Kabalevsky, Dmitri Borisovich (1904-1987)

Russian composer and pianist. While he was known in the West for his keyboard and instrumental works, his reputation in the USSR was based upon vocal works, including the opera The Taras Family (1947). Kabalevsky's work mirrored the Soviet authorities' policy of ‘socialist realism’ in his transparent neoclassical style.

As a result, his work is more immediately accessible than that of his contemporaries Prokofiev and Shostakovich, who were frequently criticized by the government. He helped guide the official course of music in the USSR after World War II.

He was born in St Petersburg, and entered the Skriabin School of Music in Moscow when his family settled there in 1918. He studied piano and became a composition pupil first of Sergey Vasilenko and Georgy Catoire, afterwards of Nikolai Myaskovsky. He later became professor of composition there.

Works Stage operas The Golden Spikes, Colas Breugnon (after Romain Rolland's 1938 novel), Before Moscow (1943), and Nikita Vershinin (1955); incidental music for Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, Sheridan's The School for Scandal, and an adaptation of Flaubert's Madame Bovary.

Film music Poem of Struggle, Our Great Fatherland, and People's Avengers for chorus and orchestra.

Orchestral four symphonies (no. 3 Requiem for Lenin); three piano concertos (1931-53), violin concerto, two cello concertos.

Chamber two string quartets (1928, 1945); three sonatas, two sonatinas, and other piano music.

Other Requiem; songs.