Gresham College Lectures

Soviet Music in World War II

April 27, 2022 Gresham College
Gresham College Lectures
Soviet Music in World War II
Show Notes Transcript

The tribulations of WWII (the “Great Patriotic War”) prompted a temporary liberalisation within Soviet culture. Images of horror and grief, formerly unacceptable, found their way into the wartime music of Soviet composers. The debate over Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony showed how the boundaries of Socialist Realism could be stretched, but also where the limits lay. 

The lecture will also discuss some works on Jewish themes (by Shostakovich, Weinberg and Gnessin) and their complex connection to the War and to the Holocaust.


A lecture by Marina Frolova-Walker

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/soviet-war-music

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- Dear friends, the topic today is "Soviet Music in World War II." And it's a very difficult lecture to give at this time. I'm sure you understand why. In fact, I was thinking of whether it was so inappropriate to do this lecture that I should cancel. But there are two reasons why I didn't want to do it. First of all, our young musicians who are going to be performing to you already learned the lovely piece that you're going to hear at the end, and secondly, I think that those who are in charge of Russian propaganda right now would not like me doing this. In fact, it's been criminalized. And for that reason, I think, it's a good thing to do it, it might be useful to do it. Why is it particularly difficult, and, you know, possibly inappropriate to do a lecture like this? Because, well, I have grown up with the cult of the Second World War, and in particular with the Russian part of it, yeah, so which starts in 1941, which we call the Great Patriotic War. So as you can imagine, children are kind of indoctrinated in this way very early on in school you meet the veterans, you read the stories, and it becomes part of you, and, of course, you also have some kind of family history, that connects you to that time. And I'm sure my British listeners will agree that it's the same or was the same, or has been the same in Britain. Yeah, the spirit of the Blitz is still alive and there are plenty of documentaries that people keep watching about that time. And there is something, a little bit of us, that is proud of what was done not by us, but by people we have some kind of connection with. So I suppose this is, this little bit of national pride that we all had, I'm talking about the Russians, that we all had, and even people who would disagree on all sorts of other political issues, you know, liberals and conservatives, used to agree on one thing; that the memory of the war was sacred, that we should not forget the victims of the war, and that we should always keep that vicarious memory in mind in order for this not to be repeated. But what happened in the last, I don't know, 15, 10 years, this cult of the war was hijacked by the Russian government, completely became more and more grand and vulgarized. The 9th May became the holiday that not everyone wanted to celebrate because you would be aligning yourself with the government. It was vulgarized, and somehow out of this, you know, let's not forget this, lest we forget, came out a little nasty slogan, "We can do this again,"if necessary, we can do this again." It seems to be coming from a song, a military song from 1955."We've marched through half of Europe,"if necessary, we can repeat."We can repeat." This is this little nasty slogan, nasty meme. And, unfortunately, this is exactly what is happening right now, this is exactly the propaganda preparation for the events that unfolded on the 24th of February,

exactly four week ago:

the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Because if you were in Russia today, just watching the news on TV you would not be aware that a war is going on, because it's not a war, it's a special operation. You are shown, I think today they showed the horrible destruction Mariupol, and they said,"Look what Ukrainian Nazis have done." Not to mention that the dehumanization of this propaganda reached such a stage that even, they would not announce the Russian losses. We don't know how many people were lost, on TV, there was not a single announcement of that. So people are living a lie, living surrounded by this lie, which is an unbearable. And the memory of World War II, that pride is now gone for us. It's not possible for me to do what I was planning to do, to play some popular songs because these popular songs have been sullied by this hijacking of the war cult. What I've decided to do, I've decided to connect to the present events, and this is why I've chosen this image, which I think, you know, does