Presto Music Classical Podcast,
The Stalin Prize with Marina Frolova-Walker
In the midst of the awards season for classical music recordings, this week I am joined by Marina Frolova-Walker, a Russian-born British musicologist and music historian, to discuss the subject of her 2016 book, Stalin's Music Prize: Soviet Culture and Politics. Marina specialises in German Romanticism, Russian and Soviet music, and nationalism in music, and is Professor of Music History and Director of Studies in Music at Clare College, Cambridge. It's a great chat, taking in some of the lesser-known Russian composers like Myaskovsky, Weinberg and Kabalevsky as well as the two titans, Prokofieff and Shostakovich.
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Stalin's Music Prize: Soviet Culture and Politics
Marina Frolova-Walker; Yale University Press; Hardback
This fascinating history takes a new look at musical life in Stalin’s Soviet Union, focusing on the musicians who received Stalin Prizes, awarded annually to artists whose work was thought to represent the best in Soviet culture. It sheds new light on the Stalin's personal tastes, and the careers of those honoured, including multiple-recipients Prokofieff and Shostakovich, offering a comprehensive examination of the relationship between music and the Soviet state from 1940 to 1954.
Available Format: Book
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