[Responding to the current need of Russian music education . . . ] From my vantage point, the current needs of music education in Russia are first and foremost material in nature. Here in St. Petersburg, we lack a sufficient number of auditoriums for students, and throughout Russia we have an acute need for more and better musical instruments. We simply don’t have them, and we aren’t manufacturing them here. Percussion and wind instruments are especially scarce, both woodwinds and brass. The situation here in Russia is simply catastrophic. The problem also extends to keyboard instruments because there isn’t a single company in Russia malcing good quality pianos, even on a secondary level, by worldwide standards. At one time, before the revolution, right here in St. Petersburg, companies made excellent instruments of all types. Secondly, it seems to me that our fundamental three-tiered system of professional music education that was developed here in the 1920s, with its three levels of institutions (preparatory schools, midlevel institutions, and conservatories), is a tremendous achievement, but our systemdoesn’t translate very well into the worldwide standardized system of degrees, that is, master’s degrees and bachelor’s degrees. I don’t know if they give out those particular degrees at the Paris Conservatory, or at similar institutions elsewhere, but, in itself, a diploma from the Moscow or St. Petersburg Conservatories should offer ample proof that the student’s level of preparation is sufficiently high.
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Stanley M. Hoffman says