# Any recommendation on patriotic RED Soviet music?



## rice (Mar 23, 2017)

I just discovered the 4th symphony by Lev Knipper, it was stunning.





Unlike many other Soviet music like Shostakovich's which tells the dark side of the regime, Knipper's symphony was about the bright side, it was red.
Disregarding the politics, the music is really special and intrigue me. I appreciate the nostalgia, the power and emotion of this kind of music.

Unfortunately, Knipper is almost forgotten today. I can only find one recording of his 4th symphony and one for the 8th. The other 18 of them are nowhere to be found. I'd love to discover more music of this kind. Especially symphonies and concertos but not songs. Does anyone have suggestions?:tiphat:


----------



## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

Shostakovich film scores especially "The Fall of Berlin." His second and third symphonies are labeled patriotic but are in the main agitprop and not very good music.


----------



## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Alexander Arutunian: Cantata of the Motherland (1948)


----------



## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

Nothing is _as _red as Knipper's 4th outside of the repertoir of Alexandrov's Ensemble.


----------



## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Reinhold Glière's ballet _The Red Poppy_ (orig. 1927). A Soviet ship docks in China and the virtuous captain interferes when he witnesses some labourers getting rough treatment by the harbourmaster. A riot ensues etc etc.

Glière, who was already in his 50s when he wrote the work, was an old-school traditionalist from Russia's Silver Age who had little truck with modernism and so the music is unapologetically late-romantic and easily digestible, but it gets to be fairly thin gruel over the course of over 90 minutes. His conservatism served him well during uncertain times - music such as his was never going to be challenged by the authorities and so he was left unmolested during the era of denunciation and cultural witch-hunts. Perhaps due to the work's length it's best to stick to the orchestral suite which is about 25 minutes long.

The whole work is available on Naxos, and the suite on Chandos (coupled with his first symphony written way back in 1900).


----------



## reinmar von zweter (Feb 19, 2020)

See that:




*Dmitry Kabalevsky: Poem of Struggle, op. 12*





*Arkady Mazaev: The Krasnodonians *(symphonic poem dedicated to the people of Krasnodon and the Antifascist Youth Guard, who tried to free the city from the Nazis)





*Aram Khachaturian: Ode in Memory of Lenin*





*Reinhold Glière: Heroic March for the Buryiat-Mongolian ASSR, Op. 71* (written for socialist party of the Mongolian-Buryiat Republic which was part of the USSR)


----------



## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

The East is Red 东方红 1965 Chinese 'song and dance epic'


----------



## Duncan (Feb 8, 2019)

First... work your way through this article -

Music of the Soviet Union

Second...

Go to YouTube...

Type in "1941 - 1945 Wartime Music Vol " - (Note: it's important to add the "Vol" without an actual number following...

This is what you'll find -

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=1941-1945+wartime+music+vol+

Not all volumes are available - 12 of 18 on YouTube but all 18 are available here -

https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/search?search_query=wartime+music+vol&size=10&view=large

and apparently they are also available on spotify...


----------



## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

rice said:


> I just discovered the 4th symphony by Lev Knipper, it was stunning....Unfortunately, Knipper is almost forgotten today.


Some 30 years ago Olympia was a great source of so much Russian/Soviet music. I picked up as many disks as I could get my hands on - the Knipper 4th among them. Flagrant propoganda indeed. But dang could Knipper write for orchestra. I kept hoping that Dudarova would find a way to record his entire symphonic output. Maybe the rest is really bad, who knows? For now we'll have to settle for what crumbs we got. But 20 symphonies is quite a challenge. I have played the bassoon concerto - it's hard, and a tough nut for audiences.


