Talks take place on Thursday afternoons, starting at 2pm, and usually take place in the Lecture Hall, Rewley House, 1 Wellington Square, Oxford OX1 2JA. These are free for Oxford u3a members but you are welcome to attend as a guest for a donation of £5 (£2 for members of all other U3As).
Most talks are recorded on Zoom for the benefit of those Oxford u3a members who are unable to attend Rewley House.
In the event of adverse weather conditions, please telephone Rewley House (01865 270360), to enquire whether the talk has been cancelled.
- This event has passed.
Professor Philip Bullock – The Politics of Russian Music: Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff
12th June 2025 @ 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Philip Ross Bullock is Professor of Russian Literature and Music at the University of Oxford, and fellow and tutor in Russian at Wadham College. His short life of Tchaikovsky was published by Reaktion in 2016, and in 2022 he edited Rachmaninoff and His World for the University of Chicago Press. He works extensively with arts organisations in the UK and abroad, and has a particularly close relationship with the Oxford International Song Festival and Wigmore Hall, London.
In this talk, he will look at the careers of two of Russia’s most famous composers. Although both projected images of themselves as unconnected with politics and ideology and believed in the eternal power of music to transcend the everyday, both were, in fact, closely involved in the main institutions of the Russian imperial administration and were called upon to use their cultural capital in the service of the state. Looking at these relationships allows us to get a better understanding of the importance of music and all the arts in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russia – and has implications for how we talk about Russian culture today, not least in the wake of the war in Ukraine.