exiles from revolution stravinsky the nationalist welcome to the … · 2021. 1. 13. · petrushka...

Exiles from Revolution Stravinsky the nationalist

© 2020 Terry Metheringham [email protected] +44 7528 835 422

Welcome to the new look Soviet Music @ Lewes U3A

This term we are going to explore how Soviet music reacted to Russian composers living abroad. Our five sessions will explore:

One: Stravinsky the nationalist Two: Prokofiev and machine music Three: Stravinsky’s middle period Four: Rakhmaninov reclaimed Five: Stravinsky’s homecoming and his late period music

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) was already living in the west in 1917, and didn’t visit Russia again until 1962. Sergei Rakhmaninov (1873-1943) emigrated soon after the Bolsheviks took power, and never returned. Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) negotiated a leave of absence from revolutionary turmoil, returning in 1936.

Soviet Music: Exiles from Revolution Session 1: Stravinsky the nationalist 2


Introduction: Stravinsky the nationalist Today we will be focusing on Stravinsky’s 1911 ballet Petrushka. We will use it as a launch pad for exploring how Stravinsky’s brand of nationalism

was received in the USSR from the early years of the revolution through to the 1960s. We will also hear music by Soviet composers echoing aspects of Petrushka:

Prokofiev Russian Overture (1936) Popov Second Symphony “Motherland” (1944) Shchedrin Concerto for Orchestra No. 1 “Naughty Limericks” (1963)

The total length of the music in this session is 95 minutes (with an option to reduce that to 70 minutes by only listening to one movement of Popov).



Stravinsky background Igor Stravinsky was born into a musical family. His father was a leading bass in the Imperial Opera. The family resisted Igor’s musical ambitions, so he compromised and studied law. At the University of Saint Petersburg he met Vladimir Rimsky Korsakov,

one of the sons of Nikolai Rimsky Korsakov, the celebrated composer and teacher of composition. Stravinsky became a family friend of the Rimsky Korsakovs. By the time Stravinsky had gained his law diploma, his father had died,

opening the path to a musical career. Rimsky Korsakov looked over Stravinsky’s adolescent compositions, and took him on as a private pupil. He taught Stravinsky from 1906 to his death in 1908. Stravinsky tells us that he looked up to Rimsky Korsakov as a father-figure. Rimsky Korsakov’s assessment of Stravinsky’s potential is interesting;

he thought his son-in-law, Maximilian Steinberg, was a far greater talent. In February 1909 Stravinsky managed to have two compositions performed at a public concert:

Scherzo fantastique op 3 and Feu d'artifice op 4. Sergei Diaghilev was in the audience. He was looking for a jobbing-composer to join his new company – Ballets Russes.



Diaghilev and Ballets Russes Sergei Diaghilev is a fascinating character. He came from an arts-loving family whose fortune was based on distilling vodka. It soon became clear that Sergei had a voracious appetite for the arts,

and a persuasive organizational flair; a perfect combination for an impresario. Diaghilev targeted western European audiences, presenting an exotic vision of Russia;

a vigorous blend of history, folklore and oriental mystery. In 1906 he mounted a huge art exhibition in Paris. In 1908 he organised a series of Russian Operas in Paris; including the western premiere of Boris Godunov,

for which he persuaded Rimsky Korsakov to lengthen and enhance the Coronation Scene. In 1909 Ballets Russes was launched. Diaghilev realised a greater profit could be made on ballet.

Operas were still programmed… Prince Igor was given its western premiere in 1909,

but in later seasons it gradually shrank to little more than the Plovotsian dances.



