Georgy Sviridov

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Georgy Vasilyevich Sviridov (Russian: Георгий Васильевич Свиридов, Ge'orgy Vasil'jevič Svirídov; (December 16, 1915 – January 5, 1998), also transliterated Georgy Vasil'yevich Sviridov, Georgy Vasilievich Sviridov, Georgy Vasil'evich Sviridov, Georgii Sviridov or Gyorgy Sviridov, was a Russian and Soviet neoromantic composer.

Contents 1 Early Life and Youth 2 Musical Career 3 Honors and Awards 4 Death 5 List of Works 6 External links

[edit] Early Life and Youth

Georgy Vasilyevich Sviridov was born in in 1915 in the town of Fatezh in the Kursk guberniya of the Russian Empire. His father, Vasily Sviridov, a sympathizer of the Bolshevik cause during the Russian Civil War that followed the Russian Revolution, was killed when Georgy was four. The family moved to Kursk, where Sviridov, still in elementary school, learned to play his first instrument, the balalaika. Learning to play by ear, he demonstrated such talent and ability that he was accepted into the local orchestra of Russian folk instruments. He enrolled in a music school in 1929, and following the advice of his teacher, M. Krutinsky, came to Leningrad in 1932, where he studied piano at the Leningrad Central Music College, graduating in 1936. From 1936 to 1941, Sviridov studied at the Leningrad Conservatory under P.B. Ryazanov and Dmitri Shostakovich. Mobilized into the Soviet armed forces in 1941, just days after his graduation from the conservatory, Sviridov was sent to a military academy in Ufa, but was discharged by the end of the year due to poor health.

[edit] Musical Career

Sviridov's first composition debut, in 1935, consisted of a cycle of lyrical romances based on the poetry of Alexander Pushkin. His graduation piece at the Leningrad Conservatory was a symphony and concerto for strings.

Sviridov's style changed considerably in the early stages of his career as a composer. His early works follow a rather archetypical style of Romantic classical music (and have been compared to the works of German Romantic composers). Some of these are musical pieces based on the poetry of British writers such as Shakespeare and Robert Burns. In his later, mature period, Sviridov consciously strove to write music that had a distinctly Russian character. While Sviridov's music remains little-known in the West, in Russia his works received extraordinary praise from both critics and audiences for their simple, lyrical melodies and national flavor.

In the Soviet Union, his achievements were first recognized in the 1940s; in 1946 Sviridov won the State Stalin Prize in the arts for his Piano Trio, a highly conservative and derivative piece owing much to Tchaikovsky's works for the same ensemble.

His rather avant-garde sounding music for the film Time, Forward! was chosen as the opening theme music for the Soviet Union's and Russia's main televized news program Vremya, becoming an instantly-recognizable excerpt for hundreds of millions of Soviet citizens.

Sviridov's orchestral work Snow-Storm (which Sviridov called 'musical illustrations' to Alexander Pushkin's story of the same name) was featured in the 1964 movie Snow-Storm and received heavy airtime on Soviet radio.

Although his instrumental works are among Sviridov's most popular, music critics (as well as Sviridov himself) perceived him primarily as a master of choral works. The most notable of these are his Leningrad Oratorio and the Oratorio Pathetique (1959).

[edit] Honors and Awards

In addition to the 1946 Stalin Prize, Georgy Sviridov was also awarded the USSR State Prize in 1968 and 1980, as well as the Lenin Prize in 1960. Sviridov was also honored with the title People's Artist of the USSR and Hero of Socialist Labor.

Asteroid 4075 Sviridov, discovered by the Russian astronomer Lyudmila Georgievna Karachkina in 1982, was named in honor of Georgy Sviridov.

[edit] Death

The composer died of a heart attack in Moscow, January 5, 1998, where he had lived since 1956.

