SHOSTAKOVICH, Dmitri (1906-1975)
Tahiti Trot (1928)
Staatsoper Berlin
Daniel Barenboim, cond.
(4:08)
Vincent Youmans composed Tea for Two for his musical No, No, Nanette in 1927.
Shostakovich and his friend, the conductor Nicolai Malko, recalled hearing the tune in ’27 at the Meyerhold Theatre in Moscow in a play called Roar, China. In one of the scenes some Americans on a ship are dancing to the tune, which Malko recalled as being named Tahiti Trot. (It was — of course — Tea for Two.)
At some point before October, Malko jokingly suggested to Shostakovich that he should orchestrate Tea for Two and proposed a bet:
The premiere at the Moscow Conservatory was on November 25, 1928. Then came the problems.
The Central Committee of the CPSU, People’s Commissar of Education Anatol Lunacharsky said that no task was more urgent for Soviet culture than to rebuke the “aggressive, jazzy syncopations of the foxtrot.”
The score was withdrawn and quickly forgotten until Gennady Rozhdestvensky reconstructed it in 1984.
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Author: Lewis Saul