This CD arrived quite quickly considering it had to come from England via the Royal Mail. Russian music, recorded by Russian musicians in the USA and Russia for a German label, but shipped from a warehouse in England.
The Silver Age in Russian music, at least as defined by Diaghilev, lasted only a decade: from 1907, when his concerts began in Paris, to 1917 when the Russian Revolution ended the party and exiled so many of the artists. This two-disc set amply captures the range of music with works by Prokofiev, Stravinsky and Scriabin. Two piano concertos, the 2nd, by Prokofiev and the other by Scriabin, are accompanied by the Mariinsky Orchestra conducted by Gergiev. The rest of the repertoire is solo piano with transcriptions from two Stravinsky ballets and the 8th Piano Sonata by Prokofiev.
Daniil Trifonov is a pianist with seemingly unlimited technical skills, not to mention deep musical sensitivities. His Prokofiev Sonata No. 8 is brilliant both musically and technically, as is his Sarcasms, op. 17. His ballet transcriptions of The Firebird and Petrushka are truly orchestral in their timbral resources. Indeed, I don't think I have ever heard the "Russian Dance" so well played. Trifonov never seems to lose the thread of the rhythmic drive despite Stravinsky's montage-like transitions.
The Piano Concerto No. 2 of Prokofiev is one of my very favorite concertos, especially the first movement and this is close to being a definitive rendering. Again, it is an exercise in color and shading. I'm sorry to say that I didn't know the Scriabin Concerto in F# minor before hearing this recording. I've never been quite sure what to make of Scriabin. I suppose you could describe his music as a kind of mystical post-Wagnerian journey. In any case, I was pleased to discover this concerto. The second movement, unusually, is a serene set of variations that grows in intensity leading up to a hyper-romantic finale.
Here is the first movement of the Scriabin Concerto in F# minor:
How odd that I didn't have a label for "modes" until just now! I recall standing about ten feet away from Richard Taruskin many years ago at the annual American Musicological Society conference (it was in Baltimore that year) when he asked the Russian musicologist who was giving a talk on Tchaikovsky where one of the modes he had just mentioned could be found in the music. The Russian gave a moment's thought and said, "it is in volume two of the collected works, the choral piece such-and-such." Musicologists know all the details! In any case, I forget now exactly what mode that was, but it is certainly the case that Russians use a lot of weird modes not found elsewhere. Let's have a look at them, shall we?
I have mentioned the octatonic scale often enough here. It is a symmetrical scale that comes in two forms, a "minor" one and a "phrygian" one. Those are not the official names, I'm not sure they have official names. But one starts with a tone-semitone repeated, the "minor" form, while the other is reversed, starting with a semitone-tone repeated, hence "phrygian." I just call them that for my own convenience. Here they are:
I think the first time they were actually used in a musical composition was by Franz Liszt, but the scale really found a home with Russian composers, especially Rimsky-Korsakov and his students. In Russia it is known as the "Korsakov scale." Stravinsky used it a lot and so did Shostakovich. Russian musicologists have pointed out that Shostakovich used other modes as well and Russian musical history is particularly rich in weird modes. From the book Shostakovich Studies, p. 91, here are some other Russian modes:
Click to enlarge
If the only Tchaikovsky you know is the Piano Concerto No. 1 played by Yuja Wang in an incredibly short skirt, then this piece by Tchaikovsky may surprise you: the Hymn of the Cherubim:
Canada and Russia have a lot in common: both are very large countries, geographically, and between the two of them, surround the Arctic. But whereas Canada is, let's face it, just a bit dull, Russia and its culture never cease to amaze. I just ran across this clip of Russian dancers:
Hard to believe some of that is even possible. Then there are Russian movies like Night Watch and Day Watch based on Russian science-fiction novels. Then there is the Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman who won the two highest honors in mathematics, the Fields medal and the Millennium Prize, both with million dollar awards. Despite living in his mother's apartment in St. Petersburg, he refused to accept either prize (and turned down other honors as well) because in his view they were "irrelevant."
The Russians also do some of the most realistic war movies like Admiral from 2008. It begins with a naval engagement. From around the 6 minute mark, watch as the captain takes over command of their single gun and, with the aid of the only remaining gun crew member, badly wounded, manages to land a hit on the bridge of the German ship, temporarily putting them out of action.
