Im Fluss des Symphonischen

You have to imagine the Soviet or Russian symphony of the 20th century, which has developed in its own way, distinct from Western music, like a treasure chest. A great deal has already been written about the history of Soviet music. Nevertheless, the lid of this treasure chest still seems to have been barely lifted, as countless composers and their works have fallen into oblivion. In an exciting journey full of discoveries, Yoffe traces the history of this individual path with an abundance of work reviews and we become acquainted with wonderful works, some of which are still unheard in the West today.

It is less a musicological investigation than a search for clues through a broad field, which Yoffe deliberately does not undertake systematically and only to a limited extent chronologically in narrative strands, in the form of essays. He leads us on walks through unknown terrain and with each section of the path, a multi-faceted picture gradually emerges like a jigsaw puzzle. Yoffe describes the stories behind the story not without humor, without which neither the absurdity of the respective situation nor its underlying seriousness would be understandable.

As a crossover artist between cultures with a rich knowledge of both Russian and Western musical traditions, Yoffe manages the balancing act of viewing music from both inside and outside.

"Wonderful new book - extremely knowledgeable, multi-layered, profound, surprisingly dense, often amusingly ironic - novel-like, masterfully narrated - a treasure trove of musical inspiration: above all, you can feel the impression of a music that nobody knows (anymore) here and now! You want to hear it, this unheard music! And somehow the musical imagination is stimulated in such a way that something begins to sound tenderly within us: a real Boris Yoffe!" (Norbert Fröhlich)

"Against the background of the usual musicological literature, Yoffe's book stands out positively for its liveliness, contentiousness and readability. The author is not afraid to clearly articulate his own, sometimes very subjective opinions; he neither tries to be smooth in order to avoid possible criticism, nor to express himself in an unnecessarily complicated way in order to feign his competence and scholarly diligence. Above all, he masters the rare ability to write about music - mostly unheard music at that - in an interesting way. Only a small number of the works described in the book are available on recordings today. Nevertheless, reading the book is always exciting, because Yoffe creates images that represent the sound of the music to a certain extent and in many cases make us wish we could actually listen to the works discussed. This is probably the most important merit of the book: it is not just about the history of Soviet music, which is probably largely unknown to the reader. The author's primary intention is to arouse the reader's interest not only in this history, but above all in the music itself... Hardly any other presentation of the subject can boast such a comprehensive breadth. Even those experts who think they know Soviet music will find their many discoveries. Yoffe's monograph, which runs to almost 650 pages, presents a fascinating panorama of the symphonic output of many dozens of composers." (Jascha Nemtsov)

contents

free shipping within Germany