SONG RESOUNDING STALIN’S PRAISE

Scandalous performance in the Palace of Arts praising the Soviet dictator.

On Thursday Dmitri Shostakovich’s oratorio entitled Song of the Forests praising Stalin and the Soviet Communism was performed by the National Philharmonic Orchestra, the National Choir, the Children’s Choir of the Hungarian Radio, singers István Rozsos and István Rácz, conducted by the Kazakh conductor Alan Buribayev. The Russian composer’s work was performed as part of the Klemperer subsciption in the Palace of Arts, Budapest.
Though it was announced that the artists dissociated themselves from the contemporary events and from the dictatorship and they called on the audience to regard it as an excursion to the Statue Park of Communism or to the House of Terror, a part of the audience was shocked by the selection of the work. The performance was honoured only by a modest applause. The oratorio was performed in Russian but the audience could follow the text from the playbill in Hungarian, praising Lenin and the Communist party. Only a few people know that Stalin is a freeman of Budapest even today. Several people have expressed their indignation to Magyar Nemzet and musicians requesting anonimity said some of them refused to take part in the performance and they had been sent on leave. The press department of the Palace of Arts claims the National Philharmonic Orchestra has decided independently about its programmes. The opera by Shostakovich entitled Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District (1934) did not win the favour of Stalin and had a bad criticism in Pravda. The composer’s Song of the Forests at last in 1949 regained the sympathy of the dictator and in 1950 the composer was awarded the Stalin prize. The work was first performed in Hungary in the ’fifties by the Symphonic Orchestra of the Hungarian Radio.

Translated by Péter Szentmihályi Szabó