Кино-концерт 1941
About Кино-концерт 1941
Lenfilm’s concert picture is a string of numbers, not a story. Yevgeny Mravinsky leads the Leningrad Philharmonic in Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers from The Nutcracker. Maxim Mikhailov sings Beethoven’s Scottish drinking song, with Pavel Kadochnikov as an uncredited sailor beside him. Emil Gilels and Yakov Flier play Albéniz’s Navarra. Galina Ulanova dances Saint-Saëns’s The Dying Swan. Lidiya Ruslanova sings “And Who Knows,” Sergei Lemeshev the Duke’s ballad and song from Verdi’s Rigoletto, and the Kirov ballet closes with a scene from Solovyov-Sedoi’s Taras Bulba, Vakhtang Chabukiani as Andriy.
Cast & crew
More about Кино-концерт 1941
Six directors share the credit: Isaak Menaker, Adolf Minkin, Herbert Rappaport, Semyon Timoshenko, Mikhail Tsekhanovsky, and Mikhail Shapiro. Arkady Koltsaty and Veniamin Levitin photographed it. Dmitri Astradantsev and Boris Pyles arranged the music. The Soviet premiere was 16 June 1941. A program timing of the surviving reel is 47 minutes 14 seconds.
Themes
Making
The reel was already on screens on 16 June 1941. Germany invaded the Soviet Union six days later, on 22 June.
Look
Arkady Koltsaty and Veniamin Levitin filmed the orchestra, the soloists, and the Kirov ballet excerpt in black and white.
Music
The pieces are the performers’ own repertory, not a single composed score: Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Albéniz, Saint-Saëns, Verdi, and Solovyov-Sedoi’s Taras Bulba, plus Ruslanova’s song and the Pokrass jazz band. Astradantsev and Pyles are credited for the musical arrangement.
Preservation
A black-and-white print of about 49 minutes survives.
Notes
- The railway jazz band of the Central House of the Red Army Railwaymen is led by Dmitri Pokrass, with Daniil Pokrass as music director. Mikhail Kharitonov and Nikolai Tiberg, variety-contest laureates, appear with them.
- Tatyana Oppenheim dances a gypsy number.
- In Taras Bulba, Mikhail Dudko is Taras and Sergei Koren is Ostap. Fyodor Lopukhov staged the ballet; I. K. Kovtunov is credited as director of that number.
- Nina Latonina is an uncredited girl in Ruslanova’s song.
- Menaker is also listed among the writers on the old Russian cinema encyclopedia card.
Scenes
- Mravinsky conducts the Waltz of the Flowers.
- Ulanova dances The Dying Swan.
- Gilels and Flier play Navarra as a piano duet.
- Lemeshev sings the Duke from Rigoletto.
- Chabukiani dances Andriy in the Taras Bulba excerpt.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Киноконцерт 1941 года.webm)
