The Tale of the Priest and the Worker of His Balde (cartoon, 1936)

The cartoon "The Tale of the Priest and His Worker Balda" based on the fairy tale by A. S. Pushkin was to be the first full-length film by Tsekhanovsky and the fifth film written by Dmitry Shostakovich ^[1] . Work on the film began in 1933, Shostakovich wrote part of the score in 1933-1934, in November 1934 the composer wrote "A lot of sharp, hyperbolic positions, grotesque characters ... Writing music is easy and fun" ^[2] . In 1936, Shostakovich was forced to stop work after the appearance of the article " Muddle instead of music ", criticizing the "formalism" in the works of the composer ^[3] . Organizational problems also occurred at the film studios, and the mechanically interconnected movements of black and white characters seemed critics to contradict the “high style of Pushkin's tale” ^[1] . In the end, the animation for the film was shot almost completely, and deposited in the Lenfilm archive, where it was destroyed in a fire caused by the bombing of Leningrad at the beginning of World War II in 1941 ^[2] . Tsekhanovsky in his diaries called the fate of the painting a “catastrophe” ^[4] .

The only remaining fragment of the film is the six-minute “Bazar” scene, the sound track includes the music of Shostakovich with vocals on the verses of the poet Obariut Alexander Vvedensky ^[3] . Among the goods sold at the bazaar are food, animals, toys, and pornographic postcards that parody the early works of Boris Kustodiev, a friend of Shostakovich ^[1] .

First performance

The first performance of "Tales" took place on January 22, 1934, on the same day the opera " Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" was performed for the first time ^[5]

In 1979, a six-part suite of cartoon music based on the unpublished manuscripts of Shostakovich was made by G.N. Christmas In December of the same year, he recorded it with the USSR State Orchestra ^[6] . The first stage production (“reconstruction” edited by the famous Soviet researcher Shostakovich S. Khentova and conductor VV Kozhin ) was performed at the Maly Theater of Opera and Ballet (Leningrad) in 1982. The audio recording of this edition with the orchestra conducted by Kozhin dates from 1983 ^[7] . In 2005, the editorial board of “Tales” was carried out by Shostakovich’s pupil V. D. Bibergan ^{[2] [8]} , who not only edited (including orchestrated) parts preserved in the clavier, but also added his own music, guided by the sketches. The audio recording of “Tales” edited by Bibergan (with the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by T. Zanderling ) was published in 2006 ^{[9] [ clarify ]} . The Tales score as edited by Bibergan was published in 2005 by DSCH Publishers in Volume 126 of the New Collected Works of Dmitry Shostakovich ^[10] .

Preserved and restored parts

The score of some parts was found as the composer's original autograph, or as a rewritten copy of the original; eleven others were found only in the form of a rough draft with missing lots and were restored by Vadim Bibergan. ^{[8] [10] [11] [12]}

• "The Tale of the Priest and His Worker Balda" on the site "Encyclopedia of Russian Cinema"
• "The Tale of the Priest and the Worker of His Balde" in animator.ru
• Comments [Manashira Yakubova] on the entry “The Tale of the Priest and His Worker, Balda” of the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor Thomas Sanderling ( Deutsche Gramophone B0006507-02)
• The surviving part of the film on Vimeo with English subtitles