Shostakovich on Trial: from Lady Macbeth to the Fifth Symphony

This lecture focuses on one of the watershed moments of Soviet music history: the censure of Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, and the composer’s path through reform to rehabilitation.
The Shostakovich story was only the tip of the iceberg, and almost all Soviet composers had to adjust their aesthetic and style at this point, unless they were prepared to languish in obscurity and poverty.
Shostakovich's Songs on the Texts of English Poets is performed by Bass Ed Hawkins and the pianist Ceri Owen.
A lecture by Marina Frolova-Walker with a performance by Edward Hawkins (Bass) and Ceri Owen (Piano)
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-an...
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[@BritinIsrael]

I just came to this by chance. A really wonderful and informative lecture. She has a voice that one can listen to for hours and not get bored. The subtitles at times made me laugh.......such as when she said Mahler more than once , the subtitle read " milder". I have seen Lady Macbeth on two occasions and the 4th Symphony 6 ( yes 6 ) times . Both are wonderfully expressive works . Just to add. that in my personal humble opinion his finest and most satisfying symphonies are his 4th and 8 th. ( When i heard of his death i actually cried and listened to the 8th)

[@nHans]

Awesome! It was a real treat listening to Ed Hawkins sing Robert Burns' _Jenny_ (aka _Comin' Thro the Rye)._ As a non-British Gen-Xer, I knew of that poem thanks to JD Salinger's _The Catcher in the Rye._ I always imagined it as being recited by a giggly schoolboy. I was completely unprepared for Ed's deep bass and somber demeanor! Now I'm suffering serious cognitive dissonance.

[@homeofcreation]

Now I can never listen to Carmen without thinking of Mitja and Lala.

[@gpcrawford8353]

Maximilian Steinberg married Rimsky-Korsakov’s daughter Sonya.

[@56rarity]

Thank you!! Really interesting and very elaborate investigation!! I have a back thought that Stalin guessed in Shostakovitch some kind of russian Wagner:))))

[@jamesoliver6625]

Is 14:35 an expression of the Woke collective or what!

[@chel3SEY]

Interesting with subtitles. Indecipherable otherwise.

[@homeofcreation]

How many languages do you speak, or at least try? I am Dutch and I can follow it easily.

[@michaelmallal9101]

Is this what Stalin listened to?