Mariinsky Orchestra/ Gergiev ****
Prom 68, Royal Albert Hall, 3rd September 2017
“Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing.” In the Soviet Union, composers quickly learnt when to toe the Party line. After his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk was condemned in Pravda, Shostakovich composed his Fifth Symphony as “a Soviet artist’s creative response to justified criticism”, later likening its finale to the forced rejoicing in Boris Godunov. In the same year, Prokofiev wrote his Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution, setting texts by Lenin, to prove his Soviet credentials on moving back to Moscow. These works bookended Valery Gergiev’s typically bulging Proms programme with the Mariinsky Orchestra.
Valery Gergiev conducts the Mariinsky Orchestra
© BBC | Chris Christodoulou
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