The influx of conductors from the Eastern Bloc into Britain has been accompanied by a good deal of music from the former Soviet countries, not all of it defined by the poles of Shostakovich (pushing boundaries and suffering for it) and the likes of Tikhon Khrennikov. The Symphony No. 3 in B minor, Op. 50, of Ukrainian Boris Lyatoshynsky, for instance, does not fall easily into progressive/conservative categories. The contours of Lyatoshynsky's career roughly followed that of Shostakovich, with experimental tendencies in the ...
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The influx of conductors from the Eastern Bloc into Britain has been accompanied by a good deal of music from the former Soviet countries, not all of it defined by the poles of Shostakovich (pushing boundaries and suffering for it) and the likes of Tikhon Khrennikov. The Symphony No. 3 in B minor, Op. 50, of Ukrainian Boris Lyatoshynsky, for instance, does not fall easily into progressive/conservative categories. The contours of Lyatoshynsky's career roughly followed that of Shostakovich, with experimental tendencies in the 1920s and '30s shelved in favor of folk music and national material as Soviet cultural commissars clamped down. The Symphony No. 3 is subtitled "Peace shall defeat war: To the twenty-fifth anniversary of the October Revolution." Regardless of the fact that the fruits of the October Revolution have been thrown in the dustbin (and that the symphony was not completed until 1951), the work retains its kick. For one thing, it's a fine orchestral showpiece, and the Bournemouth Symphony...
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