[edit] List of Works

• Seven Small Pieces for piano (1934-1935)
• Six Romances on Texts by Pushkin for voice and piano (1935)
• Seven Songs after Lermontov (1938)
• Piano Concerto No. 1 (1936-1939)
• Chamber Symphony for strings (1940)
• Three Songs after Alexander Blok (1941)
• Piano Concerto No. 2 (1942)
• "Othello", incidental music after Shakespeare (1942)
• "Shakespeare Suite" for singer and piano (1944)
• Piano Sonata (1944)
• Piano Trio (1945 - rev. 1955)
• String Quartet No. 1 (1945-1946)
• Two Partitas for piano (1946 - rev. 1957, 1960)
• String Quartet No. 2 (1947)
• Children's Album, seventeen pieces for piano (1948 - rev. 1957)
• Symphony No. 2 (1949/Unfinished)
• "Country of My Fathers", poem after A. Issaakian for tenor and bass with piano accompaniment

(1949-1950)

• "Bright Lights", operetta in three acts after L. Sacharov and S. Poloski (1951)
• "Ruy Blas", serenade (1952)
• Songs after Burns for bass and piano (1955)
• "The Decembrists", oratorio (1955)
• "Poem to the Memory of Sergei Yesenin", oratorio for tenor, mixed chorus and orchestra (1956)
• "My Father is a Farmer", song cycle after Yessenin for tenor and baritone with piano accompagniment (1957)
• "Suburb-Lyrics", seven songs after A. Prokofiev and M. Issakovsky for singer and piano (1938-1958)
• Eight Romances to words by Lermontov for bass and piano (1957-1958)
• Five Choruses to Lyrics by Russian Poets (1958)
• Oratorio Pathetique after Mayakovsky for bass, mezzo-soprano, mixed chorus and orchestra (1959)
• Song about Lenin ("We Don't Believe") after Mayakovsky for bass, mixed chorus and orchestra (1960)
• "St. Petersburg Songs" for soprano, mezzo-soprano, baritone, bass, violin, cello and piano (1961-1963)
• "A Voice from the Chorus", monolog after A. Blok for bass and piano (1963)
• "Songs of Kursk", cantata after folktexts for mixed chorus and orchestra (1964)
• "Wooden Russia", cantate to words of Yesenin for tenor, men's chorus and orchestra (1964)
• Triptych, a small symphony for orchestra (1964)
• Music for chamber orchestra (1964)
• Music to the Film "Snow Storm" after Pushkin (1964)
• "Sad Songs", small cantata to words of A. Blok for mezzo-soprano, female chorus and orchestra (1962-1965)
• "It's Snowing" small cantata to words of B. Pasternak for female chorus, boys'chorus and orchestra (1965)
• "Time, Forward!", suite of the film score (1967)
• "Five Songs about Russia", oratorio after Blok for soprano, mezzo-soprano, baritone, bass, mixed chorus and orchestra (1967)
• "Four Folksongs" for chorus and orchestra (1971)
• "The Friendly Guest", cantata to words of Yesenin for solovoices, chorus and orchestra (1971-1976)
• "Spring Cantata" to words of Nekrasov for mixed chorus and orchestra (1972)
• Concerto in Memory of A.A. Yurlov for unaccompanied mixed chorus (1973)
• Music to the Play "Czar Fyodor Ioannovich" after Tolstoi (1973)
• "The Birch of Life", cantata to words of A. Blok for mezzo-soprano and orchestra (1974)
• Three Miniatures for solo voices and mixed chorus (1972-1975)
• "Snow Storm", musical illustrations after Pushkin for orchestra (1975)
• "Songs of Petersburg" after A. Blok for bass and piano (1975)
• Three Pieces from "Children's Album" for mixed chorus a cappella (1975)
• "Ode to Lenin" after R. Rozhdestvensky for narrator, chorus and large orchestra (1976)
• "Cast of Russia", poem after Sergei Yesenin for tenor and piano (1977)
• Hymns to the Motherland for chorus (1978)
• Twenty-five Choruses for bass and piano (1939-1979)
• "Pushkin's Garland", choral concerto on verses by Alexander Pushkin (1979)
• "Nightly Clouds", cantata after A. Blok for mixed chorus a cappella (1979)
• Ten Songs after Alexander Blok for singer and piano (1972-1980)
• "Ladaga", poem for chorus after A. Prokofiev (1980)
• "Songs From Hard Times", concerto after Alexander Blok for chorus a cappella (1980-1981)
• "Petersburg", a vocal poem (1995)

[edit] External links

• [1] Petersburg Musical Archive
• [2] Classical Archives - Georgy Sviridov
• [3] Свиридов Георгий Васильевич (Russian)
• [4] Георгий Васильевич Свиридов (1915–1998) (Russian)