Soviet Music Research Articles

Aspects of Blasphemy in Soviet Music

Aspects of Blasphemy in Soviet Music

Throwing off the Russian Lenses from Soviet Music: The Colonization and Decolonization of Georgian and Ukrainian Music

Throwing off the Russian Lenses from Soviet Music: The Colonization and Decolonization of Georgian and Ukrainian Music

The role of vocal and instrumental ensembles in the evolution of the song genre in Soviet music of the 1960s–1980s

The article examines the phenomenon of the vocal­instrumental ensemble (VIA) and its role in the development of the song genre in Russian musical culture from the moment the VIA appeared until the end of the Soviet period in art. The relevance of the topic is based on the need to adequately assess the patterns of development of mass music of the Soviet period — that was ideologically ambiguous and gave rise to musical phenomena of various cultural values. The purpose of the article is to determine the influence of VIA on the evolution of the song genre in the 1960–1980s. The methodology of the article is based on the systemic and historical approach. As a result of the study, it was shown that during the indicated period, the activities of vocal and instrumental ensembles played an important role in the development of domestic song culture, contributing to the active broadcast of song genres. Two main factors that determined the specifics of song creativity in the field of VIA are marked out: 1) the search for new forms, techniques, ways of musical expression that would meet sociocultural needs of listeners and rely on the best traditions of domestic music; 2) the influence of Western culture with its searches in the field of electronic instruments, jazz, disco, techno, rock and pop music, mass production and commercialization of art.

Late Soviet Music in a Time of Russia’s War

Late Soviet Music in a Time of Russia’s War

A New "sounding image" of the Piano in the Domestic "Female" Vocal Cycle of the 1960s and 1970s

The subject of the study is a new "sounding image" of the piano in the chamber-vocal cycles of Russian composers of the 1960s and 1970s. The chosen perspective is "female" vocal cycles, i.e., those that should be performed exclusively by female voices. The author examines the piano parts in the vocal cycles of B. Tishchenko, D. Shostakovich, A. Knaifel, A. Schnittke, E. Denisov, G. Banshchikov, V. Gavrilin and other Russian masters, reveals the new, original, fresh that they brought to the music of piano accompaniment in the wake of the Khrushchev "thaw". First of all, in the field of texture, rhythm, avant-garde performance techniques, timbral-register organization of musical fabric. The main conclusion of the study is the idea that the fruitful synthesis of the achievements of the European avant-garde and domestic experience led to the emergence of a new "sounding image" of the piano in Soviet music of the 1960s, which was fully in demand in the vocal cycle. Each of the composers followed his own unique path in art, individually refracted tradition, but the overall panorama of musical art, chamber vocal creativity turned out to be rich and saturated with outstanding achievements. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that the piano accompaniment of the Russian vocal cycle was first subjected to a separate and fairly broad analysis.

Shostakovich’s Topics

The study of musical signification constitutes an important key for the comprehension of Shostakovich’s music. This becomes particularly evident when one observes that social and political background plays an important role in his compositional process through the configuration of specific musical topics on structural positions of his music. These specific topics have arisen after cultural and social events during the establishment of the Soviet Union and became typical elements of the Soviet Music. This paper aims to show the function of these elements as compositional roots in the creative concept of Shostakovich’s music. The rising of the concept of musical topic after Leonard Ratner (1980) has opened new paths for a consistent comprehension of the musical discourse, identifying social and cultural signs that may articulate ideas which go beyond the music itself: ideology, criticism and politics became elements of musical expression, composing a new soundscape of music in Revolutionary Russia.

