SR-40062

ST6R60 Playable on Stereo & Mono Phonographs

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH twobaiiet suites I Hi* AGE OF GOLD • THUS BOLT BOLSHOI THEATER ORCHESTRA & ZHUKOVSKY MILITARY AIR ACADEMY BAND

CONDUCTED BY MAKSIM SHOSTAKOVICH

MEAOAMfl Newly Recorded in the USSR

I C£D U3K MELODIYA ANGEL

THIS STEREO RECORD CAN ALSO BE PLAYED ON MODERN MONO¬ PHONIC EQUIPMENT, SAFELY AND WITH EXCELLENT RESULTS. Today's improved record-playing equipment — mono as well as stereo — features lightweight tone arms and flexible pick-ups that will not damage your stereo discs. Thus stereo records can now be purchased with assurance by owners of monophonic phonographs. They will pro¬ vide excellent mono sound on modern monophonic players, and superb stereo sound when you later acquire stereo equipment.

MELODIYA Recorded by

Melodiya in the U.S.S.R.

File: Contemporary • Ballet • Orchestral • Melodiya/Angel

STEREO

SR-40062

The spectacular vigor and charm of Shostakovich’ s contemporary ballets ...brilliantly conducted by his son

Dmitri Shostakovich two ballet suites

THE AGE OF GOLD THE BOLT* Bolshoi Theater Orchestra &* Zhukovsky Military Air Academy Band conducted by MAKSIM SHOSTAKOVICH

side one [23:10]

THE AGE OF GOLD, Op. 22a Introduction (band 1 - 3:32)

Adagio Aleksander Stepanov (saxophone) Ivan Butirsky (clarinet) Piotr Grigoriev (baritone saxophone) Leon Zaks (violin) (band 2 - 10:01)

Polka Vladimir Fedin (xylophone) (band 3-1:53)

Dance (band 4-2:11)

THE BOLT, Op. 27a Overture (band 5-5:33)

side two [24:05]

THE BOLT (cont’d.) The Bureaucrat Romuald Vladimirov (bassoon) (band 1 - 2:23)

The Drayman’s Dance (band 2 - 1:41)

Kozelkov’s Dance with Friends (band 3 - 5:26)

Interlude (band 4-4:15)

The Dance of the Colonial Slave (band 5 - 4:13)

The Conciliator Leonid Redkin (xylophone) (band 6-2:19)

General Dance and Apotheosis (band 7-3:48)

(“• IN o) \^S£/ MANUFACTURED BY CAPITOL RECORDS, INC.,

Gifted young Maksim Dmitrievich Shostakovich is considered among the Soviet Union9s most outstand¬ ing conductors. A laureate of the National Compe¬ tition of Conductors, 1966 (Moscow), he graduated from the Moscow Conservatory where he studied under Alexander Gauk and Gennady Rozhdestven¬ sky. With this recording, he joins the other renowned Soviet conductors who are heard on Melodiya/Angel.

In the ever-lengthening list of creative works by Dmitri Shostakovich, the ballets offered here rank chronologically with his incidental music to Mayakovsky’s comedy “The Bedbug^ his opera “The Nose” (based on the story by Go¬ gol), and the first three symphonies. All of them were com¬ posed in 1929-31 and in a very real sense they are the frui¬ tion of the gifted young composer’s passionate love for the theater, the desire of the musician-dramatist to express himself in a medium which offered unlimited creative op¬ portunities. He meant it when he said: “Music will always be, for me, a way of speaking to humanity!’ In the ballet suite he found what was to be, for him, perhaps the most outspoken musical form of all.

The Age of Gold (Op. 22a), a full-length “athletic ballet” with book by A. I. Ivanovsky, was Shostakovich’s first bal¬ let score and won the prize in a 1930 competition for new ballets on a Soviet subject. Premiered on March 19, 1930 by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra with Alexander Gauk conducting, the ballet was introduced to Moscow audiences one year later at the Bolshoi Theater with choreography by E. I. Kaplan and V I. Vainomen. The story concerns a Soviet soccer team which is sent abroad to an international exhibition. Its directness and simplicity are perfectly matched by uproariously satirical music and spectacularly virile choreography.

According to the story by Ivanovsky, the host to the ex¬ hibition is a capitalist country where the honored guests

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number R 68-3092 applies to this recording.

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are a Fascist delegation and where members of a visiting Soviet soccer team are coolly received. The action concerns clashes between two opposed factions consisting of the capitalists, their police and a beautiful cabaret dancer on one hand and the local workers, several members of the Communist youth movement, a victimized Negro boxer, the Soviet soccer team and their captain on the other. First, the workers protest a rigged boxing match in which the Negro is cheated of his victory. Second, the dancer tries in vain to seduce the soccer captain who, moreover, refuses to join in a Fascist toast. Third, counterfeit money is planted on the captain and he is arrested. Finally, the workers, rebelling against the injustices they see about them, invade the music hall at the exhibition, disperse the entertainers and their public and hold a demonstration of national solidarity.

Shostakovich’s own suite consists of four movements. The Introduction takes us into the ballet’s light-hearted and satirical atmosphere by quoting from other parts of the score in the style of a musical comedy overture, with interesting, bustling contrapuntal sections mingling with amusing waltz and polka strains. The often-lyrical Adagio is the dancer Deva’s solo in which she attempts to lure the handsome but incorruptible captain of the Soviet soccer team. (In a parody of the typical classical Adagio, the score indicates the use of such unlikely instruments as soprano saxophone, euphonium and piccolo.) The celebrated satiri¬ cal Polka (subtitled in the book, “Once Upon a Time in Geneva”), interestingly enough, uses more unlikely instru¬ ments: saxophone, xylophone, the insouciant sound of E-flat clarinet, the sharply-accented rhythmic pattern of the percussion and the straight-forward intonation of the solo trumpet. Its dancers in diplomatic morning coats satirize the World Disarmament Conference following World War I. The final Dance is a whirlwind trepak featur¬ ing the most characteristic of all Russian national instru¬ ments, the accordion. Reminiscent of the exuberant country fair music of Stravinsky’s “PetroushkaJ’ the Dance is a truly grand finale for full orchestra.

Like “The Age of Gold” the story of the ballet “The Bolt” (scenario by V Smirnov) is uncomplicated: a drunken loafer, Lyonka Gulba, and his besotted companions are fired from their factory jobs. In revenge, Gulba talks a young man named Gosha into ruining a lathe by inserting a bolt into the machinery. At the last moment, Gosha re¬ pents as Gulba is seized by the factory guards. All of the action takes place against a colorful background of Soviet factory life. Premiered in the Bolshoi Auditorium of the Leningrad Philharmonic on January 17, 1933 with Alex¬ ander Gauk conducting, “The Bolt” (The Fifth Ballet Suite, Op. 27a), was an immediate success.

As musically choreographed, the work opens with a “call- to-attention” by the French horn. This is followed by the brisk, tense rhythms which go to make up the typical at¬ mosphere of industrial life. What follows are perhaps best described as musical portraits of the various protag¬ onists : the unwavering figure of the bureaucrat (note the confidently dull intonations of the bassoon); the Russian folk-dance effect of the drayman’s gait; the colonial slave’s dance led by the eloquent English horn; the humor¬ ous character sketch of the conciliator who actually seems to have no character of his own at all. Concluding the work is a finale which is, in essence, a masterful blend of the classic Russian music traditions with the contemporary.

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