Kabalevsky: Cello Concertos Nos. 1 And 2 / Spring, Op. 65

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Dmitry BorisovichKabalevsky (1904-1987)Cello Concerto No.1in G minor, Op. 49 Cello Concerto No.2in G major, Op. 77 Symphonic Poem:Spring, Op.65 (Vesna)  The son of amathematician, Dmitry Borisovich Kabalevsky was born in St Petersburg in 1904 and wasintended by his father for some similar vocation to his own. Kabalevsky,however, showed considerable artistic promise, whether as pianist, poet orpainter. After the Bolshevik Revolution he moved with his family to Moscow, where he continuedhis general education, while studying painting and, at the Scriabin MusicalInstitute, the piano. It was his interest in the latter and his obviousproficiency that led him to reject the course that his father had proposed atthe Engels Socio-Economic Science Institute in 1922, and to turn instead to thepiano, teaching, playing, like Shostakovich, in cinemas, and now beginning tocompose. In 1925 he entered the Moscow Conservatory, resolved to further hisinterest in pedagogical music. Here he studied first with the leading theorist GeorgyCatoire and then with Prokofiev's friend and mentor, the composer Myaskovsky.At the same time he became increasingly known for his writing on musicalsubjects, notably in the Association of Contemporary Music Journal, although hewas careful not to distance himself from the much more musically conservativeand politically orientated Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians. Whilethe former espoused progressive forms of music that might, nevertheless, suitthe principles of Socialist Realism, the latter favoured a simpler and morepopular form of music that might be understood by the people.  In 1932 Kabalevskybecame involved in the Moscow organisation 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, came to lack musical credibility, whatever its politicalcorrectness. He worked for the state music-publishing house and taught compositionat the Moscow Conservatory, while continuing to write a large quantity ofmusic. Although, like others of his generation, he supported the generalprinciples of the Revolution, it was not until 1940 that he became a CommunistParty member, continuing during the Great Patriotic War to write music likelyto instil feelings of patriotism and help the war effort.  Problems arose formany Soviet composers in 1948. Already in 1936 Shostakovich had suffered thecondemnation of his apparently socialist opera A Lady Macbeth of the MtsenskDistrict, stigmatized by Stalin as chaos instead of music. 1948 broughtofficial condemnation of formalism, a charge levelled against Shostakovich andProkofiev by name, at the head of a list of those proscribed. Kabalevskysucceeded in having his own name removed from the list and replaced by that ofanother composer, although he might have seemed to some extent implicated byhis earlier association with the organising committee of th