Firebird Stravinsky was hired as the Ballets Russes musical odd-job man. Based in Paris, he started by orchestrating extracts from Chopin. Then he had an amazing stroke of luck! Diaghilev’s first great commission for Ballets Russes was Firebird. Choice of subject was no accident; it resonated for two contemporary streams of Russian art:

the symbolists and the neo-nationalists. Benois and Fokine created the scenario, and Diaghilev searched for a composer. Rimsky-Korsakov would have been ideal… but sadly mortality had intervened,

so Diaghilev approached some of his most talented disciples: Tcherepnin, Liadov, Glazunov, and possibly even Sokolov. [Maes, p 219]

No takers. Only then did Diaghilev ask Stravinsky. Stravinsky’s Firebird score was a huge triumph, and a wonderful tribute to Rimsky Korsakov.

Actually Firebird includes several borrowings from Rimsky Korsakov: Infernal Dance from Mlada Round Dance from Sinfonietta melodic material for the Firebird is reminiscent of The Snow Maiden melodic material for Kashchei is reminiscent of (Rimsky Korsakov’s) Kashchei the Immortal

Stravinsky was the new star of Ballets Russes, and spoken of in the same breath as Debussy.



Petrushka Stravinsky tells us that just as he was finishing the score for Firebird

I had a fleeting vision… I saw in my imagination a solemn pagan rite: sage elders, seated in a circle, watched a young girl dance herself to death. They were sacrificing her to propitiate the god of spring. [Stravinsky p 31]

Diaghilev set Stravinsky to work on Rite of Spring. Later that summer, Diaghilev visited Stravinsky, who was holidaying in Clarens. To his astonishment Stravinsky had gone off at a tangent. He was now working on something completely different, a “Konzertstück” for piano and orchestra.

I had in my mind a distinct picture of a puppet, suddenly endowed with life… The outcome is a terrific noise which reaches its climax and ends in the sorrowful and querulous collapse of the poor puppet. [Stravinsky p 31]

Diaghilev was enthusiastic about the music he heard,

and the pair quickly sketched a scenario for what became Petrushka.



LISTENING NOTES: Igor Stravinsky Petrushka

Ballet written 1910-11 First performance: 13 June 1911 by Ballets Russes, at Théâtre du Châtelet Paris Conductor Pierre Monteaux, choreography Fokine, sets Benois, Petrushka danced by Nizhinsky

Setting is a Shrovetide Fair in Admiralty Square, St Petersburg in the 1830s. The story weaves a magical story of puppets coming to life in an archetypal Russian scene. There are four tableaux. First Tableau – The Shrove Fair

General revelry is interrupted by a Master of Ceremonies, who announces two dancing girls: the first dances to a Russian tune accompanied by triangle, the second to a celesta playing a French music hall song, Une jambe en bois,

making fun of Sarah Bernhardt’s limp. General revelry resumes. Drum rolls introduce a magician standing outside his puppet theatre. He plays his flute and brings three puppets to life:

an elegant Moor, a ballerina en pointe, and Petrushka (the Russian equivalent of Pulcinella / Punch). As they dance it is clear that Petrushka loves the ballerina,

but the ballerina loves the Moor.



Second Tableau – Petrushka’s Room After the public performance the puppet Petrushka is thrown into his dark room. He gradually returns to life – a miserable existence of unrequited love and hatred for the magician. The ballerina enters. When Petrushka notices her he begins an athletic dance which scares her away. Petrushka returns to his misery and anger.

Petrushka’s Room is the scene which grew out of the initial “Konzertstück”. A concept which haunted Stravinsky was a musician separately rolling objects over the white keys and then the black keys of the piano. This developed into the bitonal effect of the white note C major arpeggio and the black note F-sharp major arpeggio which is prominent in this scene, and which throughout the ballet underlines the conflicting sides of Petrushka’s character.

Third Tableau – The Moor’s Room

The Moor is relaxing in his richly decorated room, playing with a coconut. His exotic character brings an opportunity for Russian school orientalism. The ballerina enters, and proceeds to seduce the Moor by dancing and playing a toy trumpet. The Moor responds – the couple dance a waltz. Petrushka breaks into the room in a fit of jealousy and attacks the Moor. The Moor is too powerful for Petrushka, and chases him from the room.



