Russian Composers around 1900
Mykola LYSENKO (1842-1912)
Overture to the opera Taras Bulba [4:46]
Alexander SCRIABIN (1872-1915)
Le Poème de l’Extase op.54 [20:47]; Rêverie
op.24 [5:40]
Alexander GLAZUNOV (1865-1936)
Valse de Concert No.1 in D major op.47 (1893) [9:07]
Nikolai MIASKOVSKY (1881-1950)
Symphony No.21 op.51 in F sharp minor [17:20]
Beethoven Orchestra Bonn/Stefan Blunier
rec. Bonn, Germany, 10-11 November 2011
MUSIKPRODUKTION DABRINGHAUS UND GRIMM 9371761-6 SACD
[57:44]
This CD is entitled Russian Composers around 1900, a
strange title when two of the four were Ukrainian which is similar
to describing Scottish composers as English - try getting away
with that! Had MDG wanted to stick to Russian-born composers
there are plenty to choose from who were working around 1900
but this disc may be the first of a series.
Lysenko is a new name to me but I read that he was considered
as ‘the father of Ukrainian music’ through his rediscovery
and use of folk melodies in his music. It is a shame therefore
that this disc allots him less than five minutes to show his
use of folk music for which he is so renowned though the Overture
to the opera Taras Bulba certainly demonstrates it. There
is a Russian tradition, however, that is easy to recognise and
one can hear shades of Ippolitov-Ivanov, Kalinnikov and others
from that generation. The work comes to an end with stirring
sounds so reminiscent of works that made the Red Army Choir
famous that one almost expects them to make an appearance at
any moment.
Scriabin, by contrast, was his own man if ever there was one,
a complete one-off, who saw himself in a particular light of
his own cast. His planned but never executed dream of a total
art work entitled Mysterium performed by 2000 of his
‘disciples’ at the foot of the Himalayas lasting
seven biblical days fusing together music, dance, architecture
and theatre is entirely in keeping with this most individual
of composers. A composer who cannot be pigeonholed, whose Poem
of Ecstasy, which was meant to be a part of the project,
is a symphonic expression of that thinking and an almost overwhelmingly
rich and heady mix of colours in sound that is almost a kind
of musical marijuana. Scriabin’s short piece entitled
Rêverie is in a similar vein and as dreamlike as
its title suggests that again shows how well he wrote for orchestra
using every section to the full.
Glazunov, who was born only seven years before Scriabin and
who outlived him by over twenty, was a much more “traditional”
composer whose music had more in common with his friend and
colleague Tchaikovsky than it did the newer and more experimental
composers who were to come later and his Valse de Concert
No.1 is a charming concert piece which was enthusiastically
received by his mentor Rimsky-Korsakov.
The final work on the disc is the twenty-first of Miaskovsky’s
27 symphonies. It dates from 1940. Miaskovsky has been called
‘the father of the Soviet symphony’ and indeed Scriabin
biographer Igor Belsa claimed this symphony could “only
have been composed by a composer living in the Soviet era”.
I don’t know what he meant by that apart from it being
a compliment to Soviet musical education and what he perceived
as the ‘Soviet reality’ whilst I would say that
the same could certainly be said for Shostakovich’s 10th
symphony though clearly for entirely different reasons. Miaskovsky’s
symphony is lush, full of melody and lyrical expression and
shows his determination in using folk music to keep alive the
Russian tradition as pointed out in the notes. However, lauded
as he was by the Soviet musical establishment of which he was
a part, as a professor at the Moscow Conservatory, a teacher
of Khachaturian and Kabalevsky and a member of the Soviet Composers’
Union, he was still vilified as “foreign to the people
and formalistic” in 1948, that awful year for musical
life in the USSR.
I hadn’t come across the Beethoven Orchester Bonn before
or their Swiss Musical Director Stefan Blunier but they are
an obvious pearl in Bonn’s crown and are helping raise
the former West German capital’s profile to the status
befitting of Beethoven’s birthplace.
This was an enjoyable disc and if it is the first of a series
then subsequent releases will be of interest.
Steve Arloff
Enjoyable disc and if it is the first of a series then subsequent
releases will also be of interest.