UKRAINIAN-BELARUSIAN CULTURAL TIES IN THE 1920S ON THE EXAMPLE OF COOPERATION OF THE MAGAZINE «MUZYKA» (“MUSIC”) WITH YULIAN DREJZIN

The study of Ukrainian-Belarusian cultural ties has significant research potential due to typologically similar processes of cultural and national formation of the two neighboring nations, which was especially pronounced in the 1920s. One of the important factors in this was the Bolshevik strategy of indigenization in the national regions of the Soviet Union. Almost simultaneously, there was a surge in literature and art in both republics. The lack of special studies that would cover these joint processes in the field of music culture, actualized the disclosure of this topic. The purpose of the article is to study the peculiarities of cooperation between the editorial board of the magazine «Muzyka» (“Music”) (publisher – a determining factor in the development of Ukrainian musical culture of the 1920s – Mykola Leontovych All-Ukrainian Music Society) and a leading Belarusian musicologist, one of the founders of Belarusian historical musicology Yu. Drejzin and explore their correspondence as an example of close UkrainianBelarusian cultural ties in the 1920s. To achieve this goal, historical, biographical and source research methods were used. In the autumn of 1924, P. Kozytsky, the editor of the Music, and Yu. Masyutin, the secretary, took the initiative to establish contact with Belarusian artists. The following year, communication began with Yu. Drejzin. His works include the study «Music and Revolution» (1921), the dictionary «Musical Terms» (1926), the libretto of M. Aladov’s opera «Taras on Parnassus» (1927), scholarly and critical articles, a huge number of Belarusian translations from ancient Greek literature, as well as texts from Western European vocal works. Ukrainian musicologists of that time were interested in similar tasks. Cooperation with Ukrainian colleagues coincided with the beginning of Drejzin’s active critical and journalistic activity. His investigations into Belarusian music and the work of contemporary composers were published in the Ukrainian magazines “Muzyka” (1925) and «Radians’ka Muzyka» («Soviet Music») (1933), and in the Kyiv newspaper “Proletars’ka Pravda” («Proletarian truth») and the Belarusian magazine “Polymya” (“Flame”) (both in 1926) – posts about the existence of Belarusian songs in the repertoire of the band “Dumka”. According to the correspondence, Yu. Drejzin was initially irritated by misunderstandings that occurred in his collaboration with magazine “Muzyka”. He complained about the delay of magazines with his articles, had complaints about the amount of royalties. However, after the secretary of the magazine told him in detail about the catastrophic financial condition of the publication, Yu. Drejzin completely changed his mind: he admired the fantastic dedication of the editorial board and even envied the ideology of Ukrainian artists. The collaboration of the Ukrainian magazine “Muzyka” with the Belarusian musicologist Yu. Drejzin is an organic part of the Ukrainian-Belarusian cultural cooperation, which was significantly intensified during the national upsurge of the 1920s. Drejzin’s interest in the cultural ties between the two republics was reflected in the magazines of the time, in which he published his musicological research. Peculiarities of Drejzin’s cooperation with the magazine “Muzyka” are documented in correspondence with the secretary of the magazine Yu. Masyutin. The value of these letters lies both in their factual content and in reflecting the evolution of the Belarusian scientist’s attitude to Ukrainian colleagues and his willingness to borrow the professional experience of Ukrainians.

Russian Wikipedia vs Great Russian Encyclopedia: (Re)construction of Soviet Music in the Post-Soviet Internet Space

The article addresses the issue of cultural recycling of academic music from the Soviet period. The referential texts in the Russian Wikipedia and the Great Russian Encyclopedia, currently presented for the general public in the Internet space, were selected as examples for the analysis. A comparative analysis of articles on music and the composers who lived and worked in the USSR (including Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitri Shostakovich, Dmitri Kabalevsky, Tikhon Khrennikov, Boris Asafiev, Isaak Dunaevsky, Georgy Sviridov, Aram Khachaturian, Sofia Gubaidulina and Alfred Schnittke) displayed a number of regularities: emphasizing previously unknown areas of music of that period (“avant-garde music”, “repressed music”), replacement or disregard towards the epithet “Soviet” regarding musical phenomena and composers, and the absence of any nostalgia for Soviet musical culture in modern receptions. Keywords: Soviet music, cultural recycling, Wikipedia, Great Russian Encyclopedia, Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitri Shostakovich.

