Dmitri Shostakovich

These are compelling performances from the Spannungen Festival in Heimbach in 2010. Time after time, audiences are astonished at the musical results achieved by the artists at this festival. These are first