#25 - Music, Power and the Soviet Anti-Formalism Campaign

The 25th episode of Dress Rehearsal is dedicated to "Music, Power and the Soviet Anti-formalism Campaign" and explore how composers like Dmitri Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev suffered constant coercion and defamation from the Kremlin for writing "formalist" music that was not the prescribed art with a social purpose. On 10 January 1948, more than 70 composers were summoned to a three-day conference in the Kremlin, to be lectured on "how to write music". One of the main speakers, Tykhon Khrennikov, leader of the Union of Soviet Composers, attacked all of the greatest composers present, including Shostakovich and Prokofiev. During the hour we will listen to the secretly composed and highly satirical "Anti-formalist Rayok" by Dmitri Shostakovich and the propagandist "Zdravitsa", a cantata composed, by Sergey Prokofiev, in honor of Joseph Stalin. We will listen to some of Krennikov's music, to recognize what type of music the Soviet regime asked composers to write. Don't miss it!