The lecture for this week will be on Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District.
Please follow links below, as appropriate:
- Click here to listen to the opera via Spotify
to listen to extracts of this via Youtube:
Author: Ian Biddle
Listening in preparation for week 7
Ivan Dzerzhinsky, ‘От края и до края’ [From region to region], a Chorus from the Opera Тихий Дон [Quiet flows the Don] (1935), sung by the Bol’shoy Theatre Chorus
- click here to access this via Youtube
Sergey Prokofiev, October (Cantata) Op. 74 (1936-7)
Dmitri Shostakovich, Symphony Number 5 Op. 47 (1937)
Nikolai Myaskovsky, Symphony No 12 (Collective Farm Symphony) OP. 35 (1932)
Seminar 3 language revision (week 5)
Below are four short videos covering the core material of the third language session:
Letters covered in these videos:
| Е е | [ye] |
| Ё ё | [yo] |
| Ж ж | [zh] |
| И и | [i] |
| Ц ц | [ts] |
| Ш ш | [sh] |
Listening in preparation for week 5
Vadim Kozin, ‘Druzhba’ (1938)
Leonid Utesov, ‘Suliko’ (1933)
- click here to access this via Spotify
- no Youtube link, but see here for other recordings by same singer
Alla Bayanova, ‘Ochen’ khorosho’ (1930s?)
- click here to listen to this via Spotify
- no Youtube link, but click here to listen to other recordings by same singer
- See also here
See also here
Seminar 2 language revision (week 4)
Below are four short videos covering the core material of the second language session:
Letters covered in these videos:
| В в | [v] |
| Г г | [g] |
| Л л | [l] |
| Н н | [n] |
| Ы ы | [i] |
| У у | [u] |
| Р р | [r] |
| П п | [p] |
| Ф ф | [f] |
| Х х | [kh] |
Seminar 1 language revision (week 3)
Below are four short videos covering the core material of the first language session:
Letters covered in these videos:
| А а | [a] |
| Б б | [b] |
| Д д | [d] |
| З з | [z] |
| К к | [k] |
| М м | [m] |
| О о | [o] |
| С с | [s] |
| Т т | [t] |
| Э э | [e] |
Listening in preparation for week 4
‘Svabenaia’, performed by the Jewish vocal ensemble of the Belorussian SSR [Evokans], Shalom Comrade: Yiddish Music in the Soviet Union 1928-1961 (Schott Wergo SM 1627-2)
- Click here to listen to this via Spotify
- no Youtube link
‘The wind from the field’, performed by the Ukrainian Male Chorus, Folk Songs of the Soviet Union (Eden Creek 2013)
- Click here to listen to this via Spotify
- no Youtube link
‘Balalaika tunes’, Pianitsky Chorus, Folk Songs of the Soviet Union (Eden Creek 2013)
Lithuanian Lullaby, sung by Veronika Pvolioniene, Musics of the Soviet Union (Smithsonian, Folkways CD SF 40002, 1989)
‘Kele kele’, performed by the Armenian State Dance and Song Ensemble, Armenian Folk Music in the USSR (Smithsonian, Folkways, 1960)
Jewish Fate and the Soviet-Jewish “Madam Bovary”
[From Mosaic magazine]
Arrested in 1949 on charges of “anti-Soviet crimes,” the great Yiddish author Dovid Bergelson was sentenced to death and executed by firing squad in 1952. Bergelson had fled the Soviet Union in 1921 for exile in Berlin, but in 1926 began to take a more pro-Soviet stance, arguing that the USSR was the best place for Yiddish culture to flourish, and he moved to Moscow in 1934.
Dara Horn writes:
[In the 1920s], Stalin’s effort to brainwash ethnic minorities involved the Soviet government’s financing of Yiddish-language schools, newspapers, theaters, and publishers, to the extent that there were even Yiddish literary critics who were salaried by the Soviet government. During World War II, Stalin used these loyal Jews to his advantage by creating a “Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee,” a group of Jewish celebrities, including Bergelson, tasked with drumming up money and support from American Jews for the Soviet war effort. After the war, Stalin announced that the committee he himself had created was actually part of a vast Zionist conspiracy. Bergelson and his co-defendants endured three years of torture in prison before pleading guilty to the crime of “nationalism” (read: Judaism). He was executed along with a dozen other Jewish luminaries.
Click here to read more.
Listening in preparation for week 3
Aleksandr Mosolov: 2 Preludes, Op. 15 (1925-6)
- click here to listen to this via Spotify (first prelude)
- click here to listen to this via Spotify (second prelude)
- click here to listen to both preludes via Youtube (score presentation)
- click here to access the score
Nikolai Rolavets, String Quartet No. 3 (1920)
Gavril Popov, Sympohony No. 1 (1935)
- click here to access this via Youtube
- no score
Listening in preparation for week 2
Alexander Skryabin, “Towards the flame” Op.72 (1914).
Alexander Skryabin, Symphony no 4, Poem of Ecstasy, Op. 54 (written between 1905 and 1908).
- Click here to listen to this via spotify.
- Click here to listen to this via Youtube
- access score here
Nikolai Medtner, Piano Concerto No. 1 in C minor, Op. 33, Movt. I (1914–18).
- Click here to listen to this via Spotify.
- Click here to listen to this via Youtube
- access score here
Sergei Rachmaninoff, Etudes tableux, No. 1 in F-sharp minor Op.33 (1911).
