• Find us on Facebook
  • Follow us on Twitter
  • Follow us on Instagram
  • View Our YouTube Channel
  • Listen on Spotify
  • View our scores on nkoda
Scoring

2.picc.2.corA.2.Ebcl.bcl.3(III=dbn)-6.3.3.1-timp.perc:tgl/wdbl/tamb/SD/BD/cyms/tam-t/glsp/xyl-hp-strings-banda:3crt/2tpt/2ahn/2thn/2barhn/2tubas

Abbreviations (PDF)

Territory
This work is available from Boosey & Hawkes / Sikorski for the UK, British Commonwealth (excluding Canada), Republic of Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Turkey, Israel.

World Premiere
04/06/1935
Malyi Opera House, Leningrad
Fyodor Lopukhov, choreographer / Malyi Opera Ballet / Pavel Feldt
Repertoire Note

Full-length ballet on a scenario by Fyodor Lopukhov and Adrian Piotrovsky.


Shostakovich’s third and final ballet – and his second project with the great choreographer Lopukhov - is more conventional and traditionally ‘balletic’ than his first two. By the time he wrote it, Stalin’s repressive doctrines of Socialist-Realism were beginning to bite and the plot has little satire and is relatively conventional: a group of ballet-dancers have been sent into the countryside to bring sophisticated metropolitan entertainment to a successful new Soviet Collective Farm. After some complicated amorous intrigues, it turns out that the honest country-bumpkins have more to teach the city-folk than the other way round.


What is most delightful in this little-known ballet are the extended dance-sequences, often parodying or imitating the great ballet-composers of the past like Tchaikovsky, but with a fresh, modern, open-air and energetic sparkle all their own. The score abounds in light and catchy melodies and dance-rhythms to get the foot tapping, Shostakovich at his most fluent and easily accessible.


Note by Gerard McBurney



More on this Composer

Stay updated on the latest composer news and publications