The Tale of the Priest and of His Workman Balda (film)

The Tale of the Priest and of His Workman Balda is an extant Soviet animation feature film by Mikhail Tsekhanovsky based on the eponymous fairy tale in verse by Alexander Pushkin. The only surving episode (4 mins) is called "Bazar (Marketplace)" [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0817882/]

A scenario for the film was written in the 1930s by the director Mikhail Tsekhanovskiy. Work began in 1933. In the same year, the director contacted the young composer Dimitri Shostakovich and asked him to write music to accompany the film. Shostakovich wrote some music for the film in 1933-34 but never completed the score because of the 1936 denunciation of his work in the form of the "Pravda" article "Muddle Instead of Music". Partially because the film now had no score, work on it was stopped and it was never completed. [http://books.interros.ru/?book=mult&mode=print&id=4] Other reasons included production difficulties and a general lack of organization at the studio. Although the film was nearly finished, it was put into storage at the Lenfilm archives, where almost all of it was lost in a fire during the Second World War. [http://theatre.perm.ru/premier/balda.shtml] The 6-minute scene of the market from the tale is all that survives and it stands alone as a classic of Russian animated films. [http://animator.ru/db/?p=show_film&fid=6310]

After Shostakovich died, his widow arranged to have the score completed by one of Shostakovich's students, Vadim Bibergan. The world premiere recording of the 50-minute work was made by the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Thomas Sanderling and released in 2006, a century after Shostakovich's birth. [http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=139082]

External links

* [http://animator.ru/db/?ver=eng&p=show_film&fid=6310 «The Tale of the Priest and of His Workman Balda»] at animator.ru
* [http://www.deutschegrammophon.com/special/insights.htms?ID=shostakovich-balda Liner notes] by Manashir Yakubov for the recording of The Tale of the Priest and his Worker, Balda by the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra, Thomas Sanderling conductor (Deutsche Grammophon B0006507-02)
* [http://vimeo.com/1524708 Surviving portion of the film on Vimeo with English subtitles] (public domain)