The Musical Life in Former USSR (36)

Composers, performers and dancers from the Soviet era

Discover here a selection of concerts, archives and documentaries highlighting composers and performers who have lived under the Soviet system.

At the heart of a system that fixed courses of action and musical themes to the artists, geniuses have emerged within the art community. Some, like Shostakovich, spent their whole life under the Soviet system and composed some of the most beautiful scores of the XXth century. Shostakovich, for instance, a representative figure of the Russian musical production, was successively condemned, praised, denounced, honoured by the Party – he was honoured by receiving the title "People's Artist of the USSR" in 1947. We can here remind us of his Symphony No. 5 that served as a propagand tool of the Soviet Party, contrary to its Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District that was condemned by the Party's newspaper, The Pravda and then banned.