Mozart's Attic Thursday Oct 12th at 10:00 PM

By Jay Lamy (Jayski)

Published October 10, 2017 at 9:55 AM EDT

Near the denouement of the Cold War, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev announced a cultural thaw, allowing some degree of freedom of expression among artists and writers. Yevgeny Yevtushenko responded with his poem, Babi Yar, lambasting the regime's distortion of the story of the World War II massacre in Ukraine, as well as a continuing and pervasive Russian anti-Semitism thereafter.

Dmitri Shostakovich then set Babi Yar to music, along with four other scathing Yevtushenko poems, and premiered the work as his Symphony No. 13 in 1962. This was more than Khrushchev had bargained for, and Kremlin authorities were not pleased.

Long suppressed in the Eastern bloc. the Babi Yar Symphony is our featured work this Thursday.

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Mozart's Attic Classical Music

Jay Lamy (Jayski)

Originally from central Massachusetts, Jay has called the Space Coast home for more than 30 years. He began his association with WFIT in the late '90s as a dumpster diver for office furniture in response to a broadcast plea for a new chair from a frustrated disc jockey. (WFIT has come a long way since.)

See stories by Jay Lamy (Jayski)