ALL1355-Z 12 Weeks Wednesdays 3:00pm-4:20pm Start Date 31-Jan
Zoom Limit 25
As the world looks on at Vladimir Putin’s continuing attempts to resurrect the Russian empire, it may be time to revisit the music the country’s composers produced during the last century—before, during and after the USSR, and often in defiance of Tsarist, Soviet and post-Soviet prohibitions. Who were they? Famous names include Rimsky-Korsakoff, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Stravinsky and Shostakovich; others worth knowing range from Medtner and Myaskovsky to composers traditionally identified as Russian but who actually came from Ukraine (Glière, Prokofiev, Silvestrov), Georgia (Kancheli), Armenia (Khachaturian, Terteryan), or other sometime-Soviet republics. The course will showcase composing and performing traditions that have flourished despite periods of extreme adversity and should continue to inspire us today.
Coordinator: John Temple
John is a retired business writer, long-ago concert reviewer, and 20-year Barnstable resident. This will be his 13th ALL course and, like the others, will concentrate on a limited subset of classical music and include performance videos of complete works. Prior courses have focused on specific composers (e.g. Mozart concertos, Mahler symphonies), musical genres (chamber music, choral works), and topics that cross categories (nationalism in music, music of the 1930s, etc.).