create a connection between the two wars, but the positive one. Here, you see a woman who went through the Siege of Leningrad, obviously she must have been quite young at the time, who is being arrested for protesting during the war. This is a photograph taken in the last few weeks. And after having been arrested and released, she's come our again with a different placard that she's herself painted, and she will not be stopped. So this image is the only thing to hold on to, in a sense, for me. So I will be begin from the events before 1941, yes, from 1939, because that part of the World War II usually wasn't part of the cult. In fact, it was forgotten. In fact, it wasn't written down on history books and we did not study it in school. So what was forgotten was the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which meant that Russia, just before the beginning of World War II signed a pact of non-aggression with Germany, with Hitler. And this photograph was in all the papers. People, now imagine that for many years, not just weeks and months, people were told that, you know, Nazis were bad, that it's terrible, there was denunciations of fascism in every single newspaper. And then suddenly, you sign a part of non-agreement, and what's worse, you actually cross the Polish border. So I looked at some of the diaries which were written at the time by Russians. One of them says, "In 'Pravda' today, one of the reports"from Western Ukraine styled the Poles as the hateful enemy."But it was only a month and a half ago"that we were offering this hateful enemy our military help."Such is politics."Thankfully people have short memories"and such word-spinning does not lodge"in their conscious minds." So he's being sarcastic, and I'm sure we're all familiar with this short memory. So people suddenly had to rethink all this and find justification in being friends with Hitler. Some of the them did, some of them didn't do, but it was much easier to do it because, remember, in those days, there wasn't even internet, there wasn't any alternative source of information. So they just had to, you know, there were only rumors and newspapers, nothing else. As our friendship with Hitler developed, various things were done in culture to promote something that Hitler liked, for example, Wagner. Here's another excerpt of the same diarist:"We listened to a radio broadcast'Die Walkure' for Germany,"with singers from the Bolshoi."It was prefaced with a speech by Sergei Eisenstein,"who delivered it in German."He will be producing 'Die Walkure'"at the Bolshoi next season." You can see a picture of him dealing with the Walkures."It is known to be Hitler's favorite opera,"so this is a kind of political courtesy."In Berlin, they staged Ivan Susanin,"and published, 'Quiet Flows the Don'." So all these things were seen as shocking to start with, but then people got used to the idea. And in a strange way because the attention of the government was so much on international affairs, the domestic situation got a little bit more relaxed. In fact, culture didn't have the same restrictions as it would have had in 1936 or 1937. For example, Shostakovich's"Sixth Symphony" got a mixed reception, but the castigation, the criticism of it was nothing like what he experienced in 1936. There was Prokofiev's opera "Semyon Kotko" which was a very complex, sophisticated piece, and next to that, there was a work by Tikhon Khrennikov, which is called, "Into the Storm". There was a debate of which one was better, which was not so good, and it actually turns out that the professional community favored Prokofiev over Khrennikov. So it's exactly the opposite to what would have happened in 1936. So generally, for culture, the climate was, seemed to be more liberal, even though, of course, the same opera had to be censored, the German invaders they had to be replaced by Austrians for it even to reach the stage. And Eisenstein's film, "Alexander Nevsky" also was shelved because there were these medieval Teutonic Knights invading Russia there. Of course, another thing that was happening, that Stalin continued to give a lot of carrots out, so not just sticks, but carrots to the workers of culture, so to speak. And they received orders and honorary titles, and there was a new thing now which is called the Stalin Prize introduced in 1940. The first of them were awarded just before the war, and that was a fantastical amount of money to receive for a 1st Class winner. It was 100,000 rubles, and the rubles were a bit weightier than they are now, and you could buy something like six automobiles with it. So you can imagine for an ordinary worker, it's an unthinkable, unimaginable amount of money. And these prizes were given not just to people as a lifetime achievement, but for particular pieces. And amazingly, when you look at music, you can see that it wasn't the Stalin cantatas that won the first class prize,

