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Symphony No. 2 by Rachmaninov – the composer some Bolsheviks tried to ban

Sergei Rachmaninov had been a popular composer in Russia before WW1, but he’d left Russia after the Revolution.

In the highly politicised atmosphere of the late 1920s and early 1930s, the ideological group known as the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians advocated banning Rachmaninov’s music, for being bourgeois and decadent – and so an enemy of class struggle. The ban never happened, but that it was even suggested seems extraordinary today.

Duration:

3 minutes

Credits

Role Contributor
Orchestra 91Èȱ¬ National Orchestra of Wales
Conductor Otto Tausk