Last summer, when I was at the Salzburg Festival, I saw three of the best pianists in the world within a single week: Grigory Sokolov, Igor Levit and Evgeny Kissin. Sokolov and Kissin are Russian and Levit was born in Russia but grew up in Germany.
What is it with the Russians and why have they always had such spectacularly bad governments?
Sokolov doesn't do concerto performances any more and there aren't a lot of clips around, but this one is likely worth watching/hearing.
The view of Russia in the mainstream media these days is rather negative. I have seen it described as "Zaire with permafrost" or as a country with an economy the size of Italy, but with a lot of nuclear weapons ruled by a dictator whose political opponents tend to meet with terrible accidents. Of course a lot of this is a hangover from the days of the Cold War, but there is no denying that Russia does not have a great public image in the West.
But I see rather a different Russia. From the point of view of art and culture, Russia is profoundly impressive. If we just list a few Russian writers this becomes very clear almost immediately: Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Solzhenitsyn, Pushkin, Turgenev, Chekhov, Gogol, Pasternak--one could go on and on. A list of just the important Russian composers would include Glinka, Balakirev, Borodin, Cui, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Kabalevsky, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Scriabin, Schnittke, Ustvolskaya, Gubaidulina... Then there are the great Russian pianists: Vladimir Ashkenazy, Lazar Berman, Yefim Bronfman, Emil Gilels, Vladimir Horowitz, Evgeny Kissin, Sviatoslav Richter, Grigory Sokolov--and those are just the really big names. Great Russian string players: David Oistrakh, Gregor Piatigorsky, Mstislav Rostropovich, Jascha Heifetz, Isaac Stern (both born in what was then part of Russia) and so on.
There are extraordinary Russians in other fields as well, but much less known to me. One example that comes to mind is Grigori Perelman, the great Russian mathematician who has been awarded and refused, in succession, the Fields medal (equivalent to a Nobel Prize), the Millennium Prize (accompanied by a million dollar award) and the prize of the European Mathematical Society. That doesn't happen very often.
How do we explain this? I'm pretty sure I can't! But one thing seems clear: Russians, as individuals are an extremely impressive people, very creative and very serious. But they have always been plagued by really horrible governments and administration. Perhaps these two things are just not very compatible. We might compare with Canada, a well-governed land with a mild and complacent populace that is not particularly known for great artistic creativity.
I want to end with two clips. The first is of a little traffic dispute on a road in Russia:
Oh, I recommend turning down the sound a bit as someone added a rap track. So that's one side of Russia. And here is another side. For a long time, Rostropovich hoped that Shostakovich would write a cello concerto, but Shostakovich's wife always advised never to mention it to him! Finally, one day, Rostropovich received a phone call to come over and was given the score of a new cello concerto. Four days later he came back with his accompanist to play it for Shostakovich. He was offered a music stand and, in what he said was the proudest moment of his life, Rostropovich replied, "no thanks, I have it from memory!" The whole concerto. In four days. This is just the beginning:
UPDATE: A commentator left me a terrific example of Canadian "road rage" and it is so appropriate, I'm going to embed it below.
I am surprised at how very large Russia looms in the history of music over the last hundred years or so. It is particularly striking to me as a Canadian, the other very large northern nation, because Russia leapt ahead and developed a deep musical culture while Canada still seems to be struggling. Very different places, of course. Russia was importing European composers and culture for a long time, dating from the 18th century at least, while Canada had to make to with the thin gruel of 19th century British musical culture. Early classical music in Canada tended to come from composers in Quebec, with a French musical influence, but the British conquest of Quebec in 1759 severed that connection.
Throughout the 19th century Russian music grew enormously starting with Mikhail Glinka (1804 - 1857) whose overture to the opera Ruslan and Lyudmila is justly celebrated. This is the Orchestra Of Mariinsky Theatre - Director Valery Gergiev (who looks like he is conducting with a toothpick):
Then came the "Mighty Handful" of five brilliant and original Russian composers: Mily Balakirev, César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Borodin. All lived in Saint Petersburg, and collaborated from 1856 to 1870. I have put up a lot of posts on Russian music since then, most recently my series of posts on Stravinsky.
