tea emai

- At the Coach House

A pessimistic Pinter

The Birthday Party, by the
English playwright Harold Pint-
er, is a pessimistic: comedy with
overtones of horror. Third pro-
duction in the golden jubilee
year of the University Alumnae
Dramatic Club at the Coach
House theatre on Huron Street
in Toronto, the play relates the
events that occur in the run-
down rooming house of a sea-
side resort town.

The sole boarder, a has-been
musician, is sought out by two
newcomers, who invent a birth-
day for him and insist on a cele-
bration. At the end, after a
drunken party, a night of vio-
lence and a seduction, the musi-
cian, dressed in what appears to
be his burial suit, is led away
by the two intruders. To prison?
To his death?

What's the play about? The

Dmitri Shostakovich

By N. E. STORY

A socialist country — the
U.S.S.R. — has the largest num-
ber of con composers
of world stature in European
art music (“classical music”):
Shostakovich, Kabalevsky, Khat-
chaturian; composers only re-
cently deceased like: Prokofiev,
Gliére, Miaskovsky, Shaporin;
and dozens of lesser composers
who are nevertheless gifted
enough to have earned interna-
tional reputations: Babajanian,
Balanchivadze, Dankevich,
Khrennikov, Knipper, Karayev,
Muradeli, Popov, Rakov and
others. Some of the hundreds of
other composers who are little
known beyond Soviet borders
although performed and record-
ed at home, will eventually
move into the _ international
class. Attributable as much to
the great Russian art tradition
established in pre-revolutionary
times, the remarkably large
number of composers as well as
the many distinguished non-
Russians among them are cer-
tainly’ achievements of social-
ism.

This is by way of an introduc-
tion to four major Soviet com-
positions, recently released and
never before available on re-
cordings in the West. It is true
that the oratorio arrangement of
Prokofiev's Ivan The Terrible
and Kabalevsky’s Requiem did
not appear respectively until
1961 and 1963; but Shostako-

‘vich’s Second and Third Sym-

phonies go back as far as 1927
and 1931. The first two, both
lengthy works on 2-record sets,
ere fruits of a happy collabora-
tion between Soviet Melodiya
(which recorded them in the
U.S.S.R.) and Angel Records, a
relationship that has produced
many other valuable releases.

artist defeated, compelled by
social pressures to conform? A
man’s security invaded by the
outside world? The inevitability
of death? The author plays a
guessing game with us and sivgs
few clues.

Yet he does have an eye and
an ear for the small comforts of
everyday life, the security (drab
as it is) of the familiar routines
— breakfast, small talk, the
gripes, the modest pleasures, the
absurdity of domestic speech
and relationships. Whatever the
sum total amounts to, the sep-

arate parts are entertaining,
funny and fascinating.

Directed and designed by Her-
bert Whittaker, the production
seeks out whatever logic can be
found in the enigma of this ab-
surdist script.

A uniformly excellent cast of
actors produce exceptional cha-
racterizations of a houseful of
people all of whom seem to be
a bit daft—Ian Orr as Petey, the
seaside maintenance man, shuf-
fling, empty, even simple; Jac-
queline White as his elderly
wife, Meg, a naive creature, even
simpler than her Petey; Pamela
Campion as Lulu, a neighbor girl
who wants to be noticed; Robert
McKenna as Stan, the pianist, a
scared, zombie-like shell of a
man; Neville Dawkins as Gold-
berg, full of rhetorical platitudes,
part preacher, part con man; and
Michael Polley as McCann, Gold-
berg’s macabre side-kick, some
sort of scoundrel, as impudent a
charlatan as Goldberg is unctu-
ous.

Martin Stone

Soviet composers in
new record releases

PROKOFIEV: Ivan The Ter-
rible — Oratoria—2 Melodiya-
Angel Stereo Records RB-4103
time: 74'14—Soloists, Moscow
State Chorus and U.S.S.R. Sym-
phony Orchestra, conducted by
Abram Stasevich.

This oratoria arrangement by
Stasevich of music written be-
tween 1942-45 for the Eisen-
stein films, commemorated the
70th anniversary of Prokofiev's
birth. Prokofiev and Eisenstein
first worked together on Alex-

*, ander Nevsky (1938), then Ivan

The Terrible, Parts 1 and 2
(1944 and 1946).

