Klimenty Arkad'yevich Korchmaryov (1899 - 1958)

Pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov, teacher, pianist and music critic, Klimenty Korchmaryov (also transliterated as Korchmarev) was another composer whom music history has written off completely, in this case probably for his excessive dedication to the Communist cause. Such works include his opera Ten Days That Shook the World (1929–31), the Stalin Prize-winner cantata Free China (1950) and his Lullaby (1924) with his reassuring whispered words ‘Under the Kremlin wall there’s a big mausoleum / There Ilich [Lenin] lies in his coffin, guarding the world’s happiness.’ His American foxtrot is probably his only score published in the West (by Universal Edition), and opens with a piano trill leading to an ascending scale (from piano to forte) so clearly reminiscent of the first bar of Gershwin’s ground-breaking Rhapsody in Blue.

Mauro Piccinini