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Global Arts Festival Sheds Light on Stalinist-Era Art
February 6, 2014
The Stalinist-era music and art experienced and examined at Chapman University on Monday evening was created under a sinister cloud. But it received a bright and honest handling at the keynote event for “Decoding Shostakovich,” the weeklong Global Arts Festival celebrating the life and work of the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich.
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Gathered after the keynote event of the Global Arts Festival are, from left, acclaimed pianist Alexander Toradze, Shostakovich biographer Solomon Volkov, Joseph Horowitz, artistic adviser to Pacific Symphony, Chancellor Daniele Struppa, Professor Robert Becker, and John Forsyte, president of Pacific Symphony.
“The tragedy of that just fills me with every second I play this. You can’t hurry through this,” he said.
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Leading the creation of the art exhibition at the Global Arts Festival reception were (l-r) Mark Konecny, Ph.D., associate director at the Institute of Modern Russian Culture at USC; Jeri Ferris, benefactor of the Ferris Collection at USC; Amy Graziano, Ph.D., associate professor and chair of the Hall-Musco Conservatory of Music; Wendy Salmond, Ph.D., professor in the Department of art; and John Bowlt, Ph.D., director of the Institute of Modern Russian Culture at USC.
“While these objects are together they create reverberations and chains of ideas that one can think about and relate across the campus, and in our case today to the music that we’ve just heard. So in putting together this little show of Stalinist memorabilia it’s been an effort to capture some of those lost reverberations that are there in the music and to try and do honor to the complexity of Shostakovich’s life and legacy, and really to all other Russians who lived through the same period and the same experience,” Salmond said.
The Chapman Global Arts Festival is a project of the Global Arts Program, made possible by the Kay Family Foundation. Each year the festival will explore issues of identity, community and global citizenship through the arts. Global Arts Festival events continue through Saturday, Feb. 8, and the exhibition will remain on view in Doy and Dee Henley Galleria of Argyros Forum through May 24.