Tsfasman's 'Jazz Suite'

Synopsis

Today’s date in 1906 marks the birthday of Alexander Naumovich Tsfasman, a Ukrainian composer from pre-revolutionary Tsarist Russia who would become an important figure in Soviet jazz.

Jazz first came to the Soviet Union in 1922, four years after Lenin’s Bolshevik Revolution, and at first was welcomed as the music of the oppressed African-American minority, and therefore considered an expression of the worldwide class struggle. Tsfasman encountered jazz while still a student at the Moscow Conservatory and formed his own jazz band in 1926, the first to be heard on Soviet radio. In the decades that followed, Tsfasman made over 140 records, composed music for films, and gave concerts during WWII for Red Army soldiers.

But after 1945, jazz fell out of favor in the USSR. During the Cold War, it came to be seen as a prime export of the decadent bourgeois West and performances were limited. “Today he plays jazz, tomorrow he’ll betray his country” was a widespread propaganda slogan in the Stalinist post-war USSR. Only in the 1960s did attitudes change, and we’re happy to report Alexander Tsfasman lived to see it before his death in 1971.

This music is from his Jazz Suite for piano and orchestra.

Music Played in Today's Program

Alexander Tsfasman (1906-1971): Snowflakes and Polka (excerpts), from Jazz Suite;
Zlata Chochieva, piano; BBC Scottish Symphony; Karl-Heinz Steffens, conductor; Naïve V-8448

On This Day

Births

• 1873 - Belgian composer and organist Joseph Jongen, in Liège

• 1929 - American composer Ron Nelson, in Joliet, Illinois

Deaths

• 1788 - German composer Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, 74, in Hamburg

• 1861 - German opera composer Heinrich Marschner, 66, in Hanover

Premieres

• 1918 - Puccini: one-act opera trilogy Il Trittico (Il Tabarro, Suor Angelico, and Gianni Schicchi) at the Metropolitan Opera in New York

• 1924 - Respighi: tone poem, The Pines of Rome, in Rome, at the Augusteo, Bernardo Molinari conducting

• 1925 - Berg: opera, Wozzeck, in Berlin, at the Staatsoper, with Erich Kleiber conducting

• 1936 - Barber: String Quartet, at the Villa Aurelia in Rome (Italy), by the Pro Arte Quartet

• 1969 - Ligeti: String Quartet No. 2, in Baden-Baden, Germany, by the LaSalle Quartet

• 1975 - Ruth Crawford Seeger: Suite for Piano and Woodwind Quintet, in Cambridge, Mass.

• 1983 - George Perle: Serenade No. 3 for Piano and Chamber Orchestra,in New York City, by Richard Goode and the Music Today Ensemble conducted by Gerard Schwarz

• 1997 - Morten Lauridsen: Ave Maria for a cappella chorus, by the Los Angeles Master Chorale, Paul Salamunovich conducting

• 1997 - Joan Tower: Rain Waves, at the Frick Museum in New York, by the Verdehr Trio