Alfor's Rarities from the new PP

[ilu]

DUNAYEVSKY, ISAAK OSIPOVICH
(1900–1955), composer.

The Soviet composer Isaak Dunayevsky has been compared to Irving Berlin and the other great songsters of the 1930s and 1940s in America. Like Berlin, he was a Russian-born Jewish composer whose musical fertility gained him fame and wealth in the realm of popular songs and musical comedy for film and stage. Unlike the American, he spent his most productive years under the shadow of the Great Dictator, Josef Stalin. This meant walking a tightrope from which a slight breeze could topple him. That tightrope was Soviet mass song, a genre embedded within a larger cultural system known as Socialist Realism, the officially established code of creativity fashioned in the early 1930s. Mass song required both political message and broad popular appeal, a combination usually possible only in moments of urgent national solidarity, as in wartime. Irving Berlin united these elements successfully in the two world wars, and in between settled for the unpolitical forms of love ballads and novelty tunes. Dunayevsky had to sustain the combination before, after, and during World War II.

Dunayevsky, born near Kharkov in Ukraine, began as a student of classical music. After the Russian Revolution, he played with avant-garde forms but eventually settled into composing popular music. His first big hit was the score for Makhno's Escapades (1927), a circus scenario that mocked the civil war anarchist leader of a Ukrainian partisan band opposed to the Bolsheviks. Dunayevsky went on to compose some twenty film scores, a dozen operettas, and music for two ballets and about thirty dramas. His lasting legacy is the music from the enormously popular musical films of the 1930s: Happy-Go-Lucky Guys, Circus, Volga, Volga, and Radiant Road, all featuring the singing star of the era, Lyubov Orlova, and directed by her husband, Grigory Alexandrov. A fountain of melody, Dunayevsky wove elements of folk song, Viennese operetta styles, and jazz into optimistic declamatory tunes that captivated Soviet listeners for decades. The lyrics of the most famous of these, "Vast Is My Native Land" (1936), from the film Circus, celebrated the official image of Russia as a great nation, filled with free and happy citizens. The Dunayevsky mode was overshadowed somewhat during World War II, when more somber and intimate songs prevailed. His postwar hit, the music for Kuban Cossacks (1950), enhanced the propaganda value of that film, which idealized the affluence of Cossacks and peasants on the collective farms of the Kuban region. Dunayevsky died in 1955.

ILU

[alfor]

Trygve TORJUSSEN (*1885; norwegian pianist and composer; Grieg-influenced, somewhat naive but at least partly quite charming style. Good teaching material for sensitive, non-intellectual kids).

Nordische Suite op. 3
Norwegische Gebirgsidyllen op. 4
Nordische Skizzen op. 7
Lyrische Tonbilder op. 10

Torjussen.pdf

P.S. Dear ilu, dear Jean-Seb,

thank you very much for the infos!

[alfor]

Happy Easter!

Pero GOTAVAC
Miniatures (compositions for children)
Good pieces, nice drawings.

Gotovac Miniatures.pdf

Concert pieces (lighter genre)
SHOSTAKOVICH: Waltz from ballett suite (which one???)
KHRENNIKOV: Prelude (from???)
PAKHMUTOVA (???)
SAGRADOVA (Fantasy on an operetta by Milyutin; very much in the style of Tsfasman)

Concert pieces.pdf

isokani: would 200 pages of Kas'janov, Aleksandr Aleksandrovic make you happy??

[isokani]

Kasyanov would indeed make me happy!

The pieces are all concert transcriptions by M. Sagradova, meant for children.
1. Shostakovich - Lyrical Waltz from 1st Ballet Suite
2. Khrennikov - Svetlana's Lullaby from the show 'A Long time Ago'
3. Pakhmutova - Tenderness
4. Concert paraphrase on themes from Milyutin's operettas Uneasy Happiness and Alarm Among the Girls.


And me too !!! Malc

[alfor]

Dear isokani,

thank you very much for the info!!

A lot of interesting scores for the next weeks (Mushel 24 prel. & fugues; many soviet and balkan composers, etc.)

Kasyanov preview:

Kasyanov preview.pdf

[alfor]

Aimez-vous Brahms?

Brahms-Klengel
Horn-Trio op. 40

Brahms-Klengel Horn-Trio op.40.pdf

Brahms-Laurischkas
2 songs: Liebestreu op. 3,1; Immer leiser wird mein Schlummer op. 105,2

Brahms-Laurischkas 2 songs.pdf

[Caprotti]

Aimez-vous Brahms?

Brahms-Klengel
Horn-Trio op. 40

Brahms-Klengel Horn-Trio op.40.pdf

Brahms-Laurischkas
2 songs: Liebestreu op. 3,1; Immer leiser wird mein Schlummer op. 105,2

Brahms-Laurischkas 2 songs.pdf

Thank you for the Laurischkus, here are some other Lieder

[alfor]

Helmut SCHIFF (austrian composer, father of cellist Heinrich)
Sonata (Hindemith-influenced, but truly individual style)

Schiff Sonate.pdf

Yuri M. ALEXANDROV
Poema-Sonata

Alexandrov, Y. Poema-Sonata.pdf

[alfor]

Georgy A. MUSHEL
24 Preludes & Fugues Vol. 1

Mushel Prel. & Fug. 1-12.pdf

You love birds??
This one is only for the most discreet ornithologists :

Finkengeplauder.pdf

[alfor]

Was I overly discreete??

Nikolai N. SIDELNIKOV
What the Chaffinch sang about (if somebody is able to translate the individual titles, we will know!)

Sidelnikov What the Chaffinch sang about.pdf

Mushel, Kasyanov later this evening.


For your benefit I will digitize some of my shellac records.
But first a stereo file just for testing purposes (from the famous swedish" Opus 3" label).
Filename: test.wav
http://www.mediafire.com/alfor