How Soviet Music Became “Patriotic”, or: Re-inventing the Avant-garde in Late and Post-Soviet Socialism, 1970–1998

During the last decades of the Soviet Union, composers and musicians witnessed a dissolution of the contexts in which they were used to inventing and performing music. “Soviet Music”, a vague but inclusive umbrella term for serious music production, took one of two different directions: on the one hand, it increasingly became part of a global musical avant-garde, on the other hand it was forced to adapt to increasingly narrow, Russocentric and even nationalistic attitudes. This contribution investigates ambiguities surrounding these attributes as well as the concrete problems they created for three composers - Sofia Gubaidulina, Alfred Schnittke and Edison Denisov. In particular, it concentrates on fictions of authenticity created by a milestone of Soviet cinema: Farewell to Matera by Ėlem Klimov and Larisa Shepitko. In doing so, the article questions “1991” as an important caesura and instead makes a case for conceptualizing late and post-Soviet socialism as one common period in Russian musical history.

Soviet Music as National Achievement: The Development of Professional Music in the Tatar ASSR, 1928–59

Soviet Music as National Achievement: The Development of Professional Music in the Tatar ASSR, 1928–59

Was Soviet Music Middlebrow? Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, Socialist Realism, and the Mass Listener in the 1930s

Symphonic music composed under Stalin presents both ethical and aesthetic problems. Often assumed to have been composed in a compromised style by composers who were either coerced into abandoning their “real” modernist inclinations or who were in any case second-rate, these works have been labelled variously socialist realist, conformist, conservative, or even dissident, depending on the taste and opinion of those passing judgement. This article argues that picking and choosing which symphony is socialist realist and which is not cannot be justified either logically or historically, and that we should no longer attempt to define any non-texted or non-programmatic music in this way. The Anglophone term “middlebrow” holds out the possibility of describing this repertoire without implying ethical or artistic compromise on the composers’ part, acknowledging that, in the absence of any elite or “highbrow” musical culture, composers shared the aim of reaching a mass audience.

Virtuosi Abroad: Soviet Music and Imperial Competition during the Early Cold War, 1945–1958. By Kiril Tomoff.Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015. Pp. xiv+262. $45.00.

Previous article No AccessBook ReviewsVirtuosi Abroad: Soviet Music and Imperial Competition during the Early Cold War, 1945–1958. By Kiril Tomoff.Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015. Pp. xiv+262. $45.00.Lynn M. SargeantLynn M. SargeantCalifornia State University, Fullerton Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 89, Number 3September 2017 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/692898 Views: 66Total views on this site For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Kiril Tomoff. Virtuosi Abroad: Soviet Music and Imperial Competition during the Early Cold War, 1945–1958 .

Kiril Tomoff. <i>Virtuosi Abroad: Soviet Music and Imperial Competition during the Early Cold War, 1945–1958</i> .

Kiril Tomoff, Virtuosi Abroad: Soviet Music and Imperial Competition During the Early Cold War, 1945–1958

Kiril Tomoff, <i>Virtuosi Abroad: Soviet Music and Imperial Competition During the Early Cold War, 1945–1958</i>

Bolesławska, Beata Richard J. Reisner (review)

