Program Notes PDF - The Grant Park Music Festival

GrantParkMusicFestival 

Seventy-fifth Season 

Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus 

Carlos Kalmar, Principal Conductor 

Christopher Bell, Chorus Director 

Second Program: Bernstein on the Waterfront 

Friday, June 12, 2009 at 5:30 p.m. 

Jay Pritzker Pavilion 

Grant Park orchestra and chorus 

Carlos Kalmar, Conductor 

Christopher Bell, Chorus Director 

John Horton Murray, Tenor 

Denis Sedov, Bass 

Chicago Children’s Chorus, Josephine Lee, Artistic Director 

KERNIS 

BERNSTEIN 

SHOSTAKOVICH 

Too Hot Toccata 

Symphonic Suite from On the Waterfront 

The Song of the Forests for Tenor, Bass, 

Children’s Chorus, Mixed Choir and Orchestra, Op. 81 

When the War Was Over (Bass, Men’s Chorus) 

The Call Rings Throughout the Land (Mixed Chorus) 

Memory of the Past (Bass, Mixed Chorus) — 

The Pioneers Plant the Forest (Children’s Chorus) — 

The Young Communists Forge Onwards (Mixed Chorus) 

A Walk Into the Future (Tenor, Mixed Chorus) 

Glory (Bass, Tenor, Mixed Chorus, Children’s Chorus) 

John Horton Murray 

Denis Sedov 

Program Notes A17

Friday, June 12, 2009 

carlos kalmar’s biography can be found on page A2. 

Christopher Bell’s biography can be found on page A3. 

GRANT PARK MUSIC FESTIVAL 

Hailed by Opera Now for his “believably heroic figure with a gleaming 

ring at the top of his vocal register,” John Horton Murray has 

recently added several new roles to his repertoire at the Nationaltheater 

Mannheim where his performances included the title roles in Lohengrin, 

Parsifal, and Otello, Jason in Medée, Alvaro in La forza del destino, Kaiser in 

Die Frau ohne Schatten, Max in Der Freischütz, Siegmund in Die Walküre, 

Sergei in Lady Macbeth von Mtsensk, and Canio in Pagliacci. Highlights of 

his engagements in America include The Metropolitan Opera, Seattle 

Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Utah Opera, Tulsa Opera, Santa Fe 

Opera, New York City Opera, Houston Grand Opera and Opera Company of Philadelphia. 

Among his many international engagements are performances at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, 

the Frankfurt Opera, the Royal Opera at Covent Garden, the Scottish Opera, Opera North 

Ireland, the Gran Teatre del Liceu, Teatro alla Scala. On the concert stage, John Horton 

Murray recently performed at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Vancouver Symphony 

Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Kansas City, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, 

the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Colorado Symphony and 

the San Francisco Symphony. A frequent guest at festivals around the world, the tenor has 

been featured at the Spoleto Festival, Antiken Fesitval, Bard Music Festival, the Baden-Baden 

Festival and the Bellingham Festival. Mr. Murray has recorded on numerous labels including 

Naxos, London, Decca and Sony. 

Opera News hails Denis Sedov as “tall and commanding, gifted 

with a splendid physique and a bass to match” and his ability to “seduce 

with his voice as well as with his presence.” His engagements in the 

2008-09 season include Washington National Opera, Al Ayre Español, 

the Grant Park Music Festival and the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico. 

In future seasons, he returns to the Cincinnati, Atlanta and Vancouver 

Symphonies and the Atlanta Opera. In the 2007-08 season he sang with 

Seattle Opera, L’Opera de Montreal, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, 

and Quebec Symphony, as well as with L’Orchestre de Paris. Mr. 

Sedov’s recent international engagements include his debut with the Royal Opera House 

at Covent Garden, Teatro alla Scala and the Paris Opera. He made his Metropolitan Opera 

debut as Colline in La Bohème after having been one of very few non-American singers ever 

invited to join the company’s prestigious Lindemann Young Artist Development program. 

Mr. Sedov is also a frequent guest of the world’s most noted summer festivals, such as the 

Aix-en-Provence Festival, Italy’s Spoleto Festival and the Aspen Music Festival. Mr. Sedov is 

also an equally engaging concert performer, having performed at the winter Olympics in Japan 

in 1998, the Spoleto Festival, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony and Israel 

Philharmonic Orchestra. Many of Mr. Sedov’s recordings may be found on the Deutsche 

Grammophon label. 


