For Vladimir Petrov, a prolific director in both the Stalin and Khrushchev eras, Khachaturian composed two film scores, Battle of Stalingrad (1948–50) and The Duel (1957). On his work for Battle of Stalingrad, a two-part epic lasting some 220 minutes, he wrote: To fill two hours with battle music alone! Nothing that I had done hitherto could be compared with that task—just as the battle itself surpassed in scope everything known to history until then. My task was, therefore, to compose battle music with the barest minimum of contrasting episodes to set off the dominant mood. This film needed no lyricism, no songs and no digression from the main subject. A high degree of tension was the only thing needed.

Contrary to what might generally have been expected in such a work, Khachaturian avoided any musical glorification of Stalin (played in the film by Alexis Diki) and concentrated on a dramatic emphasis of the tragic events shown on the screen, the struggle and suffering of the people rather than the position of the supreme commander. His own arrangement of Battle of Stalingrad into an eight-part concert suite gives the impression of a monumental symphonic fresco of tonal and thematic unity. As a theme to be associated with the city taking up its desperate defence against the German war-machine, Khachaturian quotes There is a Cliff on the Volga, a majestic folk song, heard after the opening main theme. The German aggressors, on the other hand, are defined shortly afterwards by the German Christmas carol O Tannenbaum, transformed into a grotesque march, similar to the Merry Widow theme in Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony, if not so incessantly repeated.

The most original movement of the suite is certainly the short Eternal Glory to the Heroes, in which Khachaturian builds up a tense climax by a funeral march-like theme, surging from and dissolving itself again into a visionary dirge of alternating chords. The Enemy is Doomed, another lyrical movement containing longer sections for strings alone, interrupted by an echo-like quotation of the Nazi motif, is a typical example of the composer's skill in producing dramatic effect by minimal musical means.

Khachaturian himself, as a conductor of the USSR Radio Symphony Orchestra, can be heard on an impressive Melodiya recording of Battle of Stalingrad, issued in 1952. The suite was arranged in 1969 for large band by Grigory Kalinkovich and issued on record in 1974. In 1976 the Art Ensemble of the Hungarian People's Army commissioned a further arrangement by the composer as an oratorio for soprano, male chorus and orchestra. Poems by Gabor Garai were inserted between the movements, to be read by a narrator. This arrangement was given the new title In Memory of the Heroes and a recording was issued by Hungaroton in 1978.

Battle of Stalingrad can be compared with The Fall of Berlin, a score by Shostakovich for a picture by Mikhail Ciaureli, realized in 1949, the same year as the first part of Battle of Stalingrad. Both films are, in the final analysis, mere glorifications of Stalin and today only their sound tracks are worthy of revival. The orchestration of Battle of Stalingrad includes piccolo, double woodwind, cor anglais, a third clarinet in E flat, bass clarinet, four horns and four trumpets, three percussion players and the usual strings.

Writer: Adriano
Edited by: Keith Anderson