REVIEWS 531 attract major international talents (pp. 99–100). Tomoff argues persuasively that these musical competitions played an important role in an increasingly ‘globally homogenized musical performance style’, particularly in terms of repertoire and judging (p. 109), in the same way that tours by such virtuosi as Oistrakh and recording projects with Western orchestras contributed to the standardization of global orchestral sound (p. 140). Given the centrality of the notion of competition, the book conspicuously lacks a definition and an assessment of this concept and its problematic status within a socialist state based on Marxist-Leninist ideology and egalitarianism. For such things the reader would have to refer to publications by the Cold War Research Group of the University of Helsinki, notably Competition in Socialist Society edited by Katalin Miklóssy and Melanie Ilic (Abingdon, 2014). As for the musical lens, Simo Mikkonen’s ‘Winning Hearts and Minds? Soviet Music in the Cold War Struggle against the West’ in Twentieth Century Music and Politics (ed. Pauline Fairclough, Farnham, 2013) offers a comparable overview of Cold War musical/cultural exchanges between the Soviet Union and the West which, although it contains less archival work, extends beyond 1958 and thus complements Tomoff’s work, particularly in the case of Sviatoslav Richter’s conspicuous absence from foreign tours in the 1950s. Throughout the book such threads, as well as some of the ideas in the introduction, are rather hastily drawn together by means of such hindsightfilled conclusions as: ‘The seeds of the eventual Soviet collapse were already planted, even at the Soviet high-water mark of the late 1950s’ (p. 3, and paraphrased elsewhere). Still, and despite an under-representation of ‘Soviet Music’ as compared to ‘Imperial Competition’, this is a book full of valuable archival references, and one that should certainly prove instructive to anyone interested in what was cooking in the Soviet cultural kitchen during the 1950s. Department of Music, Université Paris Sorbonne Michelle Assay and Department of Russian/Slavonic Studies, University of Sheffield Bolesławska, Beata. The Life and Works of Andrzej Panufnik (1914–1991). Translated by Richard J. Reisner. Ashgate, Farnham and Burlington, VT, 2015. xiii + 335 pp. Illustrations. Music examples. Figures. Notes. Bibliographies. Chronological list of compositions. Index. £70.00. Sir Andrzej Panufnik, the Polish-born composer who lived in Britain for nearlyhalfhislife,hasenduredalongwaitforanEnglish-languagemonograph, though excellent chapters were devoted to him in Bernard Jacobson’s A Polish Renaissance (London, 1996) and Adrian Thomas’s Polish Music since SEER, 94, 3, july 2016 532 Szymanowski (Cambridge, 2005). To these, Beata Bolesławska’s volume, first published in Polish in 2001, adds a full account of the composer’s life and, as well as commenting on the works as they occur chronologically, supplies three chapters of analysis of a handful of the later works. Panufnik studied at Warsaw Conservatoire, learned conducting with Weingartner, experienced brief pre-eminence in the Communist era, and found eventual serenity in exile in Twickenham — a remarkable story engagingly told in his autobiography, published in English in 1987. His style was lightly ironic and self-effacing, but Bolesławska contributes a wealth of additional detail to the story. Her opening chapters supply exhaustive information on Panufnik’s route to composition via piano, percussion, aircraft design and conducting. His entire oeuvre up to 1945 was destroyed that year (not by the Nazis, but by a decluttering philistine), whereupon he found himself a respected composer with no extant work. He successfully resurrected three early works from memory; perhaps their systematic construction facilitated the feat. Otherwise, apart from a sound-recording of a cabaret song, we have no first-hand evidence of pre-1945 Panufnik. Bolesławska has gathered a large dossier of press reviews, a vivid glimpse of the lost world of Warsaw’s musical life in the late 1930s. Panufnik’s prominence in post-war Communist Poland may surprise us. Though his portfolio was small, and his most original works never secure in their state approval (Bolesławska is excellent at evoking the caprice as well as the malice of the monitors of ‘socrealism’), his state-sponsored works allowed him a favoured position. However, he found the political pressure unbearable, and Bolesławska’s documentation underlines...

Tomoff, Kiril Virtuosi Abroad: Soviet Music and Imperial Competition during the Early Cold War, 1945–1958 (review)