Fourth Tableau – The Shrove Fair (towards evening) Back to the bustle of the fair; there’s a sequence of dances:

nursemaids, a dancing bear, a rakish merchant tossing bank notes into the crowd, and groomsmen who are eventually joined by the nursemaids.

Dancing is interrupted by a mummers’ play. Dancing resumes, but shrieks from the puppet theatre silence the crowd. Petrushka rushes out followed by the Moor and the ballerina. The Moor catches up with Petrushka and kills him with one stroke of his scimitar. A policeman finds the magician, who reassures the crowd that Petrushka is just a puppet. The crowd disperses, until the magician is alone on stage. A trumpet calls – Petrushka’s ghost is on the roof of the puppet theatre, jeering at the magician.

The fair scene gives Stravinsky an opportunity to bring together a mix of Russian folk music, moulded by powerful rhythmical invention. His earlier ballet, Firebird, could conceivably have been written by his teacher, Rimsky Korsakov – but Petrushka is where Stravinsky establishes his own voice. Stravinsky commented in An Autobiography:

It is very doubtful whether Rimsky Korsakov would ever have accepted Le Sacre, or even Petrushka. [Stravinsky p 175-6]

LINK 1 (40 mins) www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBaKgjmGxbU

Stravinsky Petrushka: Opéra de Paris 1976, using the 1911 Benois sets and Fokine choreography Petrushka is danced by Rudolf Nureyev (The performance begins at 2’33)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBaKgjmGxbU



Stravinsky in Soviet Russia Stravinsky’s huge successes with the Ballets Russes: Firebird, Petrushka, Rite of Spring,

took a while to reach Russia. The First World War intervened in August 1914. Then in 1917 there was Revolution. Stravinsky’s last trip home to Russia (until 1962) was in July 1914. Writing around 1935, Stravinsky in An Autobiography is very circumspect about the Revolution;

surprisingly so when compared with comments later in his life.

The February Revolution leads to an anecdote about Stravinsky staying up all night orchestrating Volga Boat Song for a Gala concert in aid of the Italian Red Cross – necessary because

“nothing could have been more inept than to sing God save the Tsar.” [Stravinsky p 66]

The October Revolution is overshadowed for Stravinsky by two recent bereavements: his old nanny, Bertha, who had been in service with his family since before his birth, and his brother who had died of typhus while serving with the Russian army in Romania.

The consequence of the October Revolution was severe for Stravinsky:

I was now also in a position of utmost pecuniary difficulty. The Communist Revolution, which had just triumphed in Russia, deprived me of the last resources which had still from time to time been reaching me… [Stravinsky p 70]



Stravinsky in Soviet Russia An early public performance of Firebird Suite in Russia (probably the first) was on 7 November 1918. This concert, in the Winter Palace, celebrated the first anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. Firebird was rubbing shoulders with revolutionary music,

in a programme conceived by Lunacharsky – Commissar for Enlightenment. [MFW MSP p 8] Petrushka was first performed in November 1920, at the Mariinsky. This reproduction of the Fokine / Benois Ballets Russes production made a powerful novel impression;

struggling Soviet ballet companies bad been reduced to repeating core repertoire. [MFW MSP p 40] An article by Andrey Levinson in Жизнь Искусства / Living Art warmly welcomed Petrushka

the most intense and outstanding hour of theatrical life we have seen in the capital over recent years. For balletomanes the article includes a lengthy discussion of whether Petrushka is a fully fledged ballet. It concludes that it is actually a “pantomime with music” and it is therefore correct to subtitle it “comic scenes”. [See MFW MSP p 46-9]



Stravinsky in Soviet Russia – the 1920s The 1920s was a period of experimental freedom in Soviet music. Many Stravinsky’s works were gradually introduced into Soviet repertoire. This list of performances by season at Leningrad Philharmonic illustrates Stravinsky’s success in the USSR

