There was a brief flowering of the avant-garde in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, in the time before Stalin consolidated his grip on the arts and most everything else.
In 1928, Dmitri Shostakovich penned a madcap score to accompany a silent movie set in the Paris Commune of 1871. The New Babylon had a brief popularity before the nation became a grimmer place. Then it was almost forgotten. The world premiere recording was only made in the 1980’s, and it will be our major work this Sunday