REVIEWS 529 focusing on films with a strong documentary element, she identifies three distinct periods (the 1950s and 1960s, the 1970s and 1980s and the transition and post-transition era), which epitomize the shift in how 1956 events have been perceived and portrayed by Hungarian filmmakers. In the next chapter, Jeremy Hicks examines the way the Soviet regime chose to use the Soviet wartime newsreel of Holocaust atrocities and the extent to which the Soviet silent footage can achieve true testimonial power if certain narrative and commentary elements introduced by the Soviet propaganda machine are removed. Finally, in the last chapter, Sanja Bahun compares the animation practices of the Zagreb school with those of the Czech filmmaker, Jan Svankmajer, in showing how the relative freedom that animation had in the Soviet block allowed filmmakers to move beyond the dichotomy of conformity versus subversion and, instead, put forward ‘a call for an understanding of these ideologically overdetermined flows as being premised on a considered engagement with the prospective and the potential, rather than being defined by the actual’ (p. 205). As summarized above, the volume is an eclectic compilation of hitherto unaddressed aspects of Eastern European Communist cinematography. Although these investigations are neither representative of all countries in the region, and do not represent the entire period that the title of the volume claims, these works do contribute to the reconceptualization and, ultimately, expansion of our understanding of the multifaceted nature of the cinema of the region; a cinema that is rich and as yet insufficiently explored. UCL SSEES V. Ceban Tomoff, Kiril. Virtuosi Abroad: Soviet Music and Imperial Competition during the Early Cold War, 1945–1958. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY and London, 2015. xi + 262 pp. Table. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $45.00. Unlike Kiril Tomoff’s pioneering A Creative Union: The Professional Organization of Soviet Composers, 1939–1953 (Ithaca, NY, 2006), his latest work takes on a relatively familiar story: the Cold War cultural face-off between two ‘imperial projects, the U.S. and the Soviets’ (p. 3). The book would perhaps have been equally pioneering, had it corresponded to the elements on the cover jacket: the combination of the title with a photo of Van Cliburn at the piano alongside conductor Kirill Kondrashin, depicting the American pianist’s triumph at the first Tchaikovsky Piano Competition, which leads the reader to expect a book on actual musical competitions during the Cold War. In fact, with only two out of six chapters dealing with such competitions, Tomoff has a different story to tell. In line with familiar accounts of the Cold War, he uses SEER, 94, 3, july 2016 530 a wealth of archival material and several case studies to retell the story of how the Soviets ended up losing the ‘war’ despite winning several of the battles. The mould that shapes Tomoff’s conclusions and arguments is competition (as in striving for superiority, rather than contest as such) versus integration: ‘to reveal how — in competition after competition — Soviet short-term success hid from view a more decisive integration into a global order dominated by the United States’ (p. 3). It is difficult to miss the thrust of this argument, since it is repeated throughout the book, sometimes in the space of a few pages. Although Tomoff claims to use the lens of classical music, his work does not offer much insight into Soviet musical works as such, relying as it does mainly on musical/cultural personalities, institutions and their representatives. Indeed the author seems mainly inclined to explore the Soviets’ combats with and eventual succumbing to the economic and legal systems of the West. Such is the case with the first chapter, where the legal battles surrounding the 20th Century-Fox 1948 anti-Soviet film, The Iron Curtain, are discussed. An abundance of archival materials regarding foreign representatives of the Soviet Union is offered to support the conclusion that the film forced the Soviets to jump into the Western legal system (p. 39). The time-frame of the book is in reality rather narrower than the subtitle suggests. Apart from the first chapter, the study seldom moves outside the boundaries of the 1950s, fortunately without assigning, as is so...

Kiril Tomoff, Virtuosi Abroad: Soviet Music and Imperial Competition during the Early Cold War, 1945–1958. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015. xi + 262 pp. $27.95

Kiril Tomoff, <i>Virtuosi Abroad: Soviet Music and Imperial Competition during the Early Cold War, 1945–1958</i>. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015. xi + 262 pp. $27.95