but pieces that you wouldn't expect:

the "Piano Quintet" by Shostakovich. It's a chamber work. It's a very sophisticated work, again. Myaskovsky, "Symphony No. 1", nothing particularly grand about it, it's a very lyrical symphony, it even has a quiet ending. I suppose, you know, the oratory "On the Kulikovo Field" but still even that is a kind of big national oratory arousing, glorifying Russian victory in the 14th century, but not on Soviet topic. So why is this happening? Because at that point, the Stalin Prize Committee, which consisted of professionals, was not overseen by Molotov. Molotov was flying to Berlin and he had no time for the Stalin Prize Committee. So this is how this happened. But we can't imagine that at time people, culture workers, composers were entirely free. And one interesting piece that I would like to introduce here is Shostakovich's,"Suite On Finnish Themes" Now this is another forgotten war, or at least, you know, the war that Russians would like to forget: it's the Finish War, the Winter War, which in many ways, very much reminds me of what is happening now. So Russians were hoping for a blitzkrieg, they thought it would be over by Stalin's birthday, so within three weeks, but they got stuck there. And amazingly, whereas Soviet Union where in Finland, they lost it. They lost it. I mean, they still got a little bit of territory out of that, but it was a kind of shameful episode that they preferred not to remember. And the regime change that they wanted to institute there to replace the government with a kind of social democratic or pro-communist government also did not happen. So Shostakovich was given a commission, which he obviously could not refuse. The commission was for arrangements of Finish folk songs, and it was given to him at the very end of November of 1939. Am I right? Or 40, yeah 1940. No. Yeah. I've got confused. But at that moment, just before the invasion started. And Shostakovich obviously could not say no because the commission was from the political department of the Leningrad Military District. So it's basically was a military commission and, I think, you can imagine that it was very difficult to say no. Would he have even imagined what purpose these songs would serve? We don't know very much about this. We only know that they were probably intended for a celebration, for a celebration of victory. And when you hear them, they're completely innocuous and rather lovely.(singing opera in foreign language)(singing opera in foreign language)(singing opera in foreign language)- So, an innocuous piece. What happened to it afterwards? Shostakovich completely buried it in his papers. So obviously he was so ashamed of this piece he never it to put his name to it and to promote it. It was only discovered after his death and performed. And actually, you know, because of the time that had passed since the war it's been performed in Finland, it seems to be, I mean, again, ironically it was performed, I think, for Putin's visit to Finland. So there's lots of ironies and an innocuous piece, but with a dark lining to it. So let's now fast forward to 22nd June, 1941 when the Nazis invaded the territory of the Soviet Union. I like this quote from Pasternak's novel, "Dr. Zhivago", even though it seems to be sort of counterintuitive."And when the war broke out, its real horrors,"its real dangers, its menace of real death,"were a blessing compared to the inhuman power of the lie,"a relief because it broke a spell of the dead letter." When the war broke out, people knew what was true and what was false. They knew which side they were on. And it saved some of, you know, those who had been arrested already before the war and completely lost faith in the whole system and in the regime. It was very difficult for them to live after that because they were basically understanding that they were living a lie. And then suddenly this was lifted. And you can certainly see this in people's diaries, people were actually energized by this new authenticity, authenticity of emotion, of expression that they found. Of course, Shostakovich's "Symphony No. 7" became very early a symbol of the war. And various things that it introduced show us the new license of war. What does this mean? What do I mean by this term? I mean that more things were permitted, more musical idioms were permitted now within socialist realism, if they represented the enemy, or if they represented the suffering of the Russians under the enemy. So you could write a tragic piece and be justified. You could write a piece which had this very high emotional temperature, to be expressionist, to portray horrors, and that would be justified. You could use