Virtuosi Abroad: Soviet Music and Imperial Competition during the Early Cold War, 1945–1958

277 Pages·2015·1.43 MB·English

by  Kiril Tomoff

VIRTUOSI ABROAD

VIRTUOSI ABROAD
SOVIET MUSIC AND IMPERIAL
COMPETITION DURING THE
EARLY COLD WAR, 1945–1958
Kiril Tomoff
CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS
Ithaca and London
Cornell University Press gratefully acknowledges receipt
of a grant from the Department of History, University of
California, Riverside, which aided in the publication of
this book.
Copyright © 2015 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review,
this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any
form without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage
House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.
First published 2015 by Cornell University Press
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tomoff, Kiril, author.
Virtuosi abroad : Soviet music and imperial competition
during the early Cold War, 1945/1958 / Kiril Tomoff.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8014-5312-0 (cloth : alk. paper)
1.Music and state—Soviet Union—History. 2. Music—
Political aspects—Soviet Union. 3. Cold War—Social
aspects—Soviet Union. 4. Soviet Union—Cultural policy.
5.Soviet Union—Foreign relations—1945–1991. I. Title.
ML3917.R8T66 2015
306.4'8420947—dc23 2015007587
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responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent pos-
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Cloth printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cover photo: Conductor Kirill Petrovich Kondrashin
and pianist Van Kliburn in performance, 1958.
Photograph by Mikhail Ozerskiy. RIA/Novosti.
To Lilia

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. Shostakovich and The Iron Curtain:
Intellectual Property and
Transimperial Integration 20
2. Dueling Pianos: Imperial and
National Dynamics in Postwar Music
Competitions 46
3. From a Musical Holiday to the
Tchaikovsky Competition: Moscow
as a Global Center of Musical Culture 82
4. Oistrakh on Tour, Richter at Home:
Display, Control, and the Style of
Global Empire 114
5. Oistrakh and the Impresario: Soviet
Concert Tours and Systemic
Integration 146
Epilogue 177
Notes 187
Bibliography 241
Index 257

Acknowledgments
I have benefited from intellectual engagement,
research funds, companionship, and friendship from many sources. Without
that support, I could not have written this book. Research in Moscow’s
archives began long before the topic had crystallized. I gathered some mate-
rials while I was still a graduate student supported by a Fulbright-Hays Doc-
toral Dissertation Abroad Fellowship. Subsequent research trips were funded
in part by the Faculty Senate of the University of California, Riverside. My
time in Moscow was made both more comfortable and more interesting
by the logistical support, warmth, and friendship of Elena Drozdova, Leo-
nid Weintraub, Aleksei Balashov, and Alla Ipatova. The research itself was
facilitated by the professionalism and dedication of the entire archival staffs
at RGALI, RGASPI, GARF, and RGANI, but I am particularly indebted
to Galina Albertovna Kuznetsova, Dmitrii Viktorovich Neustroev, and Oleg
Vladimirovich Naumov.
My greatest debt as a historian is to Sheila Fitzpatrick, whose support and
intellectual engagement have continued unabated in ways both large and
small in the years since I left the University of Chicago. Her approach to his-
torical investigation and writing still shapes mine. She read first drafts of all
the chapters in this book, and her supportive, penetrating critiques and advice
helped me immeasurably. Her erudition and generosity also saved me from
committing a blunder in one chapter in particular. My ideas about the inter-
section of the national, the imperial, and the global in the mid-twentieth-
century world were also shaped by conversations with Ronald Grigor Suny
and György Péteri and in engagement with two intellectual communities,
the History Department at the University of California, Riverside (UCR)
and the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard Uni-
versity. My colleagues and graduate students at UCR provided periodic
sounding boards and an extremely supportive environment for research,
for which I am grateful. For their contributions, I am especially indebted
to Catherine Allgor, Lynda Bell, David Biggs, Thomas Cogswell, Jonathan
Eacott, Ann Goldberg, Piotr Gorecki, Alexander Haskell, Randolph Head,
ix