Tikhon Khrennikov
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Tikhon Nikolayevich Khrennikov (Russian: Тихон Николаевич Хренников) (born June 10 [O.S. May 28] 1913 in Yelets, Orlov District) is a Russian and Soviet composer, but is better known for his political activities.
He wrote three symphonies, four piano concertos, two violin concertos, two cello concertos, operas, operettas, ballets, chamber music, incidental music and film music.
Khrennikov started learning to play piano as a child. As a teen he moved to Moscow, where he studied composition at Gnesin Music College under Mikhail Gnesin and Yefraim Gelman from 1929 to 1932, then he continued under Litinsky and Vissarion Shebalin at the Moscow Conservatory from 1932 to1936, also studying piano under Heinrich Neuhaus. He wrote and played his Piano Concerto No. 1 during his student years, and his Symphony No. 1 was his graduation piece.
In 1948, Andrei Zhdanov appointed Khrennikov to Secretary of the Union of Soviet Composers, and it was in this office for which he is most remembered, negatively, in the biographies of Prokofiev and Shostakovich, composers whom he criticized for "formalism" on a Soviet composers' convention in 1948. However, he is credited by some for protecting and helping some Soviet composers thanks to his position (and even he advocated to give Prokofiev and Shostakovich the Stalin Award in 1950). Through sham elections, Khrennikov remained Secretary until the collapse of the Soviet Union.
According to Shostakovich's memoirs, Khrennikov once soiled his own trousers in Stalin's presence, an honor he shared with film-maker Leo Arnshtam.
Khrennikov returned to the concert stage in the 1960s, playing his Piano Concerti. He had a rapport with violinist Leonid Kogan and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich, and they recorded one of his Violin Concertos. In the 1980s Khrennikov resumed composition with renewed vigor. His Symphony No. 3 used serial procedures, which he had denounced in earlier years.
His 1994 memoirs (ISBN 5-7140-0563-5) are rumored to contain formerly secret Soviet documents.
[edit] Quotations
"Khrennikov not only survived Stalin's repressive reign but lived in comfort under the succession of Soviet rulers and post-Soviet presidents that followed: Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko, Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin. He remains an influential musical figure: he is a professor at the Moscow Conservatory and has been chairman of the Tchaikovsky Competition for the last 25 years. In his native city of Yelets, his home has been turned into a museum and an arts school, and a statue has been erected in his honor. His socialist realist works are regularly performed and his songs remain as popular as ever. Khrennikov's long and improbable career began in 1948, when Stalin personally picked him to lead the Union of Soviet Composers. His first accomplishment on the job was an attack on abstract, "formalist" music in a speech at the First Congress of Composers in 1948, two months after the infamous Resolution of the Central Committee that condemned the "formalism" of Shostakovich, Prokofiev and others. "Enough of these symphonic diaries - these pseudo-philosophic symphonies hiding behind their allegedly profound thoughts and tedious self-analysis," he proclaimed. "Armed with clear party directives, we will stop all manifestations of formalism and popular decadence." (Vadim Prokhorov: Andante - June 24, 2003)