the so-called grotesque style, the kind of mocking style that was always frowned upon within socialist realism, because, "What are you being ironic about?"What are you mocking?" Well, here you could mock the enemy. So that also now became acceptable. And ,of course, the very famous moment in Shostakovich's "Seventh Symphony" is the moment, the beginning of the invasion. And how we suddenly change from peaceful sounds to the sound of a side drum; very, very quiet, very far away. And then you hear a little tune, a banal tune, a tune that might refer to one of the numbers in an operetta that Hitler, particularly liked "The Merry Widow", but it's an easy, easygoing, lighthearted tune, which has a sinister meaning. And then it grows and grows, it approaches you, it gets closer and closer, it becomes deafening in the sound of the orchestra. So it becomes the music of the war. So it's a kind of grotesque portrayal of the war, or portraying it through a banal tune. It was something that nobody quite had done before that, so it was a very powerful and new thing to do. So I want you to hear that, just that moment when you hear that the lovely violin solo, the end of the peaceful life, and then the beginning of the war.(Shostakovich's "Symphony No. 7")(Shostakovich's "Symphony No. 7")(Shostakovich's "Symphony No. 7") I wanted to show you where I think this idea comes from. I think it's a very cinematic idea, and I think it comes from the film called "Chapaev", it's a film about the Civil War, which comes from 1934 and every single citizen of the Soviet Union would've watched that film. It was basically the most popular film at the time. So if you listen to the soundtrack, you will hear the birds singing and then you'll hear the drum.("Chapaev" soundtrack instrumental music)(guns firing)("Chapaev" soundtrack instrumental music)(speaking in foreign language)("Chapaev" soundtrack instrumental music)(guns firing)("Chapaev" soundtrack instrumental music)- So this idea of this really cinematic idea, which I think Shostakovich makes into a musical idea. I'm not going to tell you the whole story of the "Seventh Symphony", which is very well known. And how it was used as a weapon in the war, and then, you know, picked up by the Allies, flown to America, and so on you, you probably know all that. I wanted to show you how this symphony influenced the rest of the Soviet music productions. Everyone started producing war symphonies, it really became the dominant genre. Or on the other hand, we can say almost every work that was produced at this time would have received a kind of explanation, a war program, even if the program was not written in anywhere. So any work written during the war was automatically received and explained in terms of a war program. And composers who were creating these symphonies did that in their own ways. For example, you know, Khachaturian, we talked about him, he had this very vivid national style, oriental style, I guess. And he repurposed this style to create a tragic symphony, to create tragic music of idioms that were, had been previously used is only for, kind of, entertainment, dance, enjoyment, but this was the normal kind of application of that style. And now it sounds all completely different. So I will play you a little episode where you hear the very sort of typical percussion patterns from Transcaucasian region, which would normally be used for dance. But here they are completely rethought of, rethought, repurposed to represent tragedy unfolding, tragedy and crisis.(Aram Khachaturian, "Symphony No. 2")(Aram Khachaturian, "Symphony No. 2") Prokofiev on the other hand, he also created a symphony, which was read in the context of the war program, war narrative, which is "Number Five", and he in the scherzo reused the material that was supposed to go into his "Romeo and Juliet" ballet, but wasn't needed there. So he actually reused it and elaborated in such a way that it's turned out to be even more sinister than some of Shostakovich's scherzo. So here is this very famous moment where writing is for the brass is, sort of, incredible, it's like a huge machine that's starting out, and, again, advancing you, advancing towards you.(Prokofiev, "Symphony No. 5")(Prokofiev, "Symphony No. 5")(Prokofiev, "Symphony No. 5") And every slow movement in such a symphony would be read as a requiem. And, again, would usually have this huge climax and, again, in "Symphony No. 5", it's particularly pronounced. So the lyrical melody that comes after seems to be kind of damaged deflected by that.