# Russian music help



## cvt (Oct 20, 2010)

Hi

I am new here. 

I need help with identifying music (or at least the instrument) that I have heard in a movie once. I think it was a spy type movie. They played music with this high pitched kind of piano sound. I vaguely recall that I have heard once long ago that it is called a french piano or something similar. It could have been a stringed instrument. I doesn't sound like the main instrument it sound like it adds to the atmosphere.

I associate this sound exclusively with russian cold war spy era music. It could be that this is not an instrument traditionally used by russian composers/musicians but it certainly gives that ussual russian spy movies feel.

Thanks
Chris


----------



## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Hi,
harpsichord- or pianola or other piano sounds were often used in film music of the 60s and 70s in both the East and the West to suggest a nervous, exciting atmosphere etc. There is a chance you are talking about music by the talented Shostakovich pupil *Yuri Levitin* who wrote music for a Soviet spy series, Operation Trest, which as also been issued on an old Soviet LP in a tiny, lively and intense concert suite for marimba, vibraphone and piano (to me the piano sounds a bit toy-like), called "Small Suite" op.65 (1967).

I have written about this music elsewhere, on the website "Soviet Composers":

_"1967 Operation Trest / Operatsiya Trest / ОПЕРАЦИЯ ТРЕСТ. TV-Series (in 3 or 4 parts ?)(336mins?)(Sometimes listed as "Operation Trust", Operation Triest", "Operation Death") Directed by Sergei Kolosov after a spy-novel of Lev Nikulin, with the well-known KGB-officer Boris Gudz as a consultant. The action takes place after the Civil Wars of the early 20th Century, where White Officers from abroad plan to overthrow the Revolution, and are fought by party espionage crews. Main actors: Igor Gorbachev/Gorbachyov, Donatass Banionis, Armen Dzhigarkhanyan, Aleksei Safonov, Bruno Oja/Oya, Lyudmila Kasatkina, Vsevolod Yakut, Viktor Koltsov etc. cf. google search: therunagatesclub.blogspot.com/2007/01/sidney-reilly-ace-of-spies.html Operatsiya. Two short clips can be found at You-Tube, when using the Russian title, at the channels "inkmyiasis channel" and "ivchevs channel". The camera-work and visual style (in black-and-white) is modern and interesting, perhaps influenced by the tradition back to Eisenstein, with close-ups of faces, low camera-angles etc. The series seems to have a rather morbid, grotesque and intense atmosphere in general. A short "Small Suite" from the music of this film for 3 musicians ("Recitativo - Fuga - Paysage -Toccata") was also recorded by Melodiya on an LP coupled with chamber works by Levitin."_

The you-tube clips do not contain the music, but I hope the information will ring a bell to you ... The music is very fast and sounds like some Western film music of the 60s, with strange, jazzy rhythms and abrupt, pointilistic slow sections. 
If it is not the right one, more information is needed from you about the music, the action etc.


----------



## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

I actually considered Celesta...

Shostakovich wrote a few things that involved _that_ keyboard, too---


----------

