After being virulently condemned as a "formalist," at the 1948 Composers' Union Congress, Shostakovich could not possibly continue composing large scale, abstract symphonic canvases. Survival called for the production of patriotic oratorios like the Song of the Forests (1949), popular film scores based on the lives of Soviet heroes like Michurin (1948) and a series of light, entertaining ballet suites.

The second of these ballet suites was compiled and arranged by Levon Atovmyan in 1951. The music is indeed light and entertaining to the point of banality, even triviality. To say that the blandly trite music of the suite could have been composed by a modern-day Delibes with a more lurid palette or a Russian Offenbach without a sense of irony just about catches the spirit of the works. The amazing thing about the suite, however, is that much of the music is drawn for the most part from Shostakovich's ballet, The Limpid Stream of 1935, a work which had been condemned by Pravda in 1936. Recycled and re-named, however, the music, amazingly, became acceptable to the Party.

The Second Suite's six movements are as follows: Waltz, Adagio (from Act II of The Limpid Stream), Polka, (from Jazz Suite No. 1), Sentimental Romance, Spring Waltz (from Michurin), and Finale.

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