It looks like we will get the Alexander Mosolov movie

Maybe one of my favorite composers will get a boost of publicity

Alexander Mosolov in 1927

It looks like there is going to be a movie about one of my favorite unsung Russian composers, Alexander Mosolov (1900-1973). Efforts to bring the movie to fruition had been delayed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Deadline reports that a well-known Israeli actor, Lior Ashkenazi, has been signed for the project. The article in Deadline explains, 

“Filming on the project first began in 2018 and 2019 in Moscow but the production was put on hold due to the Covid-19 pandemic and then had to be abandoned entirely following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Production is now due to resume and wrap up in Israel after the New Year for a 2024 release.

“The film’s executive producer, Max Gutbrod, who had been living in Moscow since 1996, left the country. Conductor Arthur Arnold, the film’s musical supervisor, resigned from his position as Chief Conductor of the Moscow Symphony Orchestra as a result of the war, and plans to record more of Mosolov’s music were interrupted.”

More here. 

Gutbrod says a crowd funding project will be needed. I’ll report on any announcement.

If you want to sample some of Mosolov’s music before the movie emerges, here are some of the pieces I listen to over and over again: The four piano sonatas (a fifth, the Third sonata, has been lost), the 1926 string quartet, the first piano concerto and the fifth symphony. His best known composition, and the  one most people are likely to have heard, is  the short piece “Iron Foundry,” from a mostly-lost ballet composition, Steel.