MUSIC OF RUSSIA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 128, 5 December 1941, Page 9

MUSIC OF RUSSIA

having finished, L. E. Strachan, who devised these special continuity programmes for the Commercial Broadcasting Service, has turned to Russia, and several Russian Landscapes will be heard very soon. series of American Landscapes Increasing attention, he says, is now being paid to Russian music, both Tsarist and Soviet, and it well repays study. No other country produces such basses or such distinctive tenor singing, and Russian choral singing is also an art apart from that of other countries. The first three programmes will feature folk songs, sung by the Russian Imperial Singers, a group of five men who are carrying on the musical traditions of Tsarist Russia. Leader of the group is the baritone, Staphan Slepoushkin, a native of the Ural Mountain region, who fought bravely during the Great War and fied during the Revolution to China, where he sang in opera and at concerts. Later he joined a branch of the Moscow Art Theatre. Michael Dido, the first tenor, was a lieutenant in the White Army when the Revolution came, and fled to Constantinople to continue his musical studies there, becoming first tenor with the famous "Chauve-Souris." The second tenor, Demetre Criona, is a native of Odessa, though his parents were Greek. He began his career at the Municipal Theatre as Prince Sinodal in Rubinstein’s Demon. Andrew Grigorieff, bass, was a member of an opera chorus in Moscow, but came to America to join the choir in the Russian Cathedral in New York. Ierinarh Zragewsky, the basso profundo, was born in Kiev. His voice is a remarkable one, even for a Russian bass, covering three octaves down to the low G below the bass clef. Following the programmes by the Imperial Singers come several by the Russian Cathedral Choir, a larger combination of singers. Russian Landscapes will be on the air from the ZB’s every Sunday, the first playing from 4ZB on Sunday, December’ 7; 3ZB, Sunday, December 14; 2ZB, December 21; and 1ZB, December 28,

> T? THOSE who have seen him * in the part or have heard his records of such famous songs‘ as "I Have Attained the Highest Powers" and "Farewell, My Son," Feodor Chaliapin and Boris Godounov are one and the same person, and it is Chaliapin who is starred in the presentation of Moussorgsky’s great opera from 3YA on Sunday, December 7. "Boris Godounov" was first produced at St. Petersburg in 1874. The text was later revised by Rimsky-Korsakov, but the radio version is based on Moussorgsky’s own score. The story concerns one of the strangest episodes in the history of 17th century Russia, the seizure of the throne by Boris and his eventual overthrow and death at the hands of another pretender, a fanatical young monk who imagines himself the reincarnation of the tsarevitch whom Boris had murdered. The photograph above is of | Chaliapin in the role of Boris.