The French Connection
It’s a
tenuous connection, I suppose, but in a programme devoted entirely to French
and Russian composers we can hardly avoid it. In the Eighteenth Century,
the German-born Catherine the Great wilfully infected the Russian aristocracy
with her “francophilia”, dragging Russian culture out of the dark ages
and into enlightenment. It wasn’t all plain political sailing between the
nations - in the early 1800s, Napoleon didn’t exactly top the guest list
for your average Russian aristo’s Ball. Yet, by the time Glinka “fathered”
Russian music, Catherine’s French incense had permeated the life-blood
of Russian art. The quality of Russian music as we know it partly arises
from tension between this entrenched Gallic infusion and emergent nationalism:
if the “acquired” was glycerine, the “genetic” was nitric acid - a fairly
potent brew!
It might
seem strange to start with music by Jakob Eberst - until we remember he
was born in Offenbach. He was a perfect specimen of this “French
connection”: his music sounds more “French” than many a native. If our
concert’s composers are “graphic artists” then Jaques Offenbach [*],
in his scandalously saucy satire Orpheus in the Underworld, tops
the lot. Anyone can bask in its preludial party, interstitial idylls, infernal
interlude and winsome waltz - but having heard this overture once, what
gentleman can listen again without getting impatient for that naughty can-can,
and its attendant graphic images of the feminine underworld? There’s more
than a glimpse of stocking - is that shocking? No, my friends -
it’s art!
Take “saucy”,
discard “fun”, add “faune”, and Offenbach becomes Debussy. His Prélude
à l'Après-Midi d'un Faune was inspired less by Mallarmé’s
poem than by desire to realise the poet’s hopes for its “scenic value”.
The music’s rapturous reception (1894) has been submerged by the ballet’s
riotous reception (1902). Some, it seems, felt that Nijinsky’s fantasising
faune overplayed the eroticism. Judging by the music, I’d have thought
that unlikely! Mallarmé’s “faune” languishes in the heat, his feverish
mind filling with erotic fantasies. Debussy’s luminous colours and cloying
harmonies evoke the sultry shimmering to a “T”. However, that’s not all,
because any self-respecting faune can stand the heat. Somehow, Debussy
makes the very notes of his harmonies seem to deliquesce, reflecting oppressive
humidity - and that’s what’s floored the faune.
Far from
being musical “twins”, Debussy and Ravel were as different as chalk
and cheese. Orchestrally, they shared only supreme graphic artistry, yet
even here their brushes made different strokes. Much of Ravel’s allure
comes from cohabitation of ancient and modern. Ancient -
especially dance - forms and modern styles are molecularly bonded via the
valence of incisive instrumentation. The Piano Concerto in G’s first
movement gives a jazz beat to the Bransle, whilst the astonishingly beautiful
second pares to the bone the “Hellenic” style of his teacher, Fauré,
almost making a Blues of it. In the third movement jazz beats the hell
out of Couperin, so to speak! As if it weren’t enough that these parallels
of subject and treatment enabled such stark contrasts without rupturing
the structure, there’s the sheer sound - which is out of this world!
Either
too busy to compose, too fastidious when composing, or a lazy so-and-so,
Lyadov’s inability to deliver the goods cost him the chance of a
lifetime - he was Diaghilev’s first choice for The Firebird! Yet,
when he bothered to put pen to paper his aural imagination was second to
none. Blessed with Rimsky-Korsakov’s flair for conjuring colours by the
simplest means (no mean feat!), Balakirev’s knack of line and structure,
and Mussorgsky’s feeling for the grotesque, he contrived to become the
greatest “Might Have Been” that ever graced the world of music. Hence you
might weep as you listen to Baba-Yaga, both a graphic impression
of a singularly nasty piece of work who chews children’s bones, and a graphic
illustration of the frisson generated by rubbing “rough” Russian nationalism
against “smooth” suavité Français.
Mussorgsky
was the wild man of the Mighty Handful. The correspondingly rough-hewn
quality of his music was, in his day, considered a Bad Thing. Unfortunately,
the bequest of his boozy lifestyle and early demise was an “incomplete
mess”. The well-intentioned “improvements” in Rimsky-Kosakov’s and Glazunov’s
completions ironed out what they saw as flaws. Nowadays, we’re busy putting
the “flaws” back in.
On the
death (1873) of his friend, the artist Victor Hartmann, Mussorgsky paid
tribute with this astonishingly graphic suite. Being for solo piano - and
completed! - it evaded his friends' ministrations. Pictures at
an Exhibition thus preserves the unsettling earthiness of the real
Mussorgsky. It’s a classic of the virtuoso piano repertoire, an epic of
such grand conception that its orchestral potential was immediately obvious.
Yet Rimsky-Korsakov, that orchestral magician par excellence, considered
it “untranslatable into any other medium”! Apparently, with his
unparalleled understanding of tone colour, he appreciated why Mussorgsky
had chosen the piano - for example, consider the palpable desperation
of even the finest pianist tackling the coda!
Why, with
oodles of extant orchestrations, are we hearing “the Ravel” yet again?
Well, it is arguably the finest: a true orchestration, meddling
minimally with the notes, and a prodigious feat of instrumental imagination,
its colours vividly harmonise with the images, whether romantic, raging,
fleet, ponderous, humorous, or downright ugly. If it has a fault it is,
according to Stokowski, that it’s “too French”, simply too refined
to truly reflect the rude original. In echoing Rimsky-Korsakov's and Glazunov's
general misconception, the French sophisticate supreme locks horns with
Russia’s roughest nationalist, and our “French connection” comes to a head.
The layout
resembles a stroll round the exhibition: the recurring “promenade” represents
Mussorgsky's reflections on the exhibits - and his lost friend. This makes
it particularly significant that after Limoges the skies suddenly
darken. “Strolling” becomes fevered progression, through limbo and lurid
nightmare into “desperate” incandescence. Mussorgsky traverses mourning,
communion with his dead friend’s soul, a fearful encounter with that bone-crunching
crone, to a cathartic vision of assailing the “Pearly Gates” with his friend
- and maybe a bottle of vodka?
[*]In
case you haven’t guessed, this was the name adopted by Jakob Eberst, for
exactly the same reasons of “image enhancement” as many a latter-day film
actor and pop singer!
Note originally commissioned
by the Vancouver Symphony for a concert given on 21 February 2004
.
© Paul Serotsky
29, Carr Street,
Kamo,
Whangarei 0101,
Northland,
New Zealand
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