Background

Dmitri Kabalevsky was born in St. Petersburg on December 30, 1904. His father was a mathematician.

Education

In 1918 his family moved to Moscow, where he enrolled at the Scriabin Musical Institute. After leaving the institute in 1922 he continued to study intermittently with V. Selivanov (his piano teacher at the institute), taught piano, and played for silent movies. In 1925 he entered the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied piano with Goldenweiser and composition with Catoire and, later, Miaskovsky. After he joined the Communist Party in 1940, he became a prominent personality in Soviet musical life and held important administrative positions in the musical establishment, including various offices in the Union of Soviet Composers, editor of Sovetskaia Muzyka (the official organ of the Union of Soviet Composers), head of the music department of the Soviet Radio Committee, and head of the music section of the Institute of Arts History in the Academy of Sciences.

Career

When he was only in his mid-teens he began giving piano lessons and composing simple pieces for his students.

As a spokesperson for official musical policy he frequently appeared on television, addressed factory and farm workers, wrote articles for domestic and foreign newspapers and journals, presented awards, and led delegations.

The Third Symphony ("Requiem") was composed on the tenth anniversary of Lenin's death.

The Requiem (1963) for solo voices, chorus, and orchestra was written in memory of the fallen Soviet heroes of World War II.

His opera Colas Breugnon describes the life and worldview of a 16th-century Burgundian craftsman.

He was strongly influenced by the Russian romantic tradition of Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Borodin.

His music is extroverted, charming, engaging, but not profound or challenging—characteristics that make it easily accessible and appealing to a wide audience.

His scores tend to be transparent rather than thick-textured.

The folk element plays an important part in his works.

While working on Colas Breugnon he made a study of French folk songs.

A number of the scenes in the opera have a folk flavor, but only two brief themes are taken directly from Burgundian tunes.

His tuneful, direct, buoyant style seems particularly well suited to the composition of children's pieces.

He wrote songs, choral ensembles, and piano pieces for children.

The opera, The Taras Family, deals with the struggle of partisan fighters against the invading Nazis in World War II. After initially striking out on a modernistic musical path in early works such as the set of songs to words by Aleksandr Blok (1927) and the First Piano Concerto (1928), Kabalevsky settled into an essentially conservative style that changed little throughout his career.

He wrote a fourth symphony in 1956, a third piano concerto in 1952, a concerto for violin (1949), two concertos for cello (1949 and 1964), the symphonic sketches Romeo and Juliet (1956) and Spring (1960), a second string quartet (1945), a set of twenty-four preludes for piano (1945), and two more sonatas (1945 and 1948). He wrote in a clear, simple, lyrical style based essentially on folk music and the Russian tradition of the 19th century but with marked personal traits.

In 1959 he was part of a small group of Soviet composers who visited the United States. Kabalevsky composed operas, ballets, choral works, incidental music for plays and radio productions, film music, four symphonies, a number of concertos, chamber music, songs, and piano pieces.

Of these works, the best known in the West are the overture to his opera Colas Breugnon, The Comedians, a suite for small orchestra, his Second Symphony, the Violin Concerto, the Sonatina in C Major, and other piano works for children. Kabalevsky, like other Soviet composers whose training and creative work began after the revolution, subscribed to the Soviet aesthetic theory that works of art should reflect political and social ideology.

In the First Symphony (1932), dedicated to the revolution on its 15th anniversary, the music of the first movement with its funereal passages for double-bass, cello, and bassoon represents the Russian people under the Czarist regime, while that of the second and final movement, based on a folk theme, celebrates the people's rebellion and victory.

The three concertos—for violin (1948), cello (1948 - 1949), and piano (1952)—dedicated to "youth" and meant to be played by young musicians are full of vitality and joy.

His compositions for children are among his best known and most successful works.

Achievements

• Being a prolific composer he helped to set up the Union of Soviet Composers in Moscow and remained one of its leading figures.

Works

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  • Shostakovich/Kabalevsky: Cello Concerto No. 1

    (One of his first major concerto recordings, this excellen...)

  • Kabalevsky: 24 Preludes, Op. 38

    ( Publisher ID: ZN160790 )

  • Kabalevsky: Violin Concerto in C Major, Op. 48

    ( Publisher ID: EP4618 )

  • D. Kabalevsky: Vol 4. Piano Concertos Nos. 2, 3 & 4.
  • Kabalevsky, D.B.: Romeo and Juliet / Colas Breugnon / Comedians
  • Kabalevsky: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 And 2
  • Kabalevsky: The Comedians; Piano Concerto No. 1; Rhapsody; Spring
  • Glazunov / Kabalevsky: Violin Concertos
  • Kabalevsky: Cello Concerto No. 2 Op. 77 / Khachaturian: Cello Concerto / Glazunov: Chant du Menestrel Op. 71