KHACHATURIAN

Description

The former Soviet Union was a place of unique juxtapositions; of idealism and terror, heroism and corruption, of high culture and foolish pretension. In the same way that the music of Beethoven and Wagner was used by Hitler to rally the people to the Nazi cause; in Soviet Russia, Stalin encouraged the creation of symphonies and operas to promote national patriotism and at the same time brutally suppressed any descent.

“Khachaturian” is about the life of a composer working in the darkness of that tragic era. Like most Soviet citizens, Khachaturian hid a complex private life behind a mask of Communist loyalty. In the early glory days of the Bolshevik Revolution, young composers like Khachaturian had played an integral part of the most important social and political upheavals of the 20th century – the decline of the old colonist empires. And his Caucasian roots, being born in 1903 in Armenian Georgia, offered a strongly alluring promise.