Music: Hurry Up, Shosty

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For two years Dmitri Shostakovich had been trying to "reconstruct" his composing to make his music fall more sweetly on the Kremlin ear. It seemed that was not enough. Last week he was told how fast he should compose. Complained the Soviet Composers Union in Pravda: Shostakovich had not worked hard enough to finish his new opera on the 1917 Russian Revolution, October. While comradely criticisms were being passed around, piped Pravda, the Composers Union had shown too much "complacency" about the whole matter itself.

In Czechoslovakia, musical reconstruction was booming. Program features of the Slovak Philharmonic last week: Cantata on the Communist Party, Cantata on [Communist Premier Klemenf] Gottwald, Toast to Stalin.