Георгий Свиридов

Georgy Sviridov (Георгий Васильевич Свиридов, Georgij Vasil'evič Svirídov) (December 16, 1915 – January 5, 1998) was a Russian and Soviet neoromantic composer. In 1935 Sviridov composed a cycle of lyrical romances based on the poetry of Alexander Pushkin, which first brought him critical acclaim. During his studies in Leningrad Conservatory, 1936–1941, Sviridov experimented with different genres and different types of musical composition. He completed his Piano Concerto No. 1 (1936 – 1939), Symphony No. 1 and Chamber Symphony for Strings (1940). Later, Sviridov would turn to the rich Russian musical heritage, including the folk songs, for inspiration. Among Sviridov's most popular orchestral pieces are the Romance and the Waltz from his The Blizzard, musical illustrations after Pushkin (1975), that were originally written for the eponymous 1964 film based on the short story from Pushkin's The Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin. A short segment from his score for the 1967 film Time, Forward! (Время, вперёд!) was selected as the opening theme for the main evening TV news program Vremya (Время, 'time') and became the staple of Soviet life for several generations. Poetry always occupied an important place in Sviridov's artistic universe. He wrote songs and romances to the lyrics of Mikhail Lermontov (1938, 1957), Alexander Blok (1941), William Shakespeare (1944–1960), and Robert Burns (in Russian translation, 1955). Despite the popularity of Sviridov's instrumental works, both the composer himself and the music critics regarded vocal and choral music to be his main strengths. Pathetic Oratorio (1959) after Vladimir Mayakovsky has been called a masterful musical rendering of one of the most popular Russian poets of Revolution and early Soviet time. Sviridov's prolific vocal chamber and vocal symphonic output includes Oratorio to the memory of Sergei Yesenin (1956), Little Cantata Wooden Russia (1964) after Yesenin, Cantata Songs of Kursk (1964), Spring Cantata (1972) after Nikolai Nekrasov, songs, romances, and cantatas after Fyodor Tyutchev, Sergei Yesenin, Alexander Blok, Boris Pasternak, Alexander Prokofiev, Robert Rozhdestvensky. He also wrote one opera, Twinkling Lights (1951). While Sviridov's music remains little known in the West, his works received high praise in his homeland for their memorable lyrical melodies and national flavor. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.