Though each was an estab-
lished giant in his own field,
there was no creative conflict
and an extremely intimate col-
laboration developed. Eisen-
stein worked out some of his
concepts of visual and sound
montage by making very specific
demands of Prokofiev, while the
films were also partially shaped
according to the score. Eisen-
stein wrote about the precise co-
ordination of the music not only
with the film’s dramatic progres-
sion, not only with the rhythm
of the cutting; but even the rise
and fall of visual shape within
the flow of the montage was in
direct rapport with the rise and
fall of the music. Anyone who
has seen these great master
pieces of cinematic art, domi-
nated as always by Eisenstein’s
unique and forceful creative per-
sonality, will have carried away
strong impressions of Eisen-
stein’s collaborators: Cherkas-
sov’s performance, the photo-
graphy by Tisse and Moskvin,
Prokofiev’s music.

The most perfect realization
of Prokofiev’s music is certainly
their destined setting within the
films, Yet Prokofiev’s Alexander
Nevsky Cantata (1939)) gave the
film music a beautifully realized
double identity. The brilliant
scoring for large and varied art-
istic forces, the rich melodic and
dramatic content of the Ivan The
Terrible music, thanks to Stase-
vich’s arrangement (totally self-
effacing and devoid of tamper-
ing), now have in the Ivan The
Terrible Oratorio the same feli-
citous double identity. With
Splendid music, performance and
engineering, the sole fault one
can find with this recording is
an inconsequential packaging er-

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—-JANUARY 31, 1969-—Page 10.

or. The enclosed libretto switch-
es timings for sides 2 and 3; and
shifts “Red Square” from its ac-
tual place at the end of side 1
to the beginning of side 2. This
set belongs in every record lib-
rary.

&
KABALEVSKY: Requiem —
2 Melodiya-Angel Stereo Re-
cords SRB-4101—Time: 87'44—

Kabalevsky had in mind this
1963 work “for those who died
in the war against fascism,” he
stated, “for many years... but
realization of the dream depend-
ed not on me alone—verses were
needed, and verses moreover
powerful and unique. And I
somehow shared my dream with
Robert Rozhdestvensky . . . I
worked more than two years on
the music of the Requiem. I be-
lieve no one work caused me such
much mental effort or took so
much time as the Requiem...
I would describe its fundamen-
tal idea thus—this work is writ-
ten about those who perished,
but is directed to those who are
alive; it tells of death, but cele-
brates life; it was born of war,
but in all its being aspires to
peace...

Kabalevsky’s Requiem is in
three great parts and 13 divi-
sions, including the introduc-
tions to Parts 1 and 3. It is simi-
lar in scope and organization of
musical forces of Verdi’s Re-
quiem, but unlike the Italian
master who retained the tradi-
tional divisions of the Catholic
Requiem Mass while totalling
superseding it in content, Kaba-
levsky tolerated no such an-
achronism. It goes without say-
ing that it is written not in
Latin but in the vernacular.

Kabalevsky’s Requiem opens
and closes with the word and
theme: “Pomnite!” (Remember!).
the intervening. hour and a half
making an effective dramatic
musical use of the various forc-
es. The major section for bari-
tone (Vladimir Valaitis)—I Shall
Not Die—sne*ks for the fallen,
complemented bv contralto (Val-
entina Levko) in A Mother’s
Heart. Miss Levko (who also
sang the mezzo-soprano. part in

“How do you feel about
the demise of your party?” a
bright young press hack ask-
ed me the other day. His
question was undoubtedly
prompted by the action of a
handful of dissidents, whose
recent desertion from the
ranks of the B.C. Communist
Party was loudly proclaimed
from the columns of the local
monopoly press — to which

turned to vent their political
spleen against the party to
which they had pledged a pre-
tentious “loyalty.”

I assured this budding
young Hearst that neither
myself nor the Party, as far
as I knew were “in mourn-
ing”; that the only “demise”
I knew of was that the Party
had finally relieved itself of a
long-festering and noisome
boil from an_ otherwise
healthy body. Nothing more.