BOOK REVIEWS

Books reviewed in this issueLiterature and Fine ArtsZalambani, Maria. L'istituzione del matrimonio in Tolstoj.Zhilyaev, Arseny, ed. Avant‐Garde Museology.Kunichika, Michael. “Our Native Antiquity”: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Culture of Russian Modernism.Rubins, Maria. Russian Montparnasse: Transnational Writing in Interwar Paris.Wozniuk, Vladimir. The Annotated WE: A New Translations of Evgeny Zamiatin's Novel.Lee, Steven S. The Ethnic Avant‐Garde: Minority Cultures and World Revolution.Tomoff, Kiril. Virtuosi Abroad: Soviet Music and Imperial Competition during the Early Cold War, 1945–1958.Komaromi, Ann. Uncensored: Samizdat Novels and the Quest for Autonomy in Soviet Dissidence.Lutzkanova‐Vassileva, Albena. The Testimonies of Russian and American Postmodern Poetry: Reference, Trauma, and History.Lobenthal, Joel. Alla Osipenko: Beauty and Resistance in Soviet Ballet.Senelick, Laurence and Sergei Ostrovsky, eds. The Soviet Theater: A Documentary History.Dobrenko, Evgeny, and Mark Lipovetsky, eds. Russian Literature since 1991.HistoryJaques, Susan. The Empress of Art: Catherine the Great and the Transformation of Russia.Schedewie, Franziska. Die Bühne Europas: Russische Diplomatie und Deutschlandpolitik in Weimar, 1798–1819.Werth, Paul W. The Tsar's Foreign Faiths: Toleration and the Fate of Religious Freedom in Imperial Russia.Izmozik, V. C. “Chernye kabinety”: Istoriia Rossiiskoi perliustratsii XVIII–nachalo XX veka.Wessel, Martin Schulze, and Frank E. Sysyn, eds. Religion, Nation, and Secularization in Ukraine.Buchen, Tim, and Malte Rolf, eds. Eliten im Vielvölkerreich: Imperiale Biographien in Russland und Österreich‐Ungarn (1850–1918).Seleznev, F. A. Pervaia mirovaia voina: Vzgliad iz XXI veka: Rossiia i Nizhegorodskaia guberniia v 1914–1918 gg.Pearl, Deborah. Creating a Culture of Revolution: Workers and the Revolutionary Movement in Late Imperial Russia.Destivelle, Hyacinthe. The Moscow Council (1917–1918): The Creation of the Conciliar Institutions of the Russian Orthodox Church.Rieber, Alfred J. Stalin and the Struggle for Supremacy in Eurasia.Maisky, Ivan. The Maisky Diaries: Red Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, 1932–1943.Kirschenbaum, Lisa A. International Communism and the Spanish Civil War: Solidarity and Suspicion.Kangaspuro, Markku, and Vesa Oittinen, eds. Discussing Stalinism: Problems and Approaches.Harrison, Richard W., ed. and trans. The Battle of Moscow, 1941–1942: The Red Army's Defensive Operations and Counteroffensive along the Moscow Strategic Direction.Gerovitch, Slava. Soviet Space Mythologies: Public Images, Private Memories, &amp; the Making of a Cultural Identity.Vihavainen, Timo, and Elena Bogdanova, eds. Communism and Consumerism: The Soviet Alternative to the Affluent Society.Rupprecht, Tobias. Soviet Internationalism after Stalin: Interaction and Exchange between the USSR and Latin America during the Cold War.Plokhy, Serhii. The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine.Berger, Stefan, and Alexei Miller, eds. Nationalizing Empires.Mikhailov, N. V., and Jan Plamper, eds. Malen'kii chelovek i bol'shaia voina v istorii Rossii: Seredina XIX–seredina XX v.Social Sciences, Contemporary Russia, and OtherTuroma, Sanna, and Maxim Waldstein, eds. Empire De/Centered: New Spatial Histories of Russia and the Soviet Union.Khanenko‐Friesen, Natalia. Ukrainian Otherlands: Diaspora, Homeland, and Folk Imagination in the Twentieth Century.Brusis, Martin, et al., eds. Politics and Legitimacy in Post‐Soviet Eurasia.Bystrova, A., A. Duka, and D. Tev, eds. Power and Elites.Dugin, Alexander. Eurasian Mission: An Introduction to Neo‐Eurasianism.Dugin, Alexander. The Fourth Political Theory.Gel'man, Vladimir. Authoritarian Russia: Analyzing Post‐Soviet Regime Changes.Stephenson, Svetlana. Gangs of Russia: From the Streets to the Corridors of Power.Wood, Elizabeth A., William E. Pomeranz, E. Wayne Merry, and Maxim Trudolyubov, eds. Roots of Russia's War in Ukraine.Lee, Rensselaer, and Artyom Lukin. Russia's Far East: New Dynamics in Asia Pacific and Beyond.Kanet, Roger E., and Matthew Sussex, eds. Power, Politics and Confrontation in Eurasia: Foreign Policy in a Contested Region.

Music in America’s Cold War Diplomacy. By Danielle Fosler-Lussier.Virtuosi Abroad: Soviet Music and Imperial Competition during the Early Cold War, 1945–1958. By Kiril Tomoff.