Pulcinella 1924-5 1928-9 1934-5 1937-8 1940-1 Ragtime 1925-6 Rite of Spring 1925-6 1927-8 1928-9 Suites 1&2 1926-7 Soldier’s Tale suite 1926-7 1928-9 Mavra 1927-8 1928-9 Symphonies of Wind Instruments 1927-8 Les Noces 1928-9 Oedipus Rex 1928-9 Nightingale 1928-9 Apollo 1928-9 Three pieces for String Quartet 1928-9 Piano Concerto 1928-9 Petrushka 1932-3

Table based on research by Pauline Fairclough [Fairclough CfM p 60-2 & p 111-15]



Revolution from Above – from 1928 Early Soviet policy was driven by an ideological dilemma; Marxist theorists doubted the viability of a standalone proletarian revolution in Russia,

and placed their hope in a chain-reaction of revolutions in other major industrial societies.

As it became clear that international revolution was unlikely to happen, Lenin compromised with reality and in 1921 reintroduced a mixed economy as a temporary measure.

In 1928 Stalin shifted to an ambitious go-it-alone policy of driving the Soviet Union towards Communism; Revolution from Above would build

Socialism in One Country though the new Five Year Plan approach. From 1928 to 1932 there were waves of intense cultural revolution:

Cultural exchanges with the outside world ended

Soviet composers abandoned the Association of Contemporary Musicians (affiliated to the International Society of Contemporary Music)

Glaviskusstvo was formed – a new state committee for the ideological governance of the arts. The Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM) the largest of many Proletarian groups, lobbied Glasikusstvo to drop Stravinsky (Prokofiev, and others) from the repertoire

because they are “alien to the working classes”. [MFW MSP p 218]



Stravinsky in the USSR – the late 1920s Here’s an interesting critique of Petrushka from 1929 by distinguished musicologist Yuri Keldysh. It was printed in the RAPM journal Пролетарский Музыкант / Proletarian Musician. [MFW MSP p 243-52] Keldysh writes approvingly that Stravinsky spearheaded the reaction

“against the harmonic over-refinement, highly-strung emotionality and hysterics of Skryabin’s musical style which had previously dominated the scene”.

Keldysh clearly prefers

Stravinsky’s complex chord technique, where chords can be disassembled into simple harmonic constituents, to Skryabin’s “intricate labyrinths of … chromaticism”.

But Stravinsky soon comes in for heavy criticism… Keldysh sees the folk scenes from Petrushka displaying more colouristic brilliance than live movement, and this brilliance “is invariably presented in grotesque hues”.

Keldysh is uncomfortable at the stylistic duality of Petrushka… the puppet “jerking mechanically on his strings” turns out to have feelings, whereas the crowd is living but soulless. “This opposition bore a particular social meaning that responded perfectly to the mood of the intelligentsia during the period of reaction following 1905”.

[1905 was a revolutionary year in Russia – but the Tsarist system regained control]

Keldysh concludes: Stravinsky isn’t suited to the new Revolutionary age. Not only is he a reactionary, but he has too large a dose of refined aestheticism.



Stravinsky’s assessment of his position in the USSR While the militant proletarian musicians are rejecting Stravinsky, Stravinsky is beginning to recognise he is making little headway in his homeland. Here’s his own assessment of the success of his ballets on the Soviet Russian stage,

published in An Autobiography (1936):

Under the old regime, [pre 1917] nothing of mine was ever produced. The new regime at first seemed to be interested in my music. The state theatres produced my ballets – Petrushka, L’Oiseau de Feu, and Pulcinella. A clumsy attempt to stage Renard was a failure, and the piece was soon taken off. But after that, which was ten years ago, only Petrushka retained a place in the repertories, and it was rarely given at that. As for my other works, Le Sacre, Les Noces, Le Soldat, Le Baiser de la Fée, and my latest creation Perséphone, have not yet seen the footlights in Russia. From this I conclude that a change of regime cannot change the truth of the old adage that no man is a prophet in his own country. [Stravinsky p 141]



