Dmitri Kabalevsky

Dmitri Kabalevsky studied at the Moscow Conservatoire under Nikolai Miaskovsky and throughout his career negotiated a careful artistic path through the demands and very real perils of life as a composer in the totalitarian USSR. His melodic gift certainly helped, and as a leading figure in the Union of Soviet Composers, he narrowly avoided the political denunciations that blighted Shostakovich and Prokofiev's careers in 1948. His own music benefitted from a fluency and a piquant sense of colour that meant that he was able to meet the demands of "socialist realist" artistic doctrine without compromising his personal voice, and although he worked in all major classical forms – producing four symphonies and two string quartets as well as operas, a ballet, cantatas and film music – his most enduring successes, in both Russia and the wider world, have been pieces that show the lighter side of his musical personality. His Suite The Comedians (1940) and the zingy overture to his 1938 opera Colas Breugnon are both favourites, as are the spirited concertos for violin, cello (No.1), and piano (No.3) that he composed between 1948 and 1952 specifically for young soloists: works of fresh melodic appeal spiced with Kabalevsky's own brisk (but never cruel) musical wit.