So today I want to fill in a gap. I have just recently become aware of Galina Ustvolskaya (1919 - 2006) a student of Shostakovich and yet another native of St. Petersburg. Just last month a large scale festival and symposium on the music of Ustvolskaya was held in Chicago. Among the scholars giving papers was Richard Taruskin. Ustvolskaya's music was largely ignored during the Soviet period as it was too "modernist." Indeed, it is only recently that she has begun to be recognized as an important contemporary composer. Here is a piece written in 1959, the Grand Duet for Cello and Piano. The performers are Cello - Mstislav Rostropovich and Piano - Alexei Lubimov:
That is certainly uncompromising music. Shostakovich said about her: "I am convinced that the music of G. I. Ustvolskaya will achieve worldwide renown, to be valued by all who perceive truth in music to be of paramount importance."
Ustvolskaya typically used very unusual instrumental combinations. Her Composition No. 3 (1975), for example, is for four flutes, four bassoons and piano:
Wikipedia says:
Her specific idealism is informed by an almost fanatical determination; this should be construed not only as a typically Russian trait, but also – in terms of Dostoyevsky – as a 'St. Petersburgian' one.
Let's listen to another piece. This is her Symphony No. 3 from 1983, subtitled "Jesus Messiah, Save Us." The performers are Valery Gergiev conducting the Munich Philharmonic. At least one commentator claims that this is not a good performance.
Here is the only other one on YouTube so you can compare:
Well, yeah, that seems far superior!
The only composer that this even vaguely reminds me of is Olivier Messiaen, whose dates are not too distant--if he were Russian, not French.
This book is a new collection of essays on Russian music by the leading musicologist. Taruskin is the author of the five-volume Oxford History of Western Music and has probably forgotten more about music than the rest of us ever knew. He is sometimes accused of being confrontational, but my sense is that he just doesn't have a lot of patience with idiotic points of view.
In an environment where a great deal of silliness is becoming more and more ensconced, Taruskin displays a very clear understanding of what the real job of musicology is: to unearth and understand the facts. Of the three transcendental values of the Good, the True and the Beautiful, a musicologist, or any scholar, has allegiance to only one: the True. How refreshing to hear someone simply state that.
I am a long way from finishing the volume, but as it consists of separate essays, I thought it would be good to talk about a couple of the earlier ones. The title "Suicide Notes, Faked Memoirs, Toasts to Killers" is a particularly characteristic one. The references are to controversies involving three Russian composers, Tchaikovsky (whose name Taruskin insists on spelling Chaikovsky--probably a more correct transliteration, but it still looks wrong to me), Shostakovich and Prokofiev. The controversies are respectively, Tchaikovsky's death and sexual orientation, the book Testimony purporting to be Shostakovich's memoirs as told to Solomon Volkov and the propriety of performing music by Prokofiev written in praise of Stalin.
The bottom line: Tchaikovsky was indeed homosexual and the evidence is clear from many of his and other's correspondence once it had been rescued from Soviet and other censorship, but there is no reason to believe he was so tormented by it that he committed suicide. The book by Volkov is an obvious fraud and has been shown to be so quite decisively. Finally, if you are going to have the poor taste to perform sycophantic tributes to the mass-murderer Joseph Stalin, at least have the courage to translate the text so the audience can be aware. Taruskin spends quite a lot of time excoriating those who present the discredited narratives and sometimes it can seem a bit like an intramural squabble. Still, musicology is about the details and he certainly has lots to share.
Taruskin also takes the time to torpedo another absurd claim, this time by Robert Craft, Stravinsky's long time associate and ghost writer. At a conference towards the end of his, Craft's, life, he tries to claim that around the time of the Rite of Spring and Petrouchka, Stravinsky was bisexual and enjoying romps with other men including Ravel! No-one left alive to dispute this, of course, but Taruskin examines the extremely sparse evidence and concludes: not a chance. While we are on the topic, he also alludes to the definitive dismissal of the idea that Franz Schubert was also homosexual.
