Mykola Leontovych
Mykola Leontovych specialised in a cappella choral music. He is remembered today mostly through the musical works he left behind, which include over 150 choral compositions. These range from artistic arrangements of folk songs, religious works (including his liturgy), cantatas, and choral compositions set to the words of various Ukrainian poets. His two most famous works are the choral miniatures "Schedryk" and "Dudaryk".
Muddle Instead of Music
Leningrad composer Dmitri Shostakovich completed his opera "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District" in 1932. Set in pre-revolutionary times, "Lady Macbeth" deals with themes of lust, loneliness and murder. Some of its scenes are sexually explicit; a review in the "New York Sun" called the opera "pornophony". On 24 January 1934 the work premiered to great success, lauded by critics and government officials. "Lady Macbeth" quickly spread to opera houses worldwide, cementing Shostakovich's status as an international celebrity. In the Soviet Union it received instant praise. The newspaper "Sovetskoe iskusstvo" honored "Lady Macbeth" as "a triumph of musical theatre", while "Sovetskaya muzyka" called it "the best Soviet work, the chef-d'oeuvre of Soviet creativity." Party officials were likewise pleased, extolling the opera and terming Shostakovich "a Soviet composer brought up in the best tradition of Soviet culture." In 1934 and 1935 the opera was performed several hundred times nationwide.