Back to the USSR: Alfredo Casella’s second visit to Soviet Russia

Casella’s curiosity towards Russian music materialized in several ways, ranging from artistic interest in the production of ‘the Five’ to interpersonal relationships he maintained on different occasions in the early 20th century. He visited St Petersburg with Henri Casadesus’s Société des instruments anciens, invited to give concerts of ancient music in 1907-08 and 1909. Subsequently, in 1926 the composer went to the USSR in order to promote the contemporary music. In this paper I consider a group of documents preserved at the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), which highlight some aspects of his second visit to the Soviet Union in 1935. More conspicuously, I will position Casella’s journey in the context of the cultural relations developed between Italy and the USSR by the organization of VOKS, the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries. The documents attest the contexts Casella had with several members of the Russian musical milieus, and shed some light to the reciprocal interests both sides had in keeping these contacts alive, before the Great Terror of the 1930s.