(Prokofiev, "Symphony No. 5")(Prokofiev, "Symphony No. 5")(Prokofiev, "Symphony No. 5")(Prokofiev, "Symphony No. 5") But the main war symphony, and I would claim that this is even more important possibly than the "Seventh" is Shostakovich's "Eight Symphony", because this is really as far as the license of war would go, this is where it hits the limit. Because there was a huge debate around this symphony, if you listen to it you will probably say,"Well, this is not a symphony that you feel"has been restricted by any censorship."It really feels completely authentic to me." And the fact that Shostakovich wrote it in the middle of the war is, of course, amazing, and showed what was possible. But once it was written, then the debate started. Because, of course, it was nominated also for a Stalin Prize, and they debated over it for two whole years, because actually the first time the prize wasn't awarded and then it was transferred to the next year as well. And here are some of the things that was said. So this is Alexander Goldenweiser who says,"There are no purely musical faults in this work."But there're ideological shortcomings,"and this work is extremely pessimistic." So, again, it "gives the impression that it portrays,"with huge power, all the darkness and pain"that undoubtedly have a place in our experiences."But we want to have something that rises above it." Sculptor Vera Mukhina complained that the symphony was too difficult to listen to, that you might even think,"Well, when is it going to end?" And was frustrated by"fearsome complexity," as she said that she couldn't take it home and her memory with it. And yet she selected two movements, she calls them "the two marches." This is movements two and three, which she thought were quite exceptional and very direct in the power of expression. Well, this is what she means. This is one of these marches. It's not quite a march, it's a kind of fierce staccato.(Shostakovich, "Symphony No. 8")(Shostakovich, "Symphony No. 8") So you can probably imagine that people actually heard the sounds of war itself, the actual soundscape of war in these scores, both in Prokofiev and in Shostakovich. And the end, which perplexed everyone, while in the "Seventh Symphony", Shostakovich really tried to imagine the victory, so it's a grand, grand peroration at the end. At the end of the "Eighth Symphony", although it's in C major, the end is very quiet."(Shostakovich, "Symphony No. 8)(Shostakovich, "Symphony No. 8)(Shostakovich, "Symphony No. 8) So imagine you've been sitting for an hour listening to this very complex symphony, and this is what you're rewarded by, there's a few notes in the pizzicato, so that's quite disappointing I guess. So they were taking issues with that. So finally, when the Minister Khrapchenko speaks about the work, he says that the problem is that "it's not really accessible"to ordinary cultured listeners," you know. Secondly it's too"individualistic," too individual. And thirdly, it's "too pessimistic." And then he starts, you know, relating this to what Shostakovich had done before, and, of course, you know that Shostakovich had been denounced for formalism. So he says, "He's revisiting the past." And when Khrapchenko his writing to Stalin and Molotov about this piece, he says, already puts it in much more harsher language, that "Shostakovich repeats here the same formalist errors"that had typified some of his earlier works." So the symphony was supposed to get the second class prize, so half the money, but then they came back to it next year, and Shostakovich had already written two more works, he wrote a "Second Quartet" and also a "Trio". And they thought, "Okay, well maybe"we can then add 'Trio' to it,"and then we can raise it to first class." Because to give Shostakovich second class prize is a bit embarrassing. But then there was this audition at the Stalin Prize Committee and Shostakovich must have recommended one of his disciples, a wonderful young composer called Mieczyslaw Weinberg. So can you imagine the committee listening to the Weinberg quintet then to Shostakovich's "Second Quartet", and then Shostakovich's "Trio". Now try doing this at home. These are three extremely heavy works, and very demanding emotionally, very demanding from the listeners. So Weinberg "Quintet" is a wonderful piece. Weinberg, of course, was a, has an amazing biographical story, you know, because he was in Poland where the war broke out, and he walked to the border with a Soviet Union. So he crossed the border as a refugee, like, just like people are doing now, walking 80 kilometers or something through Ukraine to get to the border. But he was walking the other direction. So he crossed the border into Soviet Union and amazingly he wasn't sent in the gulag, at least not straight away, and was allowed to have a career. All his family perished, the rest of them perished. So Shostakovich was incredibly impressed by the story and also by the talent of Weinberg and promoted him a lot. And it's an amazing work, I'll just play a few passages to you.

