Across Boundaries: Discovering Russia 1910 - 1940 Vol. 3

The history of the 20th century was shaped to an extreme degree by ideological, political and racial barriers that hindered the arts from developing freely. Many artists were forced to emigrate, while others perished in death camps. Those who remained and survived were often cut off from the outside world, forced to adjust, or were silenced into submission. And this was by no means restricted to individual names: entire groups of artists and genres of art were eradicated and are no longer present in cultural life. With its series “Across Boundaries – Discovering Russia 1910–1940,” eda records seeks to bridge one such a gap in music history. It presents world premiere recordings of works by Russian composers who were part of the generation of Prokofiev and Shostakovich and who made major contributions to Russian music in the 1910s and 1920s. The reason why they were banished and suppressed: their Jewish ethnic background and refusal to accept the dictated “socialist realism.”

While the first two volumes of the “Across Boundaries” series were either dedicated to formal aspects (eda 12) or religious and social sources of inspiration (eda 14), Volume 3 gathers a wide spectrum of genres and aesthetic approaches, highlighting not only the influence that composers from the Baroque to late romanticism had on the Russian Jewish avant-garde, but also Jewish and Latin America folk music traditions as well as aspects of modern popular music. “Waiting Room,” the motto of the third volume of the series, refers to the lasting situation of this group of composers waiting for their music to gain recognition and posthumous appreciation.