DCV. SHOSTAKOVICH, Dmitri: Odna, Op. 26

DCV. SHOSTAKOVICH, Dmitri (1906-1975)

Odna (1931)
1. The Beginning (Overture)
Reel 1: Kuzmina in Leningrad
2. Kuzmina wakes
3. Song "Konchen, Konchen tekhnikum"
4. Morning exercises
5. March "The Street"
6. Barrel-Organ. Kuzmina waits for Sobolevsky
7. Galop and song. "How Good Life will Be!"
8. March
9. (Original) Introduction; the crockery sings "Stay!"
Reel 2: Kuzmina enlists as a teacher: her decisions and conflicts
10. Office typewriters
11. A young girl signs up
12. Music from loudspeakers during telephone box scene
13. Kuzmina starts to sign up
14. March
15. Barrel-Organ
16. The old janitor flirts with her
Reel 3: Kuzmina arrives "alone" in the Altai Steppes
17. Overtone singer
18. The steppe of the Altai
19. The Altai (Kuzmina arrives as the locals look on)
20. She meets the village chairman and some of the locals
21. Kuzmina in her peasant's hut
22. Kuzmina takes courage
Reel 4: Kuzmina starts teaching the local children
23. Introduction
24. The school class
25. The Bai selects the children to tend the sheep
26. Kuzmina is struck as she protests
27. The village chairman's wife sings a lullaby to her baby
28. Kuzmina sees the wife's crockery and reminisces
29. The village Soviet chairman waking up
30. Kuzmina confronts the village chairman
31. The village chairman drinks tea with his wife
Reel 5: Kuzmina teaches in the open air while the sheep are being tended
32. The children play and dance with her
33. The Bai and the sheep trader, a sheep is slaughtered
34. Kuzmina protests
35. The Bai shouts back at her
36. The locals conspire to murder Kuzmina as she goes to report them
Reel 6: Attempted murder of Kuzmina as she is abandoned in the snow
37. Kuzmina on her way to the next town
38. A snowstorm starts to build
39. Snowstorm
Kuzmina almost freezes to death
40. Largo
41. Largo
Reel 7: Kuzmina's rescue by aeroplane
42. The village chairman meets with the locals
43. Kuzmina close to death in bed
44. The village chairman and meeting
45. The children come to comfort Kuzmina
46. The locals express themselves violently
47. The aeroplane from Moscow arrives to rescue "the teacher"
Irina Mataeva, soprano
Anna Kiknadze, mezzo-soprano
Dmitry Voropaev, tenor
Ulrich Edelmann, violin (12)
Mark van Tongeren, throat singer (17)
Barbara Buchholz, theremin (38)
Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra
Mark Fitz-Gerald, cond.
(1:19:56)

Painstakingly reconstructed by Fitz-Gerald, the score to Odna ("Alone"). This was to be the Soviet Union's first sound film -- but the synchronized sound was heard in only the very few theatres which were equipped for sound.

**

Kuzmina -- a Leningrad lass -- is looking forward to settling down with her fiancée, when she is assigned to work in the Altai on the Mongolian border. She is disrupted when the children she teaches are made to tend sheep, though they are enjoying school. She protests, the locals try to murder her, and she nearly dies in a snowdrift, until an airplane from Moscow comes to rescue her.

**

The score is filled with marvelous ingenuities, like the writing for barrel-organ, theremin and throat singer!

**

3. (soprano)

I just finished college, my studies are over
Now I live at the top of a big skyscraper
In the skyscraper there are five floors
In each floor there is a shop Tezhe shop
I clean my teeth with the powder from Tezhe
I comb my hair, and my lips look fresh without any lipstick!

I still have to deliver two reports
I must read Plekhanov again
Forty-eighth volume
House, house, house, all around me is house
And in that house -- a well-known fact -- lives Zhakt
Zhakt, Zhakt, Zhakt! philosopher Zhakt!
Very well!

7. 16. 28. (tenor)

How good life will be!
How good life will be!
What a life!
What a life!
How good life will be!
How good life will be!

9. (chorus, soprano, tenor)

Stay, stay, stay!

27. (mezzo-soprano)

Dear child, sweet child!
What is your husband's name?
Sidor, Sidor, father.
Sidor, Sidor, my dear.

Dear child, sweet child!
How many children do you have?
Seven, seven, father!
Seven, seven, my dear!

43. (mezzo-soprano)

Dear child, oh sweet child!
How many children do you have?
Seven, seven, father!
Seven, seven, my dear!