("Mieczyslaw Weinberg:

"Piano Quintet")"Piano Quintet") It's Weinberg himself playing, amazing piano playing as well. And, of course, Weinberg being Jewish composed quite a lot of music in the Jewish idiom, and actually Shostakovich, I think, learned from him. And it is, it seems Shostakovich that is often more influenced by Weinberg than Weinberg by Shostakovich, this is quite an amazing thing. But this is one of the moments in the slow movement, where you can see even these repeated notes, this kind of recitational cantillation. Piano Quintet") Piano Quintet") And if you want to see the very ending of the "Quartet","Quintet", sorry, I told you about the endings, quiet endings and how they were not a good thing in the socialist realism. He actually ends with an empty bar at the end. There's actually nothing, there's a bar of silence at the end, which is, it's a very symbolic. So when all that was performed. So that was probably about two hours of music, an architect who was a member of the Stalin Prize Committee really could not contain himself any longer, and he started swearing at Weinberg, well, Weinberg wasn't there, but anyway,"Some youth brings us a piece of utterly unbearable rubbish."It's an outrageous thing, the most incredible cacophony,"just a lot of caterwauling."There were some attempts at technical innovation:"now you do it with a finger, now with a bow!"We were laughing about it, that maybe he should get"something attached to his back, so he could drum on it."How does this come about?"In this regard, I must raise an issue of principle here."The Stalin Prize Committee has a certain"criterion of evaluation."It approaches every work from the point of"socialist realism."If we were offered some kind of futurist daub"as a painting, we would not even look at it."If we were offered some kind of zaum',"'transrational' poetry, we would not give it a hearing."So why in music do we have to listen"to these formalist scams?" And he continues, that Shostakovich,"One is a teacher, the other a pupil,"but it's an unbearable cacophony again in the 'Quartet',"and the most, it's the most you can do"just to stay put in your seat."And we keep saying Shostakovich is a genius,"a genius, a genius."We give it our encouragement."And this "Quartet", this incredible chaos and cacophony,"after we heard some rounded phrases in the "Trio""and people said it was very good."But if you take it by itself,"there is nothing particularly good about it." And so on and so on. So after that, the discussion was swayed in the other way. Nobody could quite defend Shostakovich with the same ardor as before. But the "Trio", yeah, so the"Eight Symphony", basically, this is an interesting quote about the "Eight Symphony" says one, "When the 'Eight Symphony' is performed,"there's a lot of cacophony there,"but people hear something in it"which reminds them of the cannons firing"and the Katyusha rocket launchers squealing,"while in the "Quartet" and the "Trio""this justification is lacking." So this is the license of war spelled out for you. So you can do various things if they have to do with the war, but if there's no justification, it's just formalism. Well, the "Trio" actually got the award instead of the "Symphony", second class award. And it's amazing too, because it's, it has this Jewish material and this very, very famous kind of Jewish dance, which is incredibly sinister. And, you know, he's is now, has been described as a dance of death. And the "Trio" does seem to refer to the Holocaust already because there were the first reports coming out in 1944, from when the Soviet forces liberated these parts of Poland and discovered this horrors of Majdanek. So this is very likely to have something to do with that. This is the finale of Shostakovich's "Trio".(Shostakovich, "Trio No. 2")(Shostakovich, "Trio No. 2") So this is what they liked about this piece, because it's more, it's an easy music, it's a kind of foot-tapping music for them. They did not ever mention that this was Jewish in the discussion, this didn't come up. And basically they awarded the "Trio" because it was more accessible. So in the context, we think that this is a strange award. But that's how it happened. How was the victory celebrated? Of course, Shostakovich having written the "Seventh" and the "Eighth", the "Ninth" was expected out of him to celebrate the victory. And he started writing a huge symphony with a choir, and, you know, the "Ninth Symphony" is a very dangerous number, composes, usually die after writing one. So he got cold feet and he abandoned his sketches and he presented something entirely different.