The Russians Are Coming!

It is difficult to imagine a world in which one’s art is threatened by the machinations of a political regime. Yet the four composers whose lives we’ll consider experienced just that; if the regime found a work ‘unacceptable’, the composition would be denounced, never to be heard again. Not only that, but the composer himself could lose his means of earning a living and even have reason to fear for his life. Such was the case in the careers of composers Sergei Rachmaninoff, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, and Dmitri Shostakovich. In each of the four sessions, we’ll explore the life of one of these composers and listen to some of his key works: Rachmaninoff’s popular C-sharp minor Prelude, which he came to dread having to perform; Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, which descended into a riot in 1913 Paris; the orchestral suite from Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges; and the Leningrad Symphony, which Shostakovich dedicated to Leningrad’s courageous inhabitants, many of whom survived a 900-day siege by Nazi forces.