DUE TO ONGOING CONCERNS ABOUT PUBLIC GATHERINGS DURING THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC, THE ORGANISERS AND PUSHKIN HOUSE HAVE TAKEN THE DECISION TO POSTPONE THE EVENT UNTIL THE AUTUMN. WE WILL BE ANNOUNCING NEW DATES SOON.
Due to popular request, following a lively afternoon Learn + Participate workshop with David Nice on Soviet music in the 1920s, we move forward into a darker era. The move to bring rancourous Proletarian musicians’ organisations under the aegis of the Union of Soviet Composers in 1932 seemed like a good thing at the time, not least to Prokofiev, who was then living in Paris and visiting Russia for short periods. That state control was the real aim became clear four years later, with the putatively Stalin-authored Pravda attack on Shostakovich’s highly successful opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk as ‘muddle instead of music’ The terror began, and composers negotiated the minefield as best they could. Come along to learn how rich and varied their musical responses were despite the tragedy of the late 1930s.
David Nice writes, lectures and broadcasts on music. A former music critic for The Guardian and The Sunday Correspondent, he is a regular voice on BBC Radio 3. He has written short studies on Elgar, Richard Strauss, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky and the history of opera, as well as the second volume of his Prokofiev biography for Yale University Press. He runs his own lecture series, Opera in Depth.
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