(Shostakovich, "Symphony No. 9")(Shostakovich, "Symphony No. 9") So it's a comedy symphony. It's a neoclassical symphony. It's very light. And unfortunately the tasks, the information agency published a notice about it, that this Shostakovich's "Ninth Symphony" will be in celebration of our great victory. So you can imagine in that context, this was, it was seen by many other kind of provocation and something embarrassing. Lots of Shostakovich's supporters were trying to cover up for it and saying,"Well, it expresses the joy and relief,"the feeling of Soviet people after the end of the war." But that didn't wash. So, in the end, when it was, again, nominated for a Stalin Prize, this was the report by the Politburo Commission, which basically dismissing it."It's not of significant artistic value"and it's not very successful." So if that wasn't a good enough commemoration because it was too light and not too grand enough. Prokofiev's "Ode to the End of the War" failed on the other end of the spectrum because it was too grandiose.(Prokofiev, "Ode to the End of the War")(Prokofiev, "Ode to the End of the War") So to have eight harps and four pianos and a huge number of double basses, huge number of brass was seen as excessive, extravagant, decadent, again, going beyond socialist realism. So that wasn't a good victory piece either. And indeed when you think of it, there wasn't a completely approved, universally approved victory symphony written. And maybe that had to do with the fact that already from 1948, even the day of victory, the 9th May wasn't celebrated anymore, it wasn't a holiday anymore. So Stalin actually didn't want to celebrate it, he didn't want to create the culture war, he wanted people to forget about it. So the returning prisoners of war was sent to the gulag, the archives remained closed, and the disabled veterans were removed far away, you know, from the central streets of Moscow. So the cult only then reemerged in the '60s. And my final section is the limits of commemoration. So for a very long time, after the war, the theme of commemorating the victims was very important, but there were limits, and various prescriptions of how to commemorate the victims and who you could commemorate. I will tell you one little story without playing the piece, because there's simply no recording of this piece, but I'm wondering whether somebody will make one, one day. So this is another Shostakovich disciple, Yuri Levitin, "Quartet No. 7", and his piece was dedicated to Ukrainian partisan who fought against Nazis, her name was Lyalya Ubiivovk. And the moment that the committee heard that there was a dedication to her, they started worrying about this. This was already in 1952, they said, or, you know, is there a scene of execution on this quartet? Well, that's too horrible, we don't want to have that. What about these Ukrainians folk songs that you use, are you sure that they're entirely appropriate Ukrainian songs? Why are you using old songs and not new Soviet Ukrainian songs? So the piece was completely, you know, rejected for this reason. And it was considered false and, kind of, inauthentic, even though Levitin actually came from the same city in which Ubiivovk was born and in which she died, she was executed. So it was a kind of his local commemoration, but it wasn't accepted. And another case of that was a symphony, which is, was written by Dmitri Klebanov/Dmytro Klebaniv a Kharkiv composer, Ukrainian Jewish composer, which was dedicated to the Martyrs' of Babi Yar or Babyn Yar. You probably know about much more famous symphony Shostakovich's "13th", we comes from much later. But this one is not very well known because it was rejected straight after the premier. And I will read out what they said. It says, "Great mistakes have been found"in the work of some composers."That's for example, the Kharkiv of composer Klebanov"wrote the Babi Ya Symphony"that is steeped in the spirit of bourgeois nationalism,"and cosmopolitanism, and founded"on all Jewish religious songs,"rituals of ancient Palestine, Israel's lament,"intonations of the synagogal chant."Such are the sources which inspired Klebanov"to write this anti-patriotic symphony." And this very much, very, sort of, contemporary language, anti-patriotic. This is something that we hear very much right now from the Russian media.