Mikhail Gnesin - After The Revolution

After The Revolution

After the Revolution, Gnesin and his music, initially, fared quite well. Traditional Jewish art, including music, flourished during this period, and a Jewish nationalist school of music was encouraged by the new Soviet government. Gnesin produced several works during this period, among them: Songs from the Old Country ( 1919); The Maccabees (1921); The Youth of Abraham (1922); Song of Songs (1922); The Jewish Orchestra at the Ball of the Town Bailiff (1926); Red-Headed Motele (1926- 1929); Ten Jewish Songs (1927).

Pursuing his interest in traditional Jewish music Gnesin traveled to Palestine in 1914, and again, in 1921. During the latter visit he "secluded himself for a few months in the wild mountain scenery of Bab al Wad," where he composed the first act of his opera The Youth of Abraham. He briefly considered immigrating to Palestine, but became "disenchanted" and returned to the Soviet Union.

Author and music critic David Ewen wrote, in Composers Today:

There is fire and madness in this music; the rhythms rush in every direction, like winds in a hurricane. But there is a shimmering background to all this chaos; a poignant voice in all this outburst. One hears in this music the strange pathos of the Hebrews. The same pathos with which Isiah warned his beloved race of a pending and inevitable doom, the same pathos with which Israel thinks about its long exile in unfriendly countries - that same pathos is to be found in Gnessin's operas.

His teaching career also flourished. From 1923 to 1935 Gnesin taught at the Gnessin Institute; he was simultaneously employed as Professor of Composition at the Moscow Conservatory from 1925 to 1936. In 1945 Gnesin became head of the Gnessin Institute.