GRANT PARK MUSIC FESTIVAL Friday, June 12, 2009 

Founded in 1956, Chicago Children’s Choir is a 

multiracial, multicultural choral music education organization, shaping 

the future by making a difference in the lives of children and youth 

through musical excellence. The Choir currently serves 2,800 children, 

ages 8-18 through choirs in 45 schools, after-school programs in 8 

Chicago neighborhoods and the internationally acclaimed Concert 

Choir. Under Artistic Director Josephine Lee, the Choir has 

undertaken many highly successful national and international tours, 

received an Emmy Award for the 2008 documentary Songs on the Road to Freedom, and has 

been featured in nationally broadcast television and radio performances, including PBS’s From 

the Top: Live from Carnegie Hall. Today’s performance features treble voices selected from the 

Concert Choir and Neighborhood Choirs. As a national and international touring ensemble, 

the Choir has performed throughout the United States, Europe, South Africa, South Korea, 

Japan and Canada, and for such dignitaries as 

former President and Senator Clinton, former 

South African President Nelson Mandela, the 

Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 

International and United States Olympic 

Committees and Mayor Richard M. Daley. 

The Choir has also performed with or for 

such celebrities as Luciano Pavarotti, Quincy 

Jones, Enrique Iglesias, Celine Dion, Denyce 

Graves, Samuel Ramey, Bobby McFerrin, Sweet Honey In The Rock and Ladysmith Black 

Mambazo, and collaborates regularly with Lyric Opera of Chicago, Chicago Symphony 

Orchestra, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Joffrey Ballet, River North Chicago Dance 

Company, Millennium Park, Ravinia Festival and Grant Park Music Festival. The Choir has 

three studio-recordings available from Amazon.com, iTunes and www.ccchoir.org. 

Born in Chicago, Josephine Lee is a classically trained pianist, 

conductor and producer. Appointed in 1999, Ms. Lee is the youngest 

Artistic Director in the history of Chicago Children’s Choir. Under 

her direction, the Choir tours nationally and internationally, and 

collaborates regularly with renowned choral, orchestral, opera, theatre 

and dance organizations. In April, she led the Choir in concert at 

the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. with Denyce Graves and 

Sweet Honey In The Rock, honoring the 70th Anniversary of Marian 

Anderson’s historic concert at that site. In 2007, she was the music 

director for cultural programming featuring the Chicago Children’s Choir surrounding the 

Dalai Lama’s public appearance at Millennium Park. Ms. Lee has received numerous honors 

including the 2008 3Arts Artist Award and was named a 2006 “Chicagoan of the Year in 

the Arts” by the Chicago Tribune. In 2002, Chorus America named Ms. Lee the first Robert 

Shaw Conducting Fellow, recognizing outstanding, emerging conductors who will exemplify 

the highest standards of choral performance. In 2007, she was honored as a Distinguished 

Musician by The Union League Club of Chicago. Ms. Lee has conducted and performed 

concerts and master classes in Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, South Korea, Thailand, 

Canada and Japan, in addition to conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Lyric Opera 

Orchestra, Grant Park and Oregon symphony orchestras. She received her bachelor’s degree 

in piano performance from DePaul University studying with Dmitry Paperno, as well as a 

master’s degree in conducting from Northwestern University. 

A20 Program Notes



Too Hot Toccata (1996) 

Aaron Jay Kernis (born in 1960) 

Kernis’s Too Hot Toccata is scored for timpani, piccolo, flute, two oboes, eb clarinet, 

clarinet, bass clarinet, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, percussion, piano and 

strings. The performance time is six minutes. The Grant Park Orchestra first performed 

the Toccata on June 29, 2007, Carlos Kalmar conducting. 

“I want to write music that is visceral, that is moving, and that is impeccably 

put together. I don’t want classical music to be a passive experience. 

I want it to have as much impact as the best rock concerts.” Aaron Jay Kernis, who distilled 

the essence of his art in these words, is very much a composer for the turn of the millennium 

— eclectic, brazen, exuberant, aggressive, plugged-in. “I want everything to be included in music,” 

he says, “soaring melody, consonance, tension, dissonance, drive, relaxation, color, strong harmony 

and form — and for every possible emotion to be elicited actively by the passionate use of these 

elements.” Passion, laced with chutzpah, marked his earliest recognition by the music world: when 

Jacob Druckman, his teacher at Yale and then Composer-in-Residence with the New York Philharmonic, 

scheduled an open reading of Kernis’ Dream of the Morning Sky at the Philharmonic’s 

Horizons Festival of new music in June 1983, Kernis vigorously defended his handling of the 

orchestra after the conductor, Zubin Mehta, criticized it from the podium. Audience and critics 

were won over, and Kernis was news. 

