Shostakovich and Prokofiev - one exhibition for two in the manuscript department of the National Library of Russia Automatic translate

ST. PETERSBURG. The Russian National Library has opened its archives for an exhibition dedicated to Shostakovich and Prokofiev.

Relations between Prokofiev and Shostakovich during life were more likely to be distant — neutral, rather than friendly, which did not interfere with the mutual interest in each other’s work. And the main “grandmaster”, who turned the country entrusted to him into a testing ground for experiments on living people, tried a lot, arranging Jesuit castles. Giving the title of chief composer of the Country of Soviets, worthy of nominal prizes, then to one genius, then to another.

Encountering pride, diminishing merit, playing sadistic cat and mouse. Griboedovskoye “Pass us over all sorrows and lordly anger, and lordly love” is the quintessence of what has affected everyone equally, making them hostages of a ruthless system. Shostakovich, and many years later after the disgrace, reacted to superb epithets in his address very restrained, recalling the insignificance of the distance between the status of a great man and an enemy of the people (according to the memoirs of Solomon Volkov). The 1948 decree, which accused composers of formalism, anti-people and other sins, broke the life and health of both. The ban on the performance of essays and teaching, the betrayal of former friends, the slander of triumphant envious people. Past contradictions in this dramatic period seemed inconsequential.

A considerable number of documents concerning both Prokofiev and Shostakovich are still classified, not everything has been translated, systematized, open for free access. That is why the opening of the exhibition “Interweaving of Fates: S. S. Prokofiev, D. D. Shostakovich and Their Contemporaries” at the NLR, dedicated to the anniversaries of composers, is an extraordinary event for fans of classical music. It exhibits rare and previously inaccessible to the general public exhibits: musical autographs, letters, photographs from performances, other materials related to the creativity and leisure of geniuses, as well as their teachers and friends.

Elena Tanakova © Gallerix.ru