<i>Music in America’s Cold War Diplomacy</i>. By Danielle Fosler-Lussier.<i>Virtuosi Abroad: Soviet Music and Imperial Competition during the Early Cold War, 1945–1958</i>. By Kiril Tomoff.

Virtuosi Abroad: Soviet Music and Imperial Competition during the Early Cold War, 1945–1958 by Kiril Tomoff

Reviewed by: Virtuosi Abroad: Soviet Music and Imperial Competition during the Early Cold War, 1945–1958 by Kiril Tomoff Michael Paulauskas (bio) Kiril Tomoff. Virtuosi Abroad: Soviet Music and Imperial Competition during the Early Cold War, 1945–1958. xi + 262 pp. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015. ISBN 9780801453120. In Virtuosi Abroad, Kiril Tomoff makes a significant contribution to the historiography of the cultural dimensions of the Cold War by examining the world of classical music. He argues that Soviet domination of international music competitions and successful tours of Soviet musicians in the West gave Soviet officials confidence in the inevitable victory of their system over American-style democracy and capitalism. By participating in this system, however, Soviet leaders integrated their country into the legal and economic framework of an increasingly globalized world that had been shaped primarily by the United States. This contributed to the eventual collapse of the USSR since, in the long run, the Soviet Union proved less adept than the US at navigating this system. Tomoff’s book is organized thematically into five chapters. He starts by discussing the Soviet government’s fight against William Wellman’s The Iron Curtain, perhaps the first American anti-Soviet feature film of the postwar era. Soviet legal opposition to the movie’s release crystallized around the soundtrack’s unauthorized appropriation of music by Soviet composers such as Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Khachaturian, and Miaskovsky. Surprisingly, the fight against the film was not led by Soviet officials, but rather by Western partners who were sympathetic to the Soviet Union. American leftist Helen Black, for example, led the initial fight to suppress the film in the United States and, when it failed, authored a memo that resulted in a reshaping of Soviet policy. Following Black’s advice, Soviet leaders decided to complete agreements with Western firms for the publication and distribution rights for Soviet music. This embrace of Western copyright law allowed Soviet officials to challenge The Iron Curtain in court and block its release in France, but it also meant integrating into the legal framework of American global capitalism. Tomoff then discusses Soviet participation in international music competitions after World War II. He outlines the ideological dimensions of competition with the West, the relationship between Soviet musicians and performers from satellite states, and Soviet authorities’ development of conservatory programs in Moscow to prepare musicians for competition. One of the key themes of this section is the fragmented nature of Soviet bureaucracy, with different ministries and committees colliding as they attempted to shape Soviet cultural policy, take credit for Soviet victories, and shift the blame for failures away from themselves. Tomoff also addresses the 1958 First International Tchaikovsky [End Page 257] Competition in Moscow, when American Van Cliburn took home the top prize in piano. He argues that while Americans traditionally have viewed this as a major Soviet defeat in the cultural Cold War, Soviet officials were pleased with the result, as they felt the festival was “a full-fledged demonstration that Moscow was a, perhaps the, center of a global musical culture” (112). In the eyes of Soviet leaders, people around the world would look to the USSR as the natural heir of Western musical traditions. The final chapters of the book focus on Soviet musicians’ tours of the West, particularly the United States. Tomoff centers his analysis on Soviet integration into global norms that had been set by the United States. He argues that Soviet-American musical exchanges had the effect of creating a standardized orchestral sound, with Soviet technical prowess assimilated into an American system that stressed expressiveness. Additionally, Tomoff notes that Soviet cultural authorities chose to arrange tours through Western impresarios such as Sol Hurok, rather than developing their own system, perhaps through the friendship societies that continued to operate in the West after World War II. Although this approach permitted Soviet authorities to exploit the financial resources of Western elites, it highlighted Soviet integration into the American-dominated capitalist economy of cultural production. Furthermore, it exposed Soviet artists to the “contrast between gracious American abundance and corrupt Soviet concentration of wealth” (139), as American impresarios wined and dined their Soviet guests. Soviet authorities were aware of the allure...