# Evgeny Mravinsky



## Aurelian (Sep 9, 2011)

He was born in 1903. By the time he died in 1988, glasnost was underway. Did he publicly say or privately confide in others how he really felt about the previous 80 years?


----------



## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

Mravinsky's wife said this about him: "His vast intellectual horizon, knowledge of Euorpean languages, ancient and modern philosophies, his taste in poetry, extraordinary musical memory ... helped him find the truth in all things whether musical, artistic or daily and mad him and almost missionary-like humanist. Whenever he studied a score, he sought to enter into the atmosphere of a composition and to penetrate the cornposer's spiritual world, for he felt that his overriding task was to bring that world back to life." 

He toured greatly with Leningrad Philharmonic after Stalin's death raising the orchestra's standing to world class. He was said to have had disagreements with and dislike for Shostakovich even though he premiered many of his symphonies. He refused to play the composer's Babi Yar symphony in 1962, saying he didn't like choral music. This was not true and disappointed many of his cohorts. "Although Shostakovich later made his peace with Mravinsky, I believe that he despised him as a human being for his cowardice in the whole affair," Rostropovich said.

He was said to be a "good" communist but evidence indicates more of a troubled soul finding solace in music that a true believer. Certainly he had the opportunity to leave and/or defect but never did so. Perhaps this tale, told online, will help: "An orchestra member reports that, in preparation of the finale of the Shostakovich Ninth, Mravinsky 'objected to the character of the sound in the celli and double basses.' "You have the wrong sound," he said. "I need the trampling of steel-shod boots" -- and 'we knew that he wasn't referring to the ordinary soldiers, but to the KGB forces.'


----------



## feierlich (3 mo ago)




----------

