The Famous Soviet-Era Musical Fraud NIKOLAI OVSIANIKO-KULIKOVSKI (1768-1846) (actually Michael Goldstein [1917-1989]): Symphony No. 21 in G Minor, ALEXANDER GLAZUNOV (1865-1936): Symphony No. 4 in E Flat, Op. 48 (rec. 1948).

Description: Accused of being unfit to use the Ukrainian folk motives he was using in his music because he was a Jew and, thus, incapable of "understanding" Ukrainian music, the violinist, composer and musicologist Michael Goldstein wrote this fake Classical Ukrainian symphony (four movements, 25 min.), aided and abetted by his friend Isaak Dunayevsky (one of the most famous composers of "popular music" during the Stalin era), who provided one of the finale's themes. The "discovery" of this work (in the archives of the Odessa Conservatory, where Goldstein was a librarian) gave proof to Soviet musical ideology which badly desired to have a brighter and better populated musical past for political reasons and the work was heavily promoted, soon recorded (Mravinsky did this one in 1954) and at least two dissertations were written on it by Soviet musicologists. When Goldstein admitted the hoax in 1958, one Soviet expert, examining the "manuscript" concluded that neither he nor "Ovsianiko-Kulikovsky" had written it! Goldstein emigrated to East Germany in 1964, having rubbed official Soviet musicology's nose in the ordure in a way which must have been unimaginably delightful for him. Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra; Yevgeni Mravinsky.