Olena Akhmatova News
ukrainian singer
Commemorations 2024 (Birth: Olena Akhmatova)
- soprano
- Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic
- opera singer, music teacher
Last update
2024-04-23
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The Boston Musical Intelligencer
2023-08-24 13:25:23
Music Remembers Wartime Trauma
[…] swath of European, Russian, and American luminaries made indelible appearances and alliances. Little seems to end well for most of these walk-ons—particularly writers and librettists—who paid a huge price for describing the “murderous contradictions” of their worlds. Philosopher Theodor Adorno fled into exile. The critic Walter Benjamin took his own life while trying to flee Nazi-occupied Europe, as did the writer Stefan Zweig while living as an exile in Brazil. The Russian poet Anna Akhmatova suffered through war and revolution. The novelist Vasily Grossman died with his crowning masterwork unpublished and, as he put it, under permanent “arrest” by the KGB. The sociologist Maurice Halbwachs, who invented the entire concept of collective memory, perished at Buchenwald. Eichler’s magisterial tome is further distinguished by two distinct things, one of which is the extraordinary grace and beauty of his writing. I don’t recall a book in my decades of reviewing […]
2022-06-22 06:00:21
Prokofiev’s Cello Sonata in C Major: Triumph Over Censorship
In the years following the Second World War, Stalin’s “propagandist-in-chief,” Andrei Zhdanov, drafted a series of resolutions that were designed to censor Soviet art, literature, film, and music. All art had to adhere to the ideals of Soviet “socialist realism.” The Zhdanov Doctrine proclaimed that “The only conflict that is possible in Soviet culture is the conflict between good and best.” First, Zhdanov banned the works of Anna Akhmatova, arguably Russia’s greatest living ...
2020-10-18 07:14:44
Classical-music aficionado, Tony Cooper, looks in on the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s special anniversary year
[…] (1958)*Nicholas Maw: Nocturne (1960)Elisabeth Lutyens: Symphonies (1961)*Robert Gerhard: Concerto for Orchestra (1965)Olivier Messiaen: Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum (1966)Michael Tippett: The Vision of St Augustine (1966)*Harrison Birtwistle: Nomos (1968)*Thea Musgrave: Clarinet Concerto (1969)Peter Maxwell Davis: Blind Man's Buff (1972)Nicola LeFanu: The Hidden Landscape (1973)*Pierre Boulez: Rituel (1974)*Michael Finnissy: Pathway of Sun and Stars (1976)*Richard Rodney Bennett: Actaeon (1977)Alexander Goehr: Babylon the Great Is Fallen (1979)*Oliver Knussen: Symphony No. 3 (1979)*Alfred Schnittke: Symphony No. 2 (1980)*John Tavener: Akhmatova Requiem (1981)Naresh Sohal: The Wanderer (1982)*Mark-Anthony Turnage: Night Dances (1983)Anthony Payne: The Spirit's Harvest (1985)*Harrison Birtwistle: Earth Dances (1986)*Andrzej Panufnik: Symphony No. 9 (1987)John Tavener: The Protecting Veil (1989)*Poul Ruders: Symphony No. 1 (1990)*Witold Lutosławski: Chantefleurs et chantefables (1991)Colin Matthews: Broken Symmetry (1992)*Louis Andriessen: De snelheid (revised version) (1993)Mark-Anthony Turnage: Your Rockaby (1994)*Judith Weir: Moon and Star (1995)*Kaija Saariaho: Graal théâtre (1995)Thea Musgrave: Phoenix Rising (1998)*Mark-Anthony Turnage: Fractured Lines*; Another Set To* (2000)Sally Beamish: […]
2020-08-21 09:07:33
Live again: Temple Music launches season with three live concerts
Temple Church (Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC BY-SA 3.0) Temple Music is starting live concerts again in October and November, with three concerts in Temple Church all done in a socially distanced manner. The season opens with soprano Ruby Hughes, cellist Natalie Clein and pianist Julius Drake in recital (6/10/2020), followed by the Sixteen, conductor Harry Christophers (13/10/2020) and then a concert of the jazz-inspired music of John Ashton Thomas (12/11/2020). Tre Voci, Ruby Hughes, Natalie Clein and Julius Drake's recital will feature Judith Weir's On the palmy beach which they premiered in 2019 (see my review) along with John Tavener's Akhmatova Songs, Brahms Two Songs (originally for alto, viola and piano, in a version for soprano, cello and piano), Kodaly's Sonatina for cello and piano and music by Schubert, Ravel, Bloch, and Chabrier plus two songs for soprano, cello and piano by Pauline Viardot and by Hector Berlioz. […]
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