Ron Chaplin wrote:

>Before listening to this disc, my impression of DSCH music was one of
>great drama and emotion, very serious.

The circumstances were serious.

>The fact that he also wrote this delightful "light music" breaks all
>barriers of my understanding and appreciation of the composer.

Both light music and deceptively light music.  Do you know his opera
"The Nose" after Gogol?  This is great satire and frankly, I really
believe that this was his best work ever.  And nobody performed it as
well as the Moscow Chamber Opera with Gennady Rozhdestvensky.  It's
recorded, although perhaps OOP by now.

>Frankly, it blows my mind.  Tahiti Trot is a "transcription of Vincent
>Youman's song 'Tea for Two!!!'"

Yes it is!

But note that all this music comes from before ca.  1930.  For a decade
or so after the October Revolution, avant-garde art and music did exist
in the USSR.  Only after that it suddenly became "bourgeois" and "decayed".

-Margaret Mikulska