Dawn Bonker
The Stalinist-era music and art experienced and examined at Chapman University on Monday evening was created under a sinister cloud. But it received a bright and honest handling at the keynote event for “Decoding Shostakovich,” the weeklong Global Arts Festival celebrating the life and work of the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich.
Opening the evening was a concert and dialogue featuring a performance of Shostakovich’s
Sonata for Viola and Piano
by Robert Becker, assistant professor, and acclaimed Russian pianist Alexander Toradze. The sonata was the composer’s last work, written in his dying days. In a post-performance dialogue led by Chancellor Daniele Struppa and noted Shostakovich biographer Solomon Volkov, Becker said that heartbreak shadowed him as he rehearsed and performed the music.
Gathered after the keynote event of the Global Arts Festival are, from left, acclaimed pianist Alexander Toradze, Shostakovich biographer Solomon Volkov, Joseph Horowitz, artistic adviser to Pacific Symphony, Chancellor Daniele Struppa, Professor Robert Becker, and John Forsyte, president of Pacific Symphony.
“The tragedy of that just fills me with every second I play this. You can’t hurry through this,” he said.
Toradze also performed Shostakovich at a series of concerts at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts with the
Pacific Symphony Orchestra
, this year’s partner in the Global Arts Festival.
Following the concert the Memorial Hall audience was invited to tour the exhibition
Stalin’s Russia: Visions of Happiness, Omens of Terror
, drawn from the
Wende Museum
and the collection of
Tom and Jeri Ferris Collection
at the Institute of Modern Russian culture at USC. The exhibition features propaganda art and artifacts from the Stalinist era, including a gramophone and recording of Joseph Stalin’s speech to the governing Soviet body of 1936. Wendy Salmond, Ph.D., professor and co-curator of the exhibition, introduced the exhibition as not just a Shostakovich tribute but a tribute to all Russians who endured the oppression of the day.
Leading the creation of the art exhibition at the Global Arts Festival reception were (l-r) Mark Konecny, Ph.D., associate director at the Institute of Modern Russian Culture at USC; Jeri Ferris, benefactor of the Ferris Collection at USC; Amy Graziano, Ph.D., associate professor and chair of the Hall-Musco Conservatory of Music; Wendy Salmond, Ph.D., professor in the Department of art; and John Bowlt, Ph.D., director of the Institute of Modern Russian Culture at USC.
“While these objects are together they create reverberations and chains of ideas that one can think about and relate across the campus, and in our case today to the music that we’ve just heard. So in putting together this little show of Stalinist memorabilia it’s been an effort to capture some of those lost reverberations that are there in the music and to try and do honor to the complexity of Shostakovich’s life and legacy, and really to all other Russians who lived through the same period and the same experience,” Salmond said.
The Chapman Global Arts Festival is a project of the Global Arts Program, made possible by the Kay Family Foundation. Each year the festival will explore issues of identity, community and global citizenship through the arts.
Global Arts Festival events continue through Saturday, Feb. 8, and the exhibition will remain on view in the Doy and Dee Henley Galleria of Argyros Forum through May 24.
It was a very fascinating night – great music and a wonderful exhibition!