1930s return to nationalism In the 1930s there was a return to nationalism in Soviet arts. Immediately after the October Revolution nationalism had been anathema; Communism is internationalist. Russian School composers started to be rehabilitated. Mussorgsky first. In the 1920s, proletarian musicians praised his operas: narrative “dramas of the people” But, his colleagues in the Kuchka

(Balakirev, Borodin, Cui, Rimsky Korsakov… collectively known in English as The Five, or The Mighty Handful)

were dismissed as the “irrelevant product of aristocratic and bourgeois roots”. [MFW Nat p 307] Then in the early 1930s Rimsky Korsakov made a comeback. He’d been the academic figure in the Kuchka, and a prolific composer. There was a festival of his music in Leningrad in 1933 when his operas were presented as

“ideological resistance to the threat of capitalism”. [Fairclough CfM p 166] The return of nationalism was signalled in 1934 when Socialist Realism was being defined.

Stalin advised that art should be: National in form Socialist in content. [Schwarz p 110]



Return to nationalism… opportunity for Stravinsky? With nationalism back in vogue,

perhaps there would be a new opportunity in the USSR for Stravinsky’s Petrushka-style works? This didn’t happen. Some of the reasons why Stravinsky’s Petrushka-style nationalism failed in the USSR

can be illustrated with the Soviet response to a composition by Sergei Prokofiev; Russian Overture.



Prokofiev Russian Overture Prokofiev wrote Russian Overture in autumn 1936 to celebrate his permanent return to the USSR. Russian Overture is a complex work…

unusually complex for this period because Prokofiev had been simplifying his style after the opera Fiery Angel and the associated Symphony No 3 (1928).

Perhaps this complexity can be explained by Russian Overture being conceived much earlier?

Nelly Kranetz links the work to an unrealised project from 1917. In his diary entry “May 1917” Prokofiev wrote:

After the [Classical] symphony I have another project: a similarly small-scale Russian Symphony in a pure Russian style. I shall dedicate it to Diaghilev, in memory of his fervent appeals to me, a Russian, to write unabashedly Russian music. [Prokofiev Diaries vol 2 p 196]



LISTENING NOTES: Sergei Prokofiev Russian Overture op 72

First performance: 29 October 1936 in Moscow Moscow State Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Eugen Szenkár

Russian Overture is scored for huge orchestra including:

eight horns, four each of trumpets and woodwind and seven percussionists. Prokofiev revised the score in 1937 for a smaller orchestra:

four horns, three each of trumpets and woodwind and three percussionists. Russian Overture is built on six basic themes in 2/4 and 4/4 time which are easily woven together. The structure is a rondo:

A boisterous folk dance B salon song style with schmaltzy romantic accompaniment A1 boisterous folk dance C liturgical chant – in the Orthodox znamennyi style A2 boisterous folk dance Coda resembles the Shrove Fair in Stravinsky’s Petrushka



The music is complex, with the thematic material randomly adding and dropping beats and shifting accent. It is full of bustling festivity; it is certainly music of the people,

with folk rhythms and sophisticated orchestration imitating street instruments such as wheezing accordions.

Prokofiev’s Soviet biographer, Israel Nestyev, says two of these tunes are genuine folk music,

taken from ethnographic recordings. The style of much of the music is the chastushka, a sort of ditty, two or four lines of doggerel;

robust, and often lewd. Chastushki are associated with rural youth; not the highest form of folk art! With the Revolution there was a rise in political satire in chastushka form,

which influenced the style of poets Bedny and Mayakovsky.

Chastushka is sometimes translated in English-language musical circles as “limerick”. Limerick may not precisely capture the form of the chastushka, but it works in terms of social positioning.

LINK 2 (14 mins)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS_xzOFaTac Prokofiev Russian Overture: USSR Ministry of Culture Orchestra conducted Rozhdestvensky

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS_xzOFaTac



Russian Overture – response in the USSR Prokofiev’s Russian Overture isn’t played often. Historically it seems to have had one major advocate. Conductor Eugen Szenkár used it enthusiastically as a calling card in his post-Soviet career. Szenkár said:

Prokofiev paid little attention to what the world had to say about his music. It seems as if he has woven his melodies for the wonderful imaginary world of dreams or maybe for only a few people, who understand him. [Nelly Kranetz]

In the USSR, Russian Overture faced two significant problems:

Chastushka was the wrong sort of folk music, from the perspective of the dominant Russian nationalist tradition.

Stravinsky Prokofiev and the reviewers explicitly linked Russian Overture to Ballets Russes and Stravinsky. This was unhelpful because Stravinsky had now switched status from “tolerated émigré” to “persona non grata” (which remained his status until the late 1950s).



The chastushka problem Resurgent Russian nationalism in Soviet music took an interesting course. It simply readopted the Russian archetype developed by the Kuchka in the 1860s. Marina Frolova-Walker, in her fascinating 2007 book Russian Music and Nationalism from Glinka to Stalin,

shows the Kuchka’s selective approach to folk music. They based their music on three specific strands of folk music:

protyazhnaya (drawn out song)

salon song

a touch of orientalism from Balakirev (to underline Russia’s eastern origin). The chastushka was not part of the Kuchka’s vision of Russian folk-based national music

… so the aesthetic experts of Soviet musicology deemed it improper. Bad news for Prokofiev’s new Russian Overture,

and one of the reasons his earlier ballet Chout (The Buffoon) failed in the USSR. Also bad news for Stravinsky’s chastushka based works, such as Les Noces and Mavra.



Stravinsky on Russian nationalism An Autobiography expresses Stravinsky’s views of Russian nationalism. First Stravinsky pays tribute to Pushkin:

[the] most perfect representative of that wonderful line which began with Peter the Great and which, by a fortunate alloy, has united the most characteristically Russian elements with the spiritual riches of the West.

Then he contrasts the nationalism of Glinka and Tchaikovsky, which he characterises as

“cosmopolitan”

with that of the Kuchka, which he sees as “[a] doctrinaire catechism they wished to impose... [a] naïve but dangerous tendency which prompts them to remake an art that has already been created instinctively by the genius of the people. It is a sterile tendency and an evil from which many artists suffer” [Stravinsky p 97]

Ironically Prokofiev appears to have been ambivalent about the qualities of Petrushka. Here’s how he recorded his impressions on first seeing Petrushka performed in June 1913:

Next day… I heard Stravinsky’s Petrushka. I was most interested to see and hear this ballet… and went to the performance with the liveliest curiosity. The way it was staged sent me into ecstasies, as did the orchestration and the wit constantly displayed, so that my attention did not flag for a moment, so engaging was it; but the music! I thought about it a great deal and came to the conclusion that there is ultimately something not real about it, despite its many talented passages. But my God what an avalanche of padding it contains, music not needed for the sake of the music but purely for the stage. [Prokofiev Diaries vol 1 p 429]



Anathematisation of Stravinsky When Prokofiev acknowledged Stravinsky influence on Russian Overture in 1936

he may have been unaware that Stravinsky was no longer politically acceptable.

Boris Asafiev, one of the USSR’s leading musicologists had praised the composer in Book on Stravinsky, published in 1929. But as early as 1932 he had renounced this flirtation with modernism, saying he had been rescued by an intense study of Mussorgsky. [Schwarz p 52] In 1936 Mikhail Druskin was pilloried as a formalist when comments from his 1928 book New Piano Music resurfaced. He was mocked for describing Stravinsky’s Piano Rag Music as

“the turning point in piano literature” and “the gospel of modern rhythm”. [Schwarz p 128] The anathematisation of Stravinsky in the USSR lasted until the late 1950s. When Nestyev’s Soviet era biography of Prokofiev was published in 1957

there is an elliptical description of Russian Overture, referring to ballet characters such as the “rakish merchant” being evident in the music.

Perhaps some readers recognised this reference to Stravinsky’s Petrushka. But Nestyev avoids naming either composer or ballet. [MFW Nat p 342]



Popov Second Symphony We are going to move on a few years, to 1943. Popov’s Second Symphony appears to include a homage to Petrushka in the second movement. This was not acknowledged at the time, since Stravinsky was by then a non-person. Gavriil Popov (1904-72) studied at Leningrad Conservatoire. He was friendly with both Prokofiev and Shostakovich. His best known achievement was the score for Chapaev (1934) an iconic Soviet film

about a real-life Civil War hero; an illiterate peasant who rapidly rose up the ranks. Popov’s First Symphony won a prize in 1932 before it was even completed. No sooner was it performed, in March 1935, than it was withdrawn from the repertoire for reflecting

“the ideology of classes hostile to us”. One month later it was reinstated

… but then withdrawn again in 1936, collateral damage from the Lady Macbeth affair. First Symphony was not heard again in Popov’s lifetime. Diary entries from 1936 show Popov planning a new symphony in great detail. The form was novel – the entire work would emerge from a fortissimo unison melody. However, this work was never committed to paper. [Iosif Raiskin – Northern Flowers liner notes for Third Symphony]



Prize-winning Second Symphony Second Symphony was written 1943. It is adapted from music for Fridrikh Ermler’s film She Defends the Motherland.

The film tells of a woman who forms and leads a Partisan unit following the Nazi invasion. Her husband has been killed in battle, and her young son killed as the Nazis occupied their village.

Second Symphony was awarded Stalin Prize second class in 1946. Musicologist Bogdanov-Berozovsky wrote in Советская Музыка / Soviet Music, 1946:

Second Symphony was composed at a time of the bloodiest battles ever fought on the territory of our vast country. It is full of massive power of fundamental, inner energy. This was a great success for the composer, achieved by great anguish. [Per Skans – liner notes Olympia disc]

Head of the music section of the Stalin Prize committee – Khrapchenko – advocated a prize, saying:

Second Symphony has great emotional force, it has great breadth, great inner pathos: the composer has something to say, and he says a lot indeed, in an expressive and accessible manner.

[MFW Stalin Prize p 94]



LISTENING NOTES: Gavriil Popov Second Symphony “Motherland” op 39 First performance: 15 February 1944 in Moscow USSR State Symphony Orchestra conducted by Natan Rakhlin

Popov said that the first and second movement are about peace, while the third and fourth are about war. I Andante con moto e molto espressivo

Fugue based on a Russian folk theme, scored for strings and timpani. “The people’s soul … broad and stern … born by the boundless expanses of Russian nature”*

II Presto giocoso Striking change of mood. A scherzo and trio structure, where the scherzo clearly references the Shrove Fair scene from Petrushka.

“Russian merry-go-round dance … [alternating with] … images of intimate lyricism and tenderness”*

III Largo An arch movement, played on strings alone until the climax where wind and percussion briefly join in.

“Images of human grief and suffering, heavy victims that fell to our Motherland’s lot”*

IV Presto inquieto Eerie strings bring in themes from earlier movements, with complex polyrhythms. A fugue is played first on strings, then on wind. After a pause, there is a slow majestic coda based on the opening theme of the symphony.

“[After] vehement strife ... the nation’s mighty and bright strength of mind wins … the melodious theme of the first movement growing into a symbol of our Motherland’s power and greatness”*

* Popov quoted by Nick Barnard, Musicweb International



Option A: here is a link to Popov’s Second Symphony the whole work lasts about 36 minutes… and is worth hearing.

LINK 3 A (36 mins) www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlcByU9-Lho

Popov Second Symphony “Motherland” St. Petersburg State Academic Capella Symphony Orchestra conducted by Alexander Titov

Option B: here is a link to ONLY the second movement…

the scherzo which references the Shrove Fair scene from Petrushka. LINK 3 B (8 mins)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fp-u_K6PnQ Popov Second Symphony “Motherland” – Second movement only St. Petersburg State Academic Capella Symphony Orchestra conducted by Alexander Titov

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlcByU9-Lhohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fp-u_K6PnQ



The Khrushchev Thaw The anathematisation of Stravinsky continued through the late Stalin era. Nikolai Karetnikov recalls an incident at Moscow Conservatoire in his memoirs Themes with Variations:

1952. A student (today a quite well known composer) walked along the Conservatoire corridor with some Stravinsky scores under his arm. Another student (today a very well known composer) noticed the scores. He immediately went to the Party office and submitted his report:

“I’ve just seen So-and-so with Stravinsky scores in his hands!” The accused was picked up red-handed: only a miracle saved him from expulsion from the Conservatoire.

[Karetnikov p 39]

Stalin died in 1953. The Khrushchev Thaw was soon underway. The rehabilitation of Stravinsky stated with an article in Советская Музыка / Soviet Music in 1955,

written by a new graduate from Moscow Conservatoire – Rodion Shchedrin. Shchedrin argued for:

[differentiating] the youthful Stravinsky “the disciple of Rimsky Korsakov”, from the later Stravinsky “the enemy of his homeland”. Early works like Firebird and Petrushka belong to the history of Russian music. [Schwarz p 286]

A few months later Shostakovich added his opinion

Petrushka is not really an example of anti-people music. [Schwarz p 286]



LISTENING NOTES: Rodion Shchedrin Concerto for Orchestra No 1 “Naughty Limericks”

First performance: 25 June 1963 in Moscow. Moscow Radio Orchestra conducted Rozhdestvensky Rodion Shchedrin was born in Moscow 1932 in a musical family; his father was a composer. Married to Bolshoi’s prima ballerina assoluta Maya Plisetskaya from 1958 to her death in 2015. In the Soviet era Shchedrin was positioned as an “acceptable modernist”. From 1973 he was head of the Russian section of the Union of Soviet Composers. Озорные частушки / Naughty Limericks made Shchedrin’s international reputation as a composer. Remember: частушки/chatushki is the form that was frowned upon in Prokofiev’s Russian Overture.

(see pages 20-22) This is the first Soviet example of a concerto for orchestra, and the high spirits bring orchestral techniques associated with decadent western modernism to the stage: including brass players slapping their mouthpieces, and violinists striking their music stands. Levon Hakobian has described this piece as:

a splendid kaleidoscope of colourful motifs and keen orchestral effects reanimating the spirit of Petrushka on Soviet Russian soil”. [Hakobian p 327]

LINK 4 (8 mins)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2bRuEhEYsc Shchedrin Concerto for Orchestra No. 1: USSR State Symphony conducted by Svetlanov

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2bRuEhEYsc



Bibliography

Pauline Fairclough Classics for the Masses 2016 Marina Frolova-Walker Russian Music and Nationalism from Glinka to Stalin 2007 Marina Frolova-Walker Music and Soviet Power 1917-32 2012

& Jonathan Walker Marina Frolova-Walker Stalin’s Musical Prize 2016 Levon Hakobian Music of the Soviet Era (2nd Edition) 2017 Nikolai Karetnikov Thèmes avec variations 1990 Nelly Kravetz Sergei Prokofiev and Eugene Szenkar: 2006 First performance of Russian Overture in Eretz Israel Francis Maes A History of Russian Music 1996 Sergei Prokofiev Diaries 1907-1914: Prodigious Youth 2006

(trans Anthony Phillips) Diaries 1915-1923: Behind the Mask 2008 Boris Schwarz Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia 1917-1970 1972 Igor Stravinsky An Autobiography 1936

exiles from revolution stravinsky the nationalist welcome to the … · 2021. 1. 13. · petrushka...

Documents