Exploring Music: Pretty Tunes--A Hussar Ballad by Tikhon Khrennikov

Together with Dmitri Kabalevsky, Tilchon Khrennikov appears to be a last sur­vivor of the brilliant first generation of Soviet composers that included Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Khachaturian. But whereas the others were virtually household names in this country, Khren­nikov is barely known here. During the past 30 years, according to my survey, only three of his works have been listed in Schwann, and he does not appear at all in my most recent issue, which, admittedly, is several months old. (He has, of course, fared better on Soviet records, available here through special outlets.)

Khrennikov was also the last-born of the group noted. His birthdate was 1913, mak­ing him an exact contemporary of Britten, Lutoslawski, Norman DelloJoio, and Mor­ton Gould. The son of petit bourgeois parents, he was born in the industrial town of Yelets, south of Moscow. At the age of 16 he went to the latter city to study in the Gnesin Musical Academy, transferring to the Moscow Conservatory three years later, where his mentor was Vissarion Shebalin (whom he would reward later with base ingratitude}. The following year he appeared in public as the protagonist of his own first piano concerto and graduated summa cum in 1936. For the next several years he worked primarily as a theatrical composer.

Khrennikov was apparently keenly aware of the nature of Soviet life in the Stalin era, and evidently determined to sur­vive, whatever the cost. He both preach­ed and practiced the Party line about the essential link between the arts and "socialist realism," and he hearkened to the Grand Panjandrum's theory that music should be based on the songs of the peo­ple, so to speak.

In 1939 he had a hit with an opera call­ed Into the Storm. It recommended itself to the Big Cheese in two ways. First, it pioneered in introducing the figure of Lenin to the operatic stage-though, like God in Britten's Noyes Fludde, Khren­nikov·s Lenin does not sing. Second, it was full of hummable tunes. Boris Schwarz (Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia 1917-1970) defends it for its "youthful freshness." "engaging charm," and "technical skill." but Solomon Volkhov (Testimony) has Shostakovich dismissing it as "a weak imitation of Dzerzhinsky's terrible opera The Quiet Don," a Stalin favorite. Apparently Shostakovich sent Khrennikov a letter of friendly criticism, telling him he was too good for that sort of thing.

A decade later when Comrade Zhdanov decided to cleanse the Augean stables of Russian music of Western influence, Khrennikov became his chief shoveler, unloading notably on Shostakovich and poor old Shebalin. As reward, he was elevated to the directorship of the Com­poser's Union, a post that he maintained with an iron hand, responding to the at­titudinal changes of the government as it veered one way or another. The govern­ment has indicated its approval with all sorts of awards and honors, and the com­posers, finding a strength in his leadership that they would not otherwise have had, repeatedly reelected him.

Khrennikov has wriuen, besides the works noted, concerti for violin and cello, three symphonies, and lesser instrumental and vocal works, but his chief efforts have been in the area of stage and film, most of them, one suspects, nonexportable. (Volkhov's Shostakovich says that he resented this international success of some of his contemporaries.) The ballet The Hussar Ballad is a late work, premiered in 1979. It had its inception in a 1942 play Long, Long Ago by one Alexander Gladkov, for which Khrennikov wrote music. Its theme was the 1812 Great Patriotic War (read Napoleonic invasion of Russia) and it apparently eventually dawn­ed on the composer that there were parallels between that G.P.W. and the one against the Germans in 1941-45.

The ballet music, as exemplified by this suite, is pretty much what one would ex­pect. Were it not for a few acidulous har­monics, it might have been written a hun­dred or more years ago. It is full of waltzes and polonaises and such, and is compact of pretty and glib tunes. The general at­mosphere is that of Viennese operetta of the Lehar-Kalman era, and the scoring is pure Hollywood. I suspect those who revel in "light" music will find it most to their taste.