Dmitri Kabalevsky
Dmitri Kabalevsky was born in St. Petersburg on December 30, 1904, and received his musical training in Moscow, at the Scriabin Music School and the Moscow Conservatory. He was graduated from the latter school in 1929, and in 1932 he was appointed instructor there. His first success as composer came in 1931 with his first symphony, commemorating the fifteenth anniversary of the Russian revolution; this was followed in 1934 by his second symphony, which enjoyed an even greater triumph both in and out of the Soviet Union. In 1939 Kabalevsky was elected a member of the Presidium of the Organizing Committee of the Union of Soviet Composers; in 1940 he was given the Order of Merit; and in 1946 he received the Stalin Prize for the second string quartet. He has also written operas, concertos, additional symphonies, and piano music.
A composer who has always been partial to the more conventional means and techniques, and has relied heavily on broad and stately melodies and subjective feelings, Kabalevsky has managed to produce several compositions that have wide appeal. One is the sprightly Colas Breugnon Overture. Colas Breugnon was an opera adapted by V. Bragin from a novel by Romain Rolland; it was first performed in Leningrad on February 22, 1938. The central character is a 16th-century craftsman—a jovial man who enjoys life and has a spicy sense of humor and a happy outlook on all things. The overture is essentially a study of that man, consistently gay and sprightly. There are two main melodies, both of them lively, and both derived from Burgundian folk songs.
Another popular work by Kabalevsky is The Comedians, op. 26 (1938), an orchestral suite made up of selections from the incidental music to a children’s play, The Inventor and the Comedians. The play is about the varied and picaresque adventures of a group of wandering performers in various towns and at public fairs. There are ten episodes in the suite, each in a light, infectious style that makes for such easy listening that this work is often given at children’s concerts. The ten sections are: Prologue, Galop, March, Waltz, Pantomime, Intermezzo, Little Lyrical Scene, Gavotte, Scherzo, and Epilogue.