One essay is on the topic of "nationalist" versus "non-nationalist" Russian composers and, frankly, I never quite get what the fuss is all about. Being a nationalist Russian composer, or classified as such, means that you are consigned to a special musicological ghetto? Ok. Am I just an "essentialist" for having the sense that Russian music has some distinctive qualities? Taruskin gets so far in the weeds of Russian history that I tend to forget what the point was. He seems to think that excessive attention to Russian composers as Russian nationalists is a kind of dispensable identity politics and in that case, I suppose I agree.
His discussion of Russian opera and its 18th century predecessors is fascinating however.
It is often the breadth of Taruskin's scholarship that attracts. In discussing Russian opera he outlines the three categories of Russian historical thought:
dynastic history as established by Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin, official historiographer appointed by Alexander I
neo-Hegelian statism represented by Sergey Solovyov, rigorously teleological in its praise of the centralized state
a "populist" school, short-lived, whose exponent was Nikolai Kostomarov
I love that he knows all about these guys. If we were to apply these varying historiographical schools to current American politics then we would have the dynastic view represented by both the Clinton and the Bush dynasties, the centralized statism by Barack Obama and the populist school represented by both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Heh!
As with most of Taruskin's writing I find 95% of it both intriguing and convincing. But there is always that 5% that I am skeptical about. In an earlier collection it was the claim that the whole foundation of the Early Music Movement's approach to performance practice was based on the taste for terrace dynamics and brisk, mechanical tempi by modernist composers like Stravinsky. Not among lutenists it wasn't! And I doubt the whole concept.
In this book the claim that caught my attention was that the direction musicology ought to be going (and is in fact going) is away from understanding great composers as individual geniuses and towards understanding them in terms of the social context and what they were doing in relation to everyone else. Perhaps this is a productive direction for musicologists from a career point of view, but that is likely because they keep running up against the brick wall of individual genius which is why we listen to those great composers and tend to avoid the far more numerous dullards and frauds.
I'm sure that my progress through the book will produce more posts. In the meantime, let's listen to something Russian. This is Evgeny Mravinsky conducting the Leningrad Symphony in a 1957 recording of the Symphony No. 4 by Tchaikovsky:
I'm Canadian, born in Alberta, grew up in British Columbia and educated in Quebec. But a lot of my favorite music is Russian. My two favorite 20th century composers are Stravinsky and Shostakovich and I find a lot of other Russian composers quite evocative like Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov. Now Canada and Russia have a lot in common: they are the two main countries with Arctic territories, they have an awful lot of land for the population, and much of the development and exploration came in the 19th and 20th centuries. But, from an historical point of view, Canada has had better luck. Instead of being cursed by the authoritarian rule of the tsars, followed by the even more authoritarian rule of Lenin, Stalin and their successors, Canada was blessed by being colonized by the British, something that, it has been said, was the best policy for any nation in the 18th and 19th centuries.
I have sometimes joked that the plan for Canada, based on its neighbors and history, was to have French culture (until being conquered by the British in the 18th century, Canada was a French colony and the population is still 25% French-speaking), British government and American know-how. Alas, what we seem to have ended up with is French government, British know-how and American culture!
The two major differences between Russia and Canada are population and history. Russia has a population of about 140 million and Canada fewer than 35 million. Historically, Russia has been at the crossroads of many nomadic invaders and the recipient of European culture. As I was mentioning in my post on Mussorgsky, it was not until well into the 19th century that Russia began to develop its own brand of concert music. Before then, religious music aside, it was all Italian opera for the aristocracy and folk music for the common folk. Canada has had a sparse indigenous music history as well. One of the most characteristic varieties of Canadian music is "old-time" fiddling, very popular on the East coast and common throughout Quebec and the Prairies. Most of the rest of Canadian music consists of popular and concert music very closely derived from, first of all, Britain, and more recently, the United States. There's that American culture! Ironically, one of the first links that comes up on YouTube for "traditional French-Canadian fiddle music" is this concert at the Library of Congress. The actual concert doesn't start until the 7 minute mark.