Aaron Jay Kernis was born in Philadelphia on January 15, 1960, and started teaching himself 

piano and violin at age twelve; he began composing soon thereafter. He took his professional 

training at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (with John Adams), the Manhattan School 

of Music (Elias Tanenbaum and Charles Wuorinen), Yale (Morton Subotnik, Bernard Rands and, 

principally, Jacob Druckman) and the American Academy in Rome; he was appointed to the faculty 

of the Yale School of Music in 2003. Since his coming-out with Dream of the Morning Sky at the New 

York Philharmonic concert in 1983, Kernis has created an impressive catalog: significant scores for 

orchestra (three symphonies, New Era Dance, Invisible Mosaic III, Musica Celestis, a double concerto 

for guitar and violin, a concerto for English horn titled Colored Field); numerous compositions for 

varied chamber ensembles; pieces for piano, organ and accordion; and many works for solo voices 

and for chorus. He was Composer-in-Residence with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra from 1993 

to 1996; he began a similar post with the Minnesota Orchestra in September 1998. In 1998, Kernis 

won the Pulitzer Prize for his String Quartet No. 2, “Musica Instrumentalis”; his most recent 

recognition is the University of Louisville’s prestigious Grawemeyer Award for 2002 for the cello 

concerto Colored Field. Among his other distinctions are the Stoeger Prize from the Chamber Music 

Society of Lincoln Center, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rome Prize, a grant from the National 

Endowment for the Arts, a Bearns Prize, a New York Foundation for the Arts Award, a Tippett 

Award, an Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and awards from 

BMI and ASCAP, as well as commissions from the New York Philharmonic, Baltimore Symphony, 

St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Aspen 

Music Festival, the Koussevitzky, Naumburg and Fromm foundations, American Public Radio and 

others. He fulfilled commissions for works for two significant occasions in the year 2000: one for 

the centennial celebrations of the Philadelphia Orchestra; the other, from Michael Eisner and the 

Disney Corporation, observing the arrival of the new millennium. In February 2000, his “permanently 

installed ambient music” for the Rose Center for Earth and Space at New York’s Museum 

of Natural History, titled Cosmic Cycle, was first heard. In 1995, Kernis signed an exclusive recording 

contract with Decca/London, which has released several highly acclaimed albums of his music. His 

recent works include Color Wheel, commissioned for the Philadelphia Orchestra’s opening concert 

at the new Kimmel Center on December 15, 2001. Kernis’ current commissions include works for 

his residency with the Minnesota Orchestra, a toy piano concerto for Margaret Leng Tan, and a 

new opera for Santa Fe Opera. 

Too Hot Toccata, written in 1996 to mark the end of Kernis’ residency with the St. Paul Chamber 

Orchestra, is a brilliant reworking of the finale of his Double Concerto for Violin, Guitar and 



Orchestra, jointly commissioned by that ensemble, the Aspen Music Festival and the Los Angeles 

Chamber Orchestra for Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and Sharon Isbin. The toccata is an old keyboard 

form meant to show off the skill of the performer — the Italian word “toccare” means “to touch” the 

keys in a virtuosic fashion — and Kernis said that his Too Hot Toccata “features just about all of the 

principal players and treats all of the various orchestral sections as soloists. There is also a horribly 

difficult honky-tonk piano solo, as well as a fiendish clarinet solo and a big part for the piccolo 

trumpet, in addition to a lot of virtuoso percussion writing. The music is a little hyperactive — very 

high-energy and quite out-of-control, but with a slower middle section for balance.” 

A22 Program Notes 

Symphonic Suite from On the Waterfront (1954) 

Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) 

Bernstein’s Suite from On the Waterfront is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, 

E-flat clarinet, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, alto saxophone, 

four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, two timpani, percussion, harp, 

piano and strings. The performance time is 23 minutes. The Grant Park Orchestra 

first performed the Suite on July 1, 1967, Samuel Krachmalnick conducting. 

By early 1954, when Hollywood producer Sam Spiegel first approached 

him about writing the score for a new film, Leonard Bernstein had firmly established himself on 

the American musical scene as both conductor and composer. He had served as Assistant Conductor 

of the New York Philharmonic, Music Director of the New York City Symphony and Musical 

Advisor to the Israel Philharmonic. As a composer, he had won the New York Music Critics Circle 

Award for his “Jeremiah” Symphony, and had completed his Second Symphony (“The Age of 

Anxiety”) and the ballets Fancy Free and Facsimile, as well as the scores for two Broadway shows (On 

the Town and Wonderful Town). During the middle 1950s, he was on the faculties of Brandeis University 

and the Tanglewood Music Festival, and was much in demand as a guest conductor in Europe 

and America, having created a sensation in December 1953 as the first American to conduct at La 

Scala. Initially, Bernstein turned down Spiegel’s offer to supply the music for On the Waterfront, the 

film based on Budd Schulberg’s gritty novel about the docks protection rackets, but after seeing a 

screening of the work print in February 1954, he agreed to undertake the project. He took a leave 

of absence from his post at Brandeis, and moved to Hollywood. (It was not his first trip to the 

West Coast. In 1945 the star-struck Bernstein had taken a screen test to play the lead in a Hal Wallis 

movie about Tchaikovsky that was never made.) 

In an essay titled “Upper Dubbing, Calif.” that appeared in his book The Joy of Music (the thirdfloor 

room at Columbia Studios where sounds and images were mixed was known as “Upper 

Dubbing”), Bernstein wrote, “When I was first shown a rough cut of the picture I thought it a 

masterpiece of direction; and Marlon Brando seemed to me to give the greatest performance I had 

ever seen him give, which is saying a good deal. I was swept away by my enthusiasm into accepting 

the commission to write the score, although I had thereto resisted all such offers on the grounds 

that it is a musically unsatisfactory experience for a composer to write a score whose chief merit 

ought to be its unobtrusiveness.... But all such thoughts were drowned in the surge of excitement 

I felt upon first seeing this film. I heard music as I watched: that was enough.... Day after day I sat 

at a movieola, running the print back and forth, measuring in feet the sequences I had chosen for 

music, converting feet into seconds by mathematical formula, making homemade cue sheets; and 

every time I wept at the same speeches, chuckled at the same gestures. This continued right through 

the composing, orchestrating and recording of the music.... I was fortunate to be admitted to the 

dubbing sessions; I am told that usually the composer’s work is finished on the recording stage. By 

this time, I had become so involved in each detail of the score that it seemed to me perhaps the 

most important part of the picture. I had to keep reminding myself that it is really the least important 

part, that a spoken line covered by music is a line lost, and by that much a loss to the picture, 

while a bar of music completely obliterated by speech is only a bar of music lost and not necessarily 

a loss to the picture.... And so the composer sits by, protesting as he can, but ultimately accepting, 

be it with a heavy heart, the inevitable loss of a good part of his score. Everyone tries to comfort



him. ‘You can always use it in a suite.’ Cold comfort. But after all is said and done, the others are 

right.” Though Bernstein thrived on the collaborative theatrical process at that time in his life (West 

Side Story appeared three years later), he never returned to the film studio. On the Waterfront was his 

only movie score. 

On the Waterfront, the story of Terry, a longshoreman (played by Brando) who defies the racketeers 

who had previously controlled him, enjoyed enormous success when it was released, earning 

seven Academy Awards, including those for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress 

(Eva Marie Saint) and Best Director (Elia Kazan). Bernstein, however, was not content to have his 

music (which he insisted “had been planned as a composition with a beginning, middle and end”) 

remain in the background, and in 1955 he extracted from it a Symphonic Suite for large orchestra 

based on the half-dozen thematic ideas from which he wove the tightly integrated movie score. A 

broad horn melody (used in the film for the main title) opens the Suite, and recurs several times as 

a connective device. The following sections of the Suite, played without pause, are a powerful Presto 

barbaro led by the percussion (heard in the film to anticipate or heighten the scenes of violence); 

a warmly lyrical melody introduced by the solo flute (associated with the girl whose love is largely 

responsible for converting Terry to the forces of good); and a ferocious Allegro non troppo (which 

accompanies the fight scene between Terry and the racketeer, Johnny Friendly). The opening horn 

theme returns in a transfigured setting to close both the Suite and the movie, where it underlines 

Terry’s heroic walk to victory. The last measures, however, are marked by discordant cries from the 

full orchestra that recall the bitterness and suffering which characterize the story and preclude the 

conventional happy ending. 

The Song of the Forests, Op. 81 (1949) 

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) 

Shostakovich’s Song of the Forests is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English 

horn, three clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, nine trumpets, nine trombones, tuba, 

timpani, percussion, two harps and strings. The performance time is 37 minutes. This 

is the first performance of the work by the Grant Park Orchestra. 

Much of the cultural and political history of Soviet Russia can be read 

from the events and creations of Dmitri Shostakovich’s life. His music 

of the 1920s — the impudent First Symphony, the satiric opera The Nose, the jingoistic Second 

and Third Symphonies — reflects the youthful exuberance and artistic avant-gardism of the first 

decade of the Soviet regime. After Lenin’s death in 1924, Joseph Stalin emerged victorious from the 

scramble for political power, and he solidified his dictatorship with the purges of the 1930s. Art and 

music did not escape Stalin’s repressions, and the vigorous, experimental styles of the preceding 

decade were attacked as “bourgeois decadence” and “formalistic.” Outright condemnation came 

upon Shostakovich in early 1936, when his lurid modernist opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, which 

had been performed successfully dozens of times in Leningrad and Moscow following its premiere 

in 1934, incited Stalin’s vitriol. Stalin stormed out of a performance in Moscow, and within days 

an article in the Communist Party’s official newspaper, Pravda, perhaps written by Stalin himself, 

denigrated the opera as “Chaos Instead of Music.” Shostakovich, reeling from the blow, withdrew 

Lady Macbeth and his Fourth Symphony, already in rehearsal, and produced the Fifth Symphony in 

1937 as “an artist’s response to just criticism.” 

Welcomed back into the fold of repentant artists, Shostakovich became the leading Soviet 

composer during World War II. His Seventh Symphony, which recorded the misery and hopedfor 

triumph of the Russians in Leningrad under the ghastly Nazi siege, was a symbol of Russian 

courage and heroism to those at home and abroad, and it gained a Stalin Prize for the composer in 

1942. The brooding Eighth Symphony (1943) and the sardonic Ninth (1945) met with less official 

approval, however, largely because they eschewed blatant patriotism at the time of the defeat of 

Germany. Again, in 1948, Shostakovich’s music was denounced, this time as “neo-classic” and “an 

escape from reality.” (The Soviet bureaucracy never gave clear definitions for any of these censorious 

terms.) Rather than a specifically artistic reason behind this condemnation, which also included 



Prokofiev, Miaskovsky, Khachaturian and other leading Soviet composers, it seems to have arisen 

from Stalin’s consolidation of power after the war. (In his purported memoirs, Testimony, Shostakovich 

claimed that Stalin was jealous of the international acclaim the “Leningrad” Symphony had 

brought to the composer, and these purges were the dictator’s way of punishing the composer’s 

celebrity.) Other than the deeply expressive (but musically abstract) 24 Preludes and Fugues of 

1950-1951, Shostakovich, motivated both by a sense of protest and by fear for his family, made 

public no music between 1948 and Stalin’s death in 1953 other than film scores dealing with episodes 

in Soviet history (Encounter at the Elbe, The Fall of Berlin, The Memorable Year 1919) and a series 

of Party-glorifying works for chorus and orchestra: Poem of the Motherland, The Sun Shines Over Our 

Motherland, March of the Defenders of Peace, Our Song and The Song of the Forests. 

The Song of the Forests was one of some 220 new musical works created during 1949 to promote 

Soviet ideals and gratify Stalin’s ego. The text, by the conformist poet Yevgeny Dolmatovsky, is a 

paean to the government program intended to re-forest the vast swathes of the country devastated 

during the war — the wary poet made sure to include references to Stalin as “the great gardener,” 

but those were excised after the dictator’s death. (Shostakovich set other of Dolmatovsky’s verses, 

including a song [Op. 86, No. 1] that was used as a theme for Soviet news broadcasts and was sung 

by Yury Gagarin during the first manned space flight in 1961.) Shostakovich armored the text 

with a musical battalion comprising large orchestra, mixed chorus, children’s chorus and two male 

soloists, and The Song of the Forests excited such official acclaim at its premiere (December 15, 1949, 

Leningrad Philharmonic, Yevgeny Mravinsky conducting) that it received a Stalin Prize, a headspinning 

turn of fortune for a composer whose work had been publicly condemned less than two 

years before. Though it stabilized his situation at home, The Song of the Forests dulled Shostakovich’s 

reputation abroad (a critic noted in a report of the work for Time magazine that Shostakovich had 

“once showed signs of becoming a great composer”) and apparently left him resigned but ambivalent 

about his place in the Soviet cultural machine (“I take responsibility for the music, but as for 

the words …”). 

The Song of the Forests, which channels the revered idioms of Glinka, Tchaikovsky and Rimsky- 

Korsakov as much as Shostakovich’s own distinctive musical speech, comprises seven full-throated 

movements that encompass several traditional stylistic types: hymn (When the War Was Over), scherzo 

(The Call Rings Throughout the Land), lament (Memory of the Past), intermezzo (The Pioneers Plant the 

Forest), march (The Young Communists Forge Onwards), meditation (A Walk Into the Future), apotheosis 

(Glory). It is built with consummate craftsmanship, and makes an absolutely splendid showcase for 

the chorus, but such elements as the conventionality of style, the breathless, superheated march 

strains of The Young Communists Forge Onwards, or the pile-on sonic slabs of the finale might cause 

some listeners to question the work’s emotional sincerity. It is not impossible that Shostakovich 

found in The Song of the Forests an ironic medium of protest through the very banality forced upon 

his music during the darkest days of Stalinist Russia. 

©2009 Dr. Richard E. Rodda 




Kogda Okonchilas Voina (“When the War Ended”) 

Kogda okonchilas voina, 

When the war ended 

vzdokhnula radostno strana. 

the land breathed joyfully, 

Nastali solnechniye dni. 

sunny days began. 

Moi drug, tovarishch, 

My friend, comrade, 

posle boya domoi vernulis my s toboyu, 

we returned home after the battle, 

na kartu Rodini vzglyani: 

consulting the map of our homeland: 

tam ot Volgi i do Buga 

there, from the Volga to the Bug, 

i ot sevyera do yuga, 

and from north to south, 

gdye proshli 

wherever our victorious regiments 

pobyedniye polki, 

had passed, 

vstali krasniye flazhki. 

were placed red flags. 

Rodniye stepi i polya, 

Our native steppes and fields, 

mnogostradalnaya zemlya ... 

our long-suffering land. 

My zdyes voyevali, 

here we fought 

svobodu svoyu otstoyali, 

and defended our freedom, 

nas k podvigam novim 

these clear horizons summon us 

zovut eti yasniye dali, 

to new feats of valor, 

i, vnov oshchutiv, and our senses, like our broad fields, 

kak nashi polya shiroki, 

coming alive again, 

my krasniye s karti 

we remove the red flags 

snimayem flazhki. 

from our map, 

Snimayem krasniye flazhki, 

we remove the red flags, 

voinoyu oplanyonniye, 

scorched by war, 

i stavim noviye flazhki, 

and in their place we put new flags, 

kak tsvyet lesov, zelyoniye. 

green, the color of the forests. 

Ot reki i do reki, 

From river to river, 

ot Volgi i do Buga, 

from the Volga to the Bug, 

proidyot lesnaya polosa 

The forests spread 

ot sevyera do yuga. 

from north to south. 

Odyenem Rodinu v Lesa (“We Will Clothe Our Homeland with Forests”) 

Zvuchit priziv na vsyu stranu, 

raznosit vyeter golosa 

obyavim zasukhye voinu, 

odyenem rodinu 

v lesa! 

Kovaren byl iyulski znoi, 

polyam grozili nyebesa. 

Shtob novi mir 

dyshal vesnoi, 


v lesa! 

Svetla, kak pervaya lyubov, 

beryozok yunaya krasa. 

Poseyem rozh 

pod syen dubov, 


v lesa! 

My zashchitim svoi polya, 

yavlyaya miru chudesa. 

Shtob krugli god 

The call rings out through all the land, 

the voices are carried by the winds: 

we will declare war on drought, 

we will clothe our homeland 

with forests. 

The intense heat of July was ominous, 

the heavens threatened the fields. 

So that a new world 

might breathe in spring, 


with forests. 

Pure and radiant, like first love, 

is the youthful beauty of the birches. 

We will sow rye 

in the shade of the oaks. 

We will clothe our homeland 

with forests! 

We will protect our fields, 

and show the world great wonders. 

So that the earth should bloom 



tsvela zemlya, 

the whole year round, 



v lesa! 

with forests. 

Po vsyem stepyam, 

Over the whole steppe, 

vdol russkikh ryek 

along the banks of the Russian rivers, 

proidyot lesnaya polosa. 

the forest spreads. 

Priblizim kommunizma vyek, 

We are nearing the age of Communism, 



v lesa! 

with forests. 

Vospominaniye o Proshlom (“Memories of the Past”) 

My nye zabyli 

gorkoi doli 

lyubimykh myest zemli svoyei: 

stoit odna beryozka v polye, 

i nyet zashchity u polyei! 

Iz pustyni pyeschanoi 

vyetyer lyetit okayanny, 

iz-za Volgi lyetit sukhovyei. 

Molodiye vzoidut zelenya — 

on sozhyot ikh bystryeye ognya ... 

Podnimayetsya 

slavnaya rozh — 

koloski on podryezhet, kak nosh … 

God urozhaya 

i god nyedoroda, 

kak vas uznat naperyod? 

Posle molyebna 

i krestnovo khoda 

dozhd na Russi nye idyot. 

Yesli uzh vydalsya god nyevyesyoli, 

dozhd probezhit storonoi. 

Zasukha, sgorbivshis, brodit po syolam 

s nishchenskoi rvanoi sumoi. 

Stonut polya 

na zharye bezotradnoi, 

znoinomu vetru 

otkryty puti. 

Dai nam khot kapelku tyeni prokhladnoi, 

nas, chelovyek, zashchitil! 

Kak ty stradala kogdato, 

milaya nasha zemlya! 

Khlyeba prosili rebyata, 

vlagi prosili polya ... 

Dyeti moi rodniye, dyeti moi, 

nye plachtye: 

vyrastitye bolshimi, 

zemlyu pereinachtye! 

We have not forgotten 

the cruel fate 

of our beloved land: 

the birch tree stands alone in the field, 

and the fields have no protection! 

The cursed wind blows 

from the sandy wasteland, 

the dry wind blows from the Volga. 

The young green shoots are sprouting, 

they are consumed quicker than fire … 

The glorious ears of rye push up 

through the earth, 

they are cut down as by a knife … 

A good harvest one year, 

a poor one the next, 

how can you know in advance? 

Despite prayers 

and religious processions, 

no rain falls on Russia. 

In one bad year, 

the rain passes by and misses the land. 

Drought stalks the villages 

like a stooped, wretched beggar. 

The fields languish 

in the relentless heat, 

the tracks are open 

to the burning wind: 

oh, for a small spot of cool shade, 

oh, man, protect us! 

how you once suffered, 

our dear land! 

The children begged for bread, 

the fields begged for rain. 

My children, my own children, 

do not weep: 

you will grow up, 

you will alter the land! 




Pionyery Sazhayut Lesa (“The Pioneers Plant the Forests”) 

Topoli, topoli, 

skoryei iditye vo polye! 

Pionyer vsyem primyer 

tam uzhe s rassvyeta! 

Yaseni, yaseni, 

rodnuyu step ukrasili, 

i beryoz nash kolkhoz 

posadil nyemalo. 

Zholudi, zholudi, 

kak zoloto tyazholiye, 

dubdubok, nash druzhok, 

vyrastai skoreye! 

Yabloni, yabloni, 

vyrastaitye khrabrymi! 

Vas ni lyod nye vozmyot, 

ni moroz treskuchi! 

S klyonami, klyonami, 

stoinymi, zelyonymi, 

nam rasti i tsvesti, 

zemlyu ukrashaya, 

nam rasti i tsvesti, 

slavya urozhai! 

The poplars, the poplars, 

hurry into the field! 

The pioneer, an example to us all, 

has been there since dawn! 

Ash trees, ash trees 

have adorned our native steppe, 

and our collective farm 

has planted many birch trees. 

Acorns, acorns, 

heavy as gold, 

little oak tree, our little friend, 

grow quickly! 

Apple trees, apple trees, 

grow bravely! 

Neither ice nor hard frost 

shall harm you! 

With the maples, the maples, 

slender and green, 

grow and blossom for us, 

and adorn the land, 

grow and blossom for us 

and celebrate the harvest! 

Komsomoitsy Vykhodyat Vperyod (“The Young Communists Go Forth”) 

Vstavaitye na podvig, 

narody velikoi sovyetskoi strany! 

Milostyei zhdat u prirody 

lyudi tepyer nye dolzhny. 

Schastye vozmyom my svoimi rukami 

zemlyu rodnuyu 

ukrasim sadami. 

My prostiye sovyetskiye lyudi, 

kommunizm nasha slava i chest. 

Kol narod govorit: 

“Eto budet!” 

my otvetim yemu: “Eto yest!” 

Vyshe znamya! 

Vyshe znamya! 

Komsomolskiye 

vyshli polki, 

shtob derevyev 

zelyonoye plamya podnyalos 

vozlye Volgiryeki. 

Budet nashei pshenitsye ograda 

komsomolskykh lesov polosa 

ot Kamyshina do Volgograda, 

i na yug 

do Cherkesska lesa. 

Vyshe znamya! 

Vyshe znamya! 

Komsomolskiye 

Arise, people of the great Soviet land, 

and do great deeds! 

We must not now wait 

for nature’s bounties. 

Let us grasp good fortune in our hands, 

let us adorn our native land 

with gardens. 

We are simple Soviet people, 

Communism is our glory and honor. 

As soon as the people say, 

“This will be,” 

we reply, “It already is!” 

Raise the banner higher, 

raise the banner higher! 

The regiments of Young Communists 

have gone forth 

so that the trees should rise up 

in a blaze of green 

along the River Volga. 

The Young Communists’ forests 

will fence round our wheat 

from Kamyshin to Volgograd, 

and southwards 

to the forests of Cherkessk. 






vyshli polki, 

have gone forth, 


so that the trees should flourish 

zelyonoye plamya rastsvyelo 




Slovno armiyu mirnuyu nashu, 

Just like our peaceful army, 

kol deryevya 

when the trees are lined up, 

vsye vystroit v ryad, 

as if on parade, 

to oni shar zemnoi opoyashut, 

they will encircle the earth, 

svetloi vlagoi yevo orosyat. 

and irrigate it with pure moisture. 

Vyshe znamya! 


Vyshe znamya! 


Komsomolskiye 


vyshli polki, 

have gone forth 


so that the trees should rise up 

zelyonoye plamya podnyalos 




Ekh, nye trogaitye sad etot divny, 

Ah, do not disturb this glorious garden. 

vy pred nim, 

Compared to it you are small, 

kak pigmyei, maly. 

like a pigmy. 

Krepche vashikh stvolov orudinykh 

Stronger than the barrels of your guns 

nashikh yunykh beryozok stvoly. 

are the trunks of our young birches. 

Gorodsoldat, nash geroi lyubimy, 

Soldier-city, our beloved hero, 

gordost i slava zemli rodimoi, 

pride and glory of our native land, 

nyeutomimy, nyepobyedimy, 

tireless, invincible, 

stroisya i slavsya 

grow and be famous, 

nash gorod geroi! 

our hero-city! 

Vyshe znamya! 


Vyshe znamya! 


Slovno orden, 

Like a military decoration, 

listok u drevka! 

a leaf raised on a staff! 

Razlivaisya 

Overflow your banks 

i raduisya s nami, 

and rejoice with us, 

nyeobyatnaya Volgareka. 

boundless River Volga. 

Budushchaya Progulka (“A Walk in the Future”) 

A ... Ah ... 

Solovi poyut schastliviye, 

The silence is filled with the joyous 

oglashaya tishinu, 

song of the nightingales, 

nad polyami nad nivami 

above the cornfields 

slavyat yunost i vesnu. 

they celebrate youth and the spring. 

V stepi lesok zelyony vyros, 

On the steppe has sprung up 

lyubov moya, lyubov moya! 

a little green wood, my love, my love! 

A ranshe nam nye prikhodilos 

But here in the past, 

zdyes slishat 

we could not hear 

penye solovya. 

the song of the nightingale. 

Nashi lyudi bespokoiniye 

Our tireless people 

prevratili zemlyu v sad, 

have turned the earth into a garden: 

v tri ryada deryevya stroiniye, 

in rows of three, our slender trees 

vzyavshis za ruki, stoyat. 

join hands and stand straight. 

I nad shirokimi polyami — And above the broad fields — 

maya mechta, tvoya mechta — my dream and yours — 

listva zelyonaya nad nami, 

the green leaves above us, 

strany sovyetskoi krasota. 

the beauty of our Soviet land. 




Shir stepyei 

The transformed wide expanse 

preobrazhonnaya — of the steppes — 

eto vsyo tvoi trudy. 

all this is the result of your work. 

Pust idut gulyat vlyublyonniye 

Go out and walk lovingly 

v nashi noviye sady. 

in our new gardens. 

Slava (“Glory”) 

Na polyakh kolkhozov 

vstali pa kvadratam 

stroiniye beryozy, 

rodiny soldaty, 

nashi klyony i beryozy. 

Polya shirokiye, lesa zelyoniye, 

lesniye polosy — zashchita rodiny. 

Yasen, buk i grab 

da iva — ivushka. 

Mily krai russki, 

stanesh yeshcho krashe, 

krai nash russki, krai nash slavny! 

Nye strashitsya polye 

grozovovo nyebo. 

Budet khleba v volyu, 

budut gory khleba. 

Sily nyet na svetye, 

shtoby nas slomila. 

Otstupayet vetyer pered nashei siloi. 

Polya shirokiye, lesa zelyoniye, 

lesniye polosy, nash russki krai! 

Slava komandiram 

bitvy za prirodu, 

slava brigadiru, slave polyevodu! 

Slava agronomu, 

slava sadovodu! 

Parti nashei slava! 

I vsemu narodu slava! 

Slava! 

Voskhodit zarya kommunizma! 

Pravda s nami i schastiye u nas. 

Yesli b nashu svyatuyu otchiznu 

mog Lenin uvidet seichas! 

Vedyot nashei Parti geni 

nyepreklonnykh i vernykh synov. 

My za solntsye, 

za schastye, za mir! 

My s prirodoi 

vstupayem v srazhenya 

vo imya qryadushchikh sedov. 

Deryevya vstayut velichavo 

vozlye russkikh torzhestvennykh ryek. 

Leninskoi parti slava! 

Slava narodu navek! 

Parti mudroi slava! 

Slava! 

Planted in squares 

on the fields of the collective farm 

grew the slender birches, 

soldiers of our homeland, 

our maples and birches. 

The broad fields and green forests, 

the protective forests of our native land. 

The ash tree and beech, 

hornbeam and willow. 

Our dear Russian land, 

you will become still more beautiful. 

Our Russian land, our glorious land! 

The field is not afraid 

of the threatening storm in the sky. 

We will have bread in plenty, 

there will be mountains of bread. 

There is no force on earth 

that can break us. 

The wind abates before our strength. 

The broad fields and green forests, 

the tracts of forests, our Russian land! 

Glory to the commanders 

of the battle for nature! 

Glory to the field cultivation teams! 

Glory to the agriculturalist, 

glory to the gardener! 

Glory to our party! 

Glory to all the people! 

Glory! 

The day of Communism is dawning! 

Truth is with us, and good fortune. 

If only Lenin could see 

our holy motherland now! 

Our party is led by the genius 

of loyal and indomitable sons. 

We are for the sun, 

for happiness and peace! 

Together with nature, 

we will march into battle 

in the name of our gardens of the future. 

The trees rise up majestically 

beside the solemn Russian rivers. 

Glory to Lenin’s Party! 

Glory to the people forever! 

Glory to our wise Party! 

Glory!

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