There is however a sort of
ironical humor to this oft-
heralded “demise” of com-
munism and Communist par-
ties. Dialectically, its “pall-
bearers” are best described in
those lines of Macbeth, which
speak of a “. .. tale told by
an, idiot, full of sound and
fury, signifying nothing.”

During the November days
of 1931 the Toronto mono-
poly press, notorious for its
sensationalism and ability to
distort realities, loudly an-
nounced in four-inch block
letter headlines, that the con-
viction of Communist Party
leader Tim Buck and seven of
his colleagues had “Struck a
Deathblow at Communism in
Canada,” the very words
used by the then attorney-
general Price of Ontario in
his announcement of that his-
toric “demise.”

It would seem however
that all such “funeral” ora-
tions over the “corpus dilecti”
of Communism are a bit pre-
mature, as have been the
hundreds of “obsequies” be-
fore and since that event.

I imagine it would be a
very difficult exercise for
anyone to attempt the tabu-
lation of just how many times
Communism in the Soviet
Union and/or elsewhere have
been declared as having “fail-
ed,” “collapsed,” “expired,”
“died and been buried,” etc.,
etc, during the past half-
century, only to return again
and again with double the
vigor before their “inter-
ment.”

It would probably take a
modern computer to tally up

these elements instinctively-

the number of times the la,
Winnie Churchill had th
Soviet Union and its guid
philosophy of the science
Marxism-Leninism dead ay
buried, with all other Cop,
munist parties and mov,
ments dutifully “expiring
with it: A master of th
Shakespearian dramatic, Wi)
nie could sure give commu,
ism an awful trouncing at thy
end of a-heavy day with Joh
Barleycorn. But the Sovig
Union survives, and Winn;
is scarcely a memory.

All of which adds up to,
fundamental lesson  whid
these anti-Soviet “undertak,
ers” in the service of fascism,
reaction and war seem incap
able of learning —viz; thy
there is no future in decryin
a social system, which hg
already in itself become man;
future.

Even the most non-politicd
worker, black, white, brow
or red can tell you there is m
future in anti-communism
anti-Sovietism because it pro
duces nothing except ily
sions, violence, and destruc
tion of all human values —
even life itself.

encrusted establishment, lon
accustomed to “ruling th
roost” in modern capitalis
society, gives up easily or i
likely to abandon its mos
versatile weapon of ant
communism, Far from it; they
merely vary its use between
open naked aggression ané
violence, to that of subtle
conspiracies, counter-revolu:
tion, etc. when ocassion and
necessity arise. The latter
they call “bridge-building’
with its “all-one-happy:
family” illusion, into which
the unwary and unsophisti:
cated are sucked as into t
powerful vacuum cleaner.

“But... but. . . what about
your party?” persisted ou
young Hearst, “didn’t some
leave it?”

Just then I turned up the
radio. It was relating the
dramatic story of two Soviet
space ships and four Soviet
astronauts making a rendez
vous away out there in space
somewhere, scoring another
Soviet “first” on man’s jour
ney to the stars.

“There son, go home ané
write a story about that.
That’s auch more important
than the stale peanuts your |"
boss sent you out after.|)
That’s the Party.” :

Ivan The Terrible) is a new ar-
rival, with an exquisitely beau-
tiful and expressive voice. The
feature part for the children’s
chorus—Our Children—makes
the poignant yet inevitably
buoyant comment:

“What our fathers did not

sing to an end

We will sing through!

What our father did not build

We will construct!”

Then in the concluding “Re-
member!” given by the entire
ensemble, the children’s chorus

- intones:
“People of the world, kill
war!
People of the world, curse
war!” es

And the others add in cont”
sion:

“But them who no more W)

come again ever— {

I beseech you, remember!” :

A comparison was made abit
with Verdi. I believe Kabalét
sky’s Requiem is also of i
parable stature with the Itall#
masterpiece, both in s
music and in profound conte
It generalizes decisive histori@
experience of our time, as ‘
Verdi a century ago for ®
time. Recording and_ perfor
ance are flawless, with the # ©
ded historical value of
under the direction of the cof
poser,

rireseew (To: be: continued)