Dmitri ShostaRovich’s Thirteenth Symphony, setting to music the poem “Babi Yar, “Yevgency Yevtushenko’s protest against anti-Semitism, was played in the Moscow Conservatory’s great hall last night to a tumultuous ovation, after being banned for three years, the Washington Post reported today.
Post correspondent Stephen S. Rosenfeld, in an account of the rendition dedicatee to the Jewish victims buried in a mass grave at Babi Yar, in Kiev, said “A great ovation-half elation, half electricity–greeted the first public performance” of the symphony since Nikita Khrushchev forbade its playing nearly three years ago. When the work was first rendered in 1962, Khrushchev, in banning it, condemned both the symphony and Yevtushenko’s “over concern” for Jews.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
