Georgi Sviridov(1915-98)

[vandermolen]

On February 13, 2023, the program "Georgy Sviridov and sacred music of the 20th century" will be performed in the Small Hall of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic.


Sviridov's tour in Kursk



https://riakursk.ru/po-mestam-georgiya-sviridova-v-kurske/

I don't think that I'll be attending that one!

[foxandpeng]

Canticles and Prayers. Outstanding.

I don't often appreciate choral religious music, so have to be in the right frame of mind. Composers like Sviridov, Vasks, Rautavaara, Kilar, and oddly, Penderecki are unusually gifted in my mind.

These Canticles and Prayers always seem to hit the right note.

[AnotherSpin]

Kursk is not so far from the state borders of Ukraine. Russia regularly attacks from Kursk, not with Sviridov's opuses, but with bombs and missiles. I hope the response will be not just adequate, but far beyond the fears of the Kremlin führer.

[Roy Bland]

Unknown Romances by Sviridov to Blok's Verses Published
The "Musical Academy" magazine has published unknown romances by Georgy Sviridov to the words of Alexander Blok for the first time. Blok was the most important imaginary interlocutor of Georgy Sviridov: over sixty years of "co-creation" Sviridov wrote more than eighty songs and romances to his poems. This CD presents the world's first recording of romances from 1938, which marked the beginning of Sviridov's immersion in Blok's poetry.

[Roy Bland]

http://choir-capella.ru/o-kapelle/diskografiya

[Mandryka]

I have just discovered the extraordinary Pushkin's Garland

[kyjo]

Sviridov seems to be best-known for his vocal/choral works, but judging by his Piano Trio and Piano Quintet (both from 1945), his instrumental works deserve to be remembered as well:



Simply put, if you like Shostakovich's Piano Trio No. 2 and Piano Quintet, you're really going to enjoy this! One could accuse Sviridov as being a bit too derivative of DSCH at times, but his musical ideas are so strong that this didn't bother me. Sviridov really knows how to build momentum and write effective climaxes, and his writing for chamber forces is expert and virtuosic. The beautifully melancholic Romance from The Snow Storm (arr. for piano trio) serves as a nice encore, and the performances here do full justice to the music.

[Mandryka]

Sviridov seems to be best-known for his vocal/choral works, but judging by his Piano Trio and Piano Quintet (both from 1945), his instrumental works deserve to be remembered as well:



Simply put, if you like Shostakovich's Piano Trio No. 2 and Piano Quintet, you're really going to enjoy this! One could accuse Sviridov as being a bit too derivative of DSCH at times, but his musical ideas are so strong that this didn't bother me. Sviridov really knows how to build momentum and write effective climaxes, and his writing for chamber forces is expert and virtuosic. The beautifully melancholic Romance from The Snow Storm (arr. for piano trio) serves as a nice encore, and the performances here do full justice to the music.

Actually I prefer the Sviridov trio to the Shostakovich trio.

[kyjo]

Actually I prefer the Sviridov trio to the Shostakovich trio.

I can't blame you for that! Sviridov's trio is less prone to scathing irony and bleak introspection than Shostakovich's (which makes for more congenial everyday listening to me), while retaining that composer's great sense of drama, forward momentum, and thematic memorability. 

[Mandryka]

Back to Pushkin's Garland this morning. Such affecting melodies - if ever there was music which goes "deep" then this is it, even though the means he uses are pretty popular they don't seem to me to be cliché or kitsch. There are lots of performances on spotify, with quite important differences of interpretation. The one I'm enjoying is Vladimir Menin with choirs from Novosibirsk and Moscow.

[André]

Back to Pushkin's Garland this morning. Such affecting melodies - if ever there was music which goes "deep" then this is it, even though the means he uses are pretty popular they don't seem to me to be cliché or kitsch. There are lots of performances on spotify, with quite important differences of interpretation. The one I'm enjoying is Vladimir Menin with choirs from Novosibirsk and Moscow.

Do yourself a favour and watch this video of Reveille in a russian church.

[Mandryka]

Do yourself a favour and watch this video of Reveille in a russian church.

Yes I'd seen that - that was the thing which made me explore Pushkin's Garland. 

[André]

Yes I'd seen that - that was the thing which made me explore Pushkin's Garland. 

Same here  . I bought a disc of Garland after seeing this video.

[Mandryka]

I can't blame you for that! Sviridov's trio is less prone to scathing irony and bleak introspection than Shostakovich's (which makes for more congenial everyday listening to me), while retaining that composer's great sense of drama, forward momentum, and thematic memorability. 

This is Sviridov himself playing with the Glazunov Quartet -- there's quite a lot of scathing irony there I think.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpbJBgDz-K8

[AnotherSpin]

For nearly two decades from the late '60s, Georgy Sviridov reigned undisputed as the USSR's most well-known composer. His rousing theme from Time, Forward! (Время, вперёд!) blasted daily from every Soviet telly as the intro to Vremya, the 9 p.m. official state news broadcast — a half-hour of triumphs, tragedies, and tightly managed reality.

Each episode opened with jubilant tales of heroic workers, record harvests, unstoppable milk yields, and steel and coal figures so lofty they seemed plucked from a fairy tale, all thanks to socialism's sturdy hand.

Then came gloom: capitalist workers suffering unspeakable miseries, sinister plots by the American military, Zionist conspiracies, and other reassuring threats. A solemn obituary followed — yet another senior comrade succumbing to the long illness.

Finally, spirits were restored with tales of Soviet athletes smashing records, and the broadcast ended on a surreal note: the weather forecast set to the soothing, suspiciously Western strains of Paul Mauriat.