(Dmitri Klebanov/Dmytro Klebaniv, "Symphony No. 1")(Dmitri Klebanov/Dmytro Klebaniv, "Symphony No. 1")(singing in foreign language)- You might have recognized Mahlerian style, which, of course, Mahler a Jewish composer. It's not here without a reason that Klebanov is using this idiom here. And later on, he does another interesting thing, he's quotes from Beethoven's"Ninth Symphony", but instead of the recitative is the finale, he uses Jewish cantillation again. So you can see how this music is full of symbols. It damaged his career quite substantially. And now when I think back to the case of Levitin, having sort of discovered this denunciation of Klebanov, I think that there was probably also an unspoken worry about Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism. That you could not commemorate someone Ukrainian in a specifically Ukrainian way. This was not allowed. You could not commemorate the Jews separately from the Soviet people. You could not commemorate Ukrainians separately from the Soviet people. So this is very much something that, again, connects it to the rhetoric of our time to today. These are the roots of what we have seen growing in recent decades. Well, now to the piece that our trio is going to play here, a "Trio" by Mikhail Gnessin, a very rarely performed piece. And I will only say a very few words about it. Gnessin is an interesting composer. He was a pioneer of the Soviet style in the 1920s. He created one of the first pieces, symphonic monument, which was actually on the Soviet theme. He was also a pioneer of Jewish national music, he wrote a lot of music, which was specifically trying to discover how to do, how to create music out of various songs and chants. And to the extent that he was the only composer, only of Soviet composers who was explicitly banned by the Nazis. So that's an interesting fact. Gnessin was also extremely courageous man. On three occasions at least, in 1932, in 1936, in 1948, he actually just stood up for his friends, he stood up against charges of formalism, which was a very dangerous thing to do, so I have a huge respect for him. But this is a piece which is written in commemoration of his son. He wrote it during his evacuation in Tashkent. His son who was a 35-year-old, Fabi, his name was, arrived in Tashkent before Gnessin and died in the hospital before his father arrived. And Gnessin wanted to write a piece in his memory, but he created a more general dedication,"In Memory of Our Perished Children". And he also wrote a little note, which was supposed to be passed around when the piece was performed."The composer has strived to express our shared pain"over our children, students, and young friends"who perished in battles for our fatherland"or who were tortured by the enemy in occupied cities;"but he also seeks to stir up in his listeners' memory"an image of these young people as living beings,"in the youth, from childhood dreams and play,"from youthful unrequited love and aspirations,"to the earliest real achievements of adulthood,"and then their sudden deaths."The sections of the trio linked to the poetry"of children's suffering are built on a theme"that was composed at age of eight by the son"of the composer Fabi, now diseased." This piece is, doesn't sound particularly Jewish, although it does contain Yiddish theme at the very start in the pizzicato, but it's not explicitly written in the Jewish idiom. Nevertheless later on, it has acquired new meanings as a Holocaust memorial piece. But today, I think, this dedication can stand and we don't have to add anything to it, and dedicated to those innocent victim, the victims of the war that is going on now. And I will invite now onto the stage our very young performers. They're all undergraduates from Cambridge University: Jaqueline Seki, William Harris, and Ellis Thomas; two of them are from Clare College and one of them are from Downing College. Please give them very warm round of welcome.(audience clapping)(Mikhail Gnessin, "Trio")(Mikhail Gnessin, "Trio")(Mikhail Gnessin, "Trio")(Mikhail Gnessin, "Trio")(Mikhail Gnessin, "Trio")(Mikhail Gnessin, "Trio")(Mikhail Gnessin, "Trio")(Mikhail Gnessin, "Trio")(Mikhail Gnessin, "Trio")(Mikhail Gnessin, "Trio")(Mikhail Gnessin, "Trio")(Mikhail Gnessin, "Trio")(Mikhail Gnessin, "Trio")(Mikhail Gnessin, "Trio")(Mikhail Gnessin, "Trio")(Mikhail Gnessin, "Trio")(Mikhail Gnessin, "Trio")(Mikhail Gnessin, "Trio")(Mikhail Gnessin, "Trio")(Mikhail Gnessin, "Trio")(Mikhail Gnessin, "Trio")(Mikhail Gnessin, "Trio")(Mikhail Gnessin, "Trio")(Mikhail Gnessin, "Trio")(Mikhail Gnessin, "Trio")(Mikhail Gnessin, "Trio")(audience clapping)- We don't have time for questions. But I just would like to say, first of all, thank you to performers who were tremendous. It was, I thought it was a deeply moving piece of music, but also thank you to you for persevering this evening in these awful circumstances. And I just want to read out two of the many comments online. One person said,"Thank you so much for deciding to do your talk,"music is a universal language." And the second one, I'd just quickly like to read says,"20th century Russian music"is part of European cultural history"as much as Shakespeare, Wagner or Dante."Professor Frolova-Walker does not need to make"any apologies for any crude misuse"by a temporary dictator." So thank you.(audience clapping)