----------



## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

Take a look at:

Shostakovich: Ballet "The Golden Age"
Shebalin: Dramatic Symphony "Lenin"
Myaskovsky: Symphony XII "Collective Farm" & Symphonies XVIII & XIX
Kabalevsky: Symphonies I & III
Prokofiev: Cantata in Commemoration of the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution
Shaporin: Opera "The Decembrists"
Ivan Dzerzhinsky: Opera "Quiet Flows the River Don"


----------



## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

Two works by Prokofiev:

The Opera “Semyon Kotko”

And Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution (a great piece of music)


----------



## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

_Semyon Kotko_ should have met all the requirements. Poor old Prokofiev bent over backwards to give them a Socialist Realism opera but it was ill-starred. Just his luck to write an opera set in 1918 in which a Ukrainian village is menaced by marauding Germans just in time for the 1939 non-aggression pact between the USSR and Nazi Germany to be signed...


----------



## reinmar von zweter (Feb 19, 2020)

And the rare and almost utterly unknown (in west) Chinese propaganda works?





















The enormous *Long March Symphony*, by *Shande Ding* (or Ding Shande)


----------



## erki (Feb 17, 2020)

Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 Leningrad is actually pretty good piece of music. Although I like his 15 string quartets the most that are not much as red at all.
Somewhat odd take on soviet propaganda is the fact that all nations were considered equal and living happy in arms of great USSR. So exploring nations folk music was very OK and patriotic. My favourite on this is Estonian composer Veljo Tormis with his choral works based on rune tones of many Finno-Ugric peoples. Obviously nothing "red" about these but not many composers throughout Soviet Union were actually writing propaganda music. More often they manipulated with the title and dedication or the text in order to fit into the frames.


----------



## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

reinmar von zweter said:


> The enormous *Long March Symphony*, by *Shande Ding* (or Ding Shande)


yes, that is an excellent symphony, though there is a better version on youtube than the Slovak Orchestra





















another favorie Chinese symphony is the Great Wall symphony by Mingxin Du and the Chinese Sights and Sounds by Bao Yuankai


----------



## rice (Mar 23, 2017)

Thank you for much great recommendations! It's gonna take some time to go through them all:tiphat:


Fabulin said:


> Nothing is _as _red as Knipper's 4th outside of the repertoir of Alexandrov's Ensemble.


I think you're right. It really cannot be more Soviet!


elgars ghost said:


> Reinhold Glière's ballet _The Red Poppy_ (orig. 1927).


Glière's works are really decent. It's very romantic and very Russian. Although what I am after is the flavour of propaganda and almost military march quality. Still, I like Glière's music a lot, and already ordered recordings of many of his work!


Duncan said:


> Go to YouTube...
> 
> Type in "1941 - 1945 Wartime Music Vol " - (Note: it's important to add the "Vol" without an actual number following...
> 
> ...


Yes the wartime music series. I have some of them already, and some more on their way. It's full of good, rare stuff.
I like the Polovinkin, Scherbachov, of course the Knipper 8th and Myaskovsky!
I listened to the others on youtube as well. Popov and Weinberg, too modern to my taste.



mbhaub said:


> Some 30 years ago Olympia was a great source of so much Russian/Soviet music. I picked up as many disks as I could get my hands on - the Knipper 4th among them. Flagrant propoganda indeed. But dang could Knipper write for orchestra. I kept hoping that Dudarova would find a way to record his entire symphonic output. Maybe the rest is really bad, who knows? For now we'll have to settle for what crumbs we got. But 20 symphonies is quite a challenge. I have played the bassoon concerto - it's hard, and a tough nut for audiences.


Lucky you! I have to search for them in the used market. I now have the policy to new CDs "Don't think just buy!" So I won't regret when they fade away from the market.
I'm sure there're some lying around in small record shops or storage around the globe. Sadly most are unlikely ever to be put online for music lovers to own.
I'd love to hear other Knipper symphonies too. We need more projects like Titov's to uncover the hidden treasures!


----------



## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

Shostakovich managed some rather propagandist pieces, the 12th Symphony alongside the earlier 2nd and 3rd. Plus the entertaining but vapid choral pieces such as The Song of the Forests and The Sun shines over our Motherland. It would be quite hard to place any of these pieces among his finest masterpieces, mind.....

You might also try anything by the biggest cπ×¶ in modern musical history, Tikhon Khrennikov. His greatest attribute is a complete absence of scruples.

I hope one day we can find a cantata to the glorious liberation of the Hungarians from 1956, a great Symphony to the courageous liberators of the Czechoslovaks from the evil Alexander Dubcek, from 1968, or an opera in praise of the wonderful collectivisation and industrialisation of the Ukraine and its deliberate and happy consequences from 1932-33.


----------



## Azol (Jan 25, 2015)

Does this fill your bill?

Aram Khachaturian - Triumphal Poem, Op. 75


----------



## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Long ago I checked out some works by Khrennikov to find out if there was any chance that he could be at least redeemed through his music. Despite abhorring the man's stance on other issues I tried to listen with an open mind but even then I found nothing gripping or individualistic about his music at all - it was solid but seemed very generic to me and gave me the impression that Kabalevsky could have composed stuff like this in his sleep.


----------



## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

Wasn't it Khrennikov who poo-ed his trousers when he met Stalin, according to Testimony? I'd so love that story to be true.......


----------



## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Couldn't happen to a nicer man. Bearing in mind how much he idolised Stalin I'm surprised it wasn't an involuntary emission of a different kind.


----------



## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

You mean that while he left without them, he did actually come in his pants? :angel:


----------



## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Bdededum-Tssshhh…. :clap:

Doesn't bear thinking about.


----------



## erki (Feb 17, 2020)

Knowing something about Stalin I am not surprised that some people **** their pants when meeting him. People had all kinds of bodily outcomes in his torture chambers as well.


----------



## eljr (Aug 8, 2015)

:tiphat:



...................


----------



## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

_I hope one day we can find a cantata to the glorious liberation of the Hungarians from 1956, a great Symphony to the courageous liberators of the Czechoslovaks from the evil Alexander Dubcek, from 1968, or an opera in praise of the wonderful collectivisation and industrialisation of the Ukraine and its deliberate and happy consequences from 1932-33._

In "Testimony" Volkov said Shostakovich's 11th symphoy was his yurodivy commentary on Hungary 1956. He wrote the symphony 1957. In both the Russian 1905 pre-revolution (the alleged portrait of the symphony) and the real 1956 Hungarian uprising, the rioters were defeated.


----------



## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

elgars ghost said:


> Reinhold Glière's ballet _The Red Poppy_ (orig. 1927). A Soviet ship docks in China and the virtuous captain interferes when he witnesses some labourers getting rough treatment by the harbourmaster. A riot ensues etc etc.
> 
> Glière, who was already in his 50s when he wrote the work, was an old-school traditionalist from Russia's Silver Age who had little truck with modernism and so the music is unapologetically late-romantic and easily digestible, but it gets to be fairly thin gruel over the course of over 90 minutes. His conservatism served him well during uncertain times - music such as his was never going to be challenged by the authorities and so he was left unmolested during the era of denunciation and cultural witch-hunts. Perhaps due to the work's length it's best to stick to the orchestral suite which is about 25 minutes long.
> 
> The whole work is available on Naxos, and the suite on Chandos (coupled with his first symphony written way back in 1900).


Gliere always struck me as someone who belonged writing for the Soviet equivalent of Broadway.


----------



## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

The Shostakovich Fifth pulls off an amazing trick: It manages to be a terrific parody of the kind of music a megalomaniac like Stalin would love -- while at the same time being exactly the kind of music a megalomaniac like Stalin would love.


----------



## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

Maybe not patriotic and not Sovietic but definitely RED I can say I am very fond of the Chinese ballet Red Detachment of Women:






I am not really fond of ballets but this is something I find really enchanting that I can watch over and over again. It really tells a story through music and dance.

Here is the film with English subtitles from 1960 that the ballet is based on for comparacense:


----------



## Sad Al (Feb 27, 2020)

I'm too incompetent to comment.. but drunk enough.. pardon me.. try Prokofieff's flaming angel symphony on Mobile fidelity sound lab


----------

