 1904 and was intended by his father for some similar vocation to his own.Kabalevsky, however, showed considerable artistic promise, whether as pianist,poet or painter. After the Revolution he moved with his family to Moscow, where hecontinued his general education, while studying painting and, at the ScriabinMusical Institute, the piano. It was his interest in this last and his obviousproficiency that led him to reject the course that his father had proposed atthe Engels Sodo-Economic Science Institute in 1922 and he turned instead to thepiano, teaching, playing, like Shostakovich, in cinemas and now beginning tocompose. In 1925 he entered the Moscow Conservatory, resolved to further hisincreasing interest in pedagogical music. Here he studied first with theleading theorist Georgy Catoire and then with Prokofiev's friend and mentor,the composer Myaskovsky. At the same time he became increasingly known for hiswriting on musical subjects, notably in the Association of Contemporary MusicJournal, although he was careful not to distance himself from the much moremusically conservative and politically orientated Russian Association ofProletarian Musicians. While the former espoused progressive forms of musicthat might, nevertheless, fit the principles of Sodalist Realism, the latter favoureda simpler and more popular form of music that the people might understand. In 1932Kabalevsky became involved in the Moscow organization and activities of the nowestablished Union of Soviet Composers that replaced the earlier groupings,although, over the years, the leadership, like that of the Association ofProletarian Musicians, lacked musical credibility , whatever their politicalcorrectness. He worked for the state music publishing house and taughtcomposition at the Moscow Conservatory, while continuing to write a largequantity of music. Although, like others of his generation, he supported thegeneral principles of the Revolution it was not until1940 that he became aCommunist Party member, continuing during the Great Patriotic War to writemusic likely to instil patriotism and help the war effort. Problemsarose for many Soviet composers in 1948. Already in 1936 Shostakovich had beencondemned for his apparently socialist opera A Lady Macbeth of the MtsenskDistrict, stigmatized by Stalin as chaos instead of music. 1948 broughtofficial condemnation of formalism, involving Shostakovich and Prokofiev byname at the head of the list of those proscribed. Kabalevsky succeeded inhaving his own name removed from the list and replaced by that of anothercomposer, although he might well have been to some extent implicated by hisearlier association with the Organization Committee of the Composers' Union, the Orgkomitet,which earned particular critici
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