classical, comrades?

TroyD

Just thought that I'd share......I happened upon (thanks Dave) about a half dozen or so LP's that were recorded in the former Soviet Union. Reviews to follow but I'm AMAZED at the performances. All of them are simply fantastic (and well recorded).

Anyhow, if you can lay your hands on any of them, I'll bet you will NOT be dissappointed.

BDT

ohskigod

not surprised here, Russian classical musicians are top notch.

Fallen Kell

Well, you would hope so, especially since they were basically brow beaten to be the best for political reasons (the whole Democracy vs Communisim thing). For something to be recorded and produced for the masses, it would have to be perfect. Nothing less was acceptable, lest it show that there was something that citizens of the Soviet Union were not better than people in the "free world"...

Mjr7531

Interestingly enough, The Moscow Symphon really took communism to heart, they dissolved the position of conductor and they all worked and made musical desicions as a whole, I thought it was pretty neat. I love russian music and I agree many of those performers in the day put some incredible work, have a good listen!

Mjr7531

Fallen Kell wrote:

Well, you would hope so, especially since they were basically brow beaten to be the best for political reasons (the whole Democracy vs Communisim thing). For something to be recorded and produced for the masses, it would have to be perfect. Nothing less was acceptable, lest it show that there was something that citizens of the Soviet Union were not better than people in the "free world"...

Nothing less than perfect is normally not acceptable anyways, in any orchestra, hearing a live vs. recorded performance has worlds of difference. Some conductors in the US take the music measure by measure in order to acheive a high level of perfection, often to the dismay of the musicians

Whether the Communism vs. Democracy thing was true or not, the Russians have always been good with music, granted it is different from how we interpret it, but it can still be very enjoyable. And beyond even this, the one thing music has, or rather what it doesn't have, is borders, it can be enjoyed by anybody and everybody anytime.

And no, I doubt the Soviets had to beat good music out of them, they probably already had it to begin with.

gregure

While I agree that perfection is something that all world-class orchestras strive to achieve no matter what, it's certainly possibe that nothing less than stellar performances would have been issued to the public. It wasn't so much the fact that the government was Communist per se, but the fact that everything in that society was so heavily censored and controlled by the government, that the media that was released had to conform to the government's idea of how the USSR was to be perceived. There is an interesting bit of history surrounding Stalin and the arts. He went so far as to force Prokofiev, Shoshtakovich and others to publicly proclaim their work as worthless, as it did not conform to Stalin's idea of what Russian music should be. Luckily all their music survives.

TroyD

Fallen Kell wrote:

Well, you would hope so, especially since they were basically brow beaten to be the best for political reasons (the whole Democracy vs Communisim thing). For something to be recorded and produced for the masses, it would have to be perfect. Nothing less was acceptable, lest it show that there was something that citizens of the Soviet Union were not better than people in the "free world"...

Actually, I'll disagree with that. Goods that were made in the USSR were generally inferior by both design and quality control to goods found elsewhere.

Russian composers/musicians were in vogue long before the Bolshevik revolution.

BDT

reeltrouble1

I imagine in the throws of communism that a life as a meanigful musician was sought after and very competitive. I could care less about the politics, the music is what its all about and yes Russians have contributed to the fine arts for a long long time.

RT1