One thing you will notice about this music is that it is rather similar to the Celtic fiddle music, also called "old-time" music, from Cape Breton. You might notice the "Scotch snap" in this recording, which reveals the Celtic origins of the style:
Apart from commercialized stuff and a lot of balalaika and accordion music, the most authentic seeming Russian folk music I can find in YouTube is all vocal. Here is a sample:
But where Canada and Russia really seem to diverge is in the 19th century when, all of a sudden, we have a lot of composers striving to create a uniquely Russian concert music based on Russian cultural traditions, but composed with European techniques. The Wikipedia article on Russian music describes this as follows:
The first great Russian composer to exploit native Russian music traditions into the realm of Secular music was Mikhail Glinka (1804–1857), who composed the early Russian language operas Ivan Susanin and Ruslan and Lyudmila.
They were neither the first operas in the Russian language nor the
first by a Russian, but they gained fame for relying on distinctively
Russian tunes and themes and being in the vernacular.
Russian folk music became the primary source for the younger generation composers. A group that called itself "The Mighty Five", headed by Balakirev (1837–1910) and including Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908), Mussorgsky (1839–81), Borodin (1833–87) and César Cui
(1835–1918), proclaimed its purpose to compose and popularize Russian
national traditions in classical music. Among the Mighty Five's most
notable compositions were the operas The Snow Maiden (Snegurochka), Sadko, Boris Godunov, Prince Igor, Khovanshchina, and symphonic suite Scheherazade.
Many of the works by Glinka and the Mighty Five were based on Russian
history, folk tales and literature, and are regarded as masterpieces of romantic nationalism in music.
We have nothing compared to this in Canada. Instead, in the 19th century, a modest national tradition of song developed. Wikipedia mentions the following:
The Great Migration of Canada from 1815 to 1850, done largely by Irish, British and Scottish immigrants, broadened considerably the Canadian musical culture.[39] 1844, Samuel Nordheimer (1824–1912) opened a music store in Toronto selling pianos and soon thereafter began to publish engraved sheet music.[1] Samuel Nordheimer store was among the first and the largest specialized music publisher in the Province of Canada.[40] They initially had the sole right to publish copies of Alexander Muir's "The Maple Leaf Forever" that for many years served as an unofficial Canadian national anthem.[41]
By the time of Canadian Confederation
(1867), songwriting had become a favored means of personal expression
across the land. In a society in which most middle-class families now
owned a piano, and standard education included at least the rudiments of
music, the result was often an original song.[42]
Such stirrings frequently occurred in response to noteworthy events,
and few local or national excitements were allowed to pass without some
musical comment.[43][44]
The 1870s saw several conservatories opened their doors, providing
their string, woodwind and brass faculty, leading to the opportunity for
any class level of society to learn music.[45]'One Sweetly Solemn Thought in 1876 by Hamilton-based Robert S. Ambrose, became one of the most popular songs to ever be published in the 19th century.[34] It fulfilled the purpose of being an appropriate song to sing in the parlors of homes that would not permit any non-sacred music to be performed on Sundays. At the same time it could be sung in dance halls or on the stage along operas and operettas.
What you may notice here is that while the Russian composers wrote music that is widely performed to this day, the same cannot be said of the Canadian 19th century composers mentioned. Well, sure, "The Maple Leaf Forever" is heard, but you can't really call it a piece of concert music. It was not until the 20th century that some Canadian composers began to appear. But none of them to date has really made a mark. Composers like Murray Adaskin achieved some renown in Canada, where he was the first composer to be appointed artist-in-residence at a university, but little outside. Here is his Vocalise for solo violin:
Now in pop music, it is an entirely different story as Canadian musicians such as Guy Lombardo, Paul Anka, Neil Young, the Guess Who, Leonard Cohen, Celine Dion and Justin Bieber have been enormously successful. But, Leonard Cohen aside, it is hard to point to much in their style that is uniquely Canadian.
This survey has been brief and woefully incomplete, but I hope it suggests some conclusions. For whatever reason, it seems evident that Canada has a weak musical identity, while Russia has a very powerful one. It is hard to imagine music in the 20th century without Stravinsky, Shostakovich and Prokofiev. But no Canadian composers (as opposed to popular musicians) have had this kind of lasting influence. I think we could use a few "wild men" like Mussorgsky! Or passionate geniuses like Tchaikovsky:
