Тихон Хренников: Совет композиторы және саясаткер

Soviet Russian composer (1913–2007)

Tikhon Nikolayevich Khrennikov (Тихон Николаевич Хренников; 10 June 1913 [O. S. 28 May 1913] – 14 August 2007) was a Russian and Soviet composer, pianist, and General Secretary of the Union of Soviet Composers (1948–1991), who was also 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. During the 1930s, Khrennikov was already being hailed as a leading Soviet composer. In 1948, Andrei Zhdanov, the leader of the anti formalism campaign, nominated Khrennikov as Secretary of the Union of Soviet Composers. He held this influential post until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

On 10 January 1948, more than 70 composers, musicians and music lecturers were summoned to a three day conference in the Kremlin, to be lectured by the communist party's chief ideologist Andrei Zhdanov on how to write music. As one of the main speakers, Khrennikov backed the party line, and attacked all three of the greatest composers present, Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev and Khachaturian. Years later, he defended his behaviour by telling a BBC correspondent: "They told me they forced me to read out that speech attacking Shostakovich and Prokofiev. What else could I have done? If I had refused, it would have been curtains for me." In 1948, Joseph Stalin appointed Khrennikov General Secretary of the Union of Soviet Composers, a position he would keep until the union was disbanded with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In an interview with pianist Jascha Nemtsov on 8 November 2004 in Moscow, Khrennikov asserted that composer Mieczysław Weinberg, when arrested, had been discharged immediately because of Khrennikov's protection. According to Khrennikov the same had happened to Alexander Veprik. Extant evidence demonstrates that Veprik spent four years in a prison camp and Mieczysław Weinberg was released in June 1953 because of Stalin's death. In 1949, Khrennikov officially attacked the composer Alexander Lokshin, using formulations of one of Stalin's ideologists, Pavel Apostolov. In his speech Khrennikov contrasted Lokshin's "modernist" style with the bylina Stepan Razin's Dream by Galina Ustvolskaya, which he considered an ideal example of true national art. Khrennikov's speech aroused great indignation in Mikhail Gnessin, who accused him of duplicity: not daring to criticise Lokshin in a professional environment, Khrennikov attacked him ideologically from his position as a leading Soviet official. After this ideological campaign Lokshin was excluded from academic circles. Khrennikov did not prevent Prokofiev's first wife, Lina Codina, from being charged as a "spy" following her arrest by the NKVD on 20 February 1948. As head of the Composers' Union, Khrennikov made no attempt to have the sentence against Lina Prokofieva quashed or reduced. The Composers' Union did not help Prokofiev's sons, who were compulsorily evicted from their apartment. After Codina returned from the Gulag, the Union of Soviet Composers did nothing to improve the extremely bad living conditions of her family; it was the prominent singers Irina Arkhipova and Zurab Sotkilava who protected Prokofiev's first family. Afterwards, the family was exposed to regular official humiliations. According to Prokofiev's first son, Sviatoslav, the Union refused Codina permission to go to Paris, even though she had been personally invited by the French culture minister to the opening of Prokofiev's memorial board. Instead, Khrennikov took part at that ceremony with his whole family. The Union also refused Lina Prokofieva permission to go to the opening of the Sydney Opera House. At the same time, Sviatoslav Prokofiev noted the typical logic of the Soviet functionary: sometimes Khrennikov could help if it was not dangerous for his own position and career. The ideological campaigns of 1948–49 against musical formalism were directly connected with the offensive against "rootless cosmopolitans," which formed a part of the state anti Semitism in the Soviet Union that flourished after the Second World War. The leadership of the Union of Soviet Composers branded certain composers as "zionist aggressors" or "agents of world imperialism", and made accusations of "ideologically vicious" and "hostile" phenomena in Soviet musical culture. An accusation of Zionism was often used as a weapon against people of different nationalities, faiths and opinions, such as Nikolai Roslavets. "Struggle against formalists" was pursued in other countries too. According to György Ligeti, after Khrennikov's official visit to Budapest in 1948, The Miraculous Mandarin by Béla Bartók was removed from the repertoire and paintings by French impressionists and others were removed from display in museums. Khrennikov and other functionaries of the Union of Soviet Composers constantly attacked the heritage of the Russian avant garde as well as its researchers. For example, the East German musicologist de (1934–2008) was persecuted because of his promotion in the West of modern Soviet music of the 1920s. Gojowy was proclaimed to be an "anti Soviet writer" – until 1989 he was forbidden to visit the Soviet Union and some of his publications that he sent to Soviet colleagues were intercepted by customs. At the same time, Soviet musicologists engaged in developing a Russian avant garde tradition were officially prohibited from going abroad. Once again, Nicolai Roslavets was an example. Khrennikov was a Member of Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from the 1950s on. From 1962, he was a representative in the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

Symphony No. 1 in B flat minor, Op. 4 (1933–35)
Symphony No. 2 in C minor, Op. 9 (1940–42)
Symphony No. 3 in A major, Op. 22 (1973)

"Mik", suite for orchestra, Op. 3 (1934)
Much Ado About Nothing, incidental music, Op. 7 (1935–36)
"Don Quichotte" by Mikhail Bulgakov, suite for orchestra, Op. 10 (1941)
"Love For Love", suite from the ballet, Op. 24b (1976)
"A Hussar Ballad", suite from the ballet, Op. 25b (1978)

Piano Concerto No. 1 in F major, Op. 1 (1932–33)
Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, Op. 14 (1958–59)
Cello Concerto No. 1 in C major, Op. 16 (1964)
Piano Concerto No. 2 in C major, Op. 21 (1972)
Violin Concerto No. 2 in C major, Op. 23 (1975)
Three Pieces for Violin and orchestra, Op. 26b (1978)
Piano Concerto No. 3 in C major, Op. 28 (1983–84)
Cello Concerto No. 2, Op. 30 (1986)
Piano Concerto No. 4, for piano, string orchestra and percussion, Op. 37 (1991)

"Our Courtyard" (Happy Childhood), children's ballet in one act, Op. 19 (1970)
"Love For Love", two acts, Op. 24 (1976)
"A Hussar Ballad", three acts, Op. 25 (1978)
"Napoleon Bonaparte", Op. 40 (1994)
"The Captain's Daughter", Op. 41 (1999)

Five Pieces for piano, Op. 2 (1933)
Three Pieces for piano, Op. 5 (1934–35)
Five Pieces for piano, Op. 38 (1992)
Six Children's Pieces for piano, Op. 42 (2002)

Piano Concertos No. 1–3. Tikhon Khrennikov (piano), USSR State Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Yevgeny Svetlanov. Piano Concerto No. 4, String Quartet No. 1, Cello Sonata, Songs. Khrennikov was interviewed by former BBC correspondent Martin Sixsmith for the BBC's 2006 radio show Challenging the Silence. In it Khrennikov denied the suggestion that he was at the heart of the criticism of composers such as Prokofiev and Shostakovich, though he expressed pride that he "was Stalin's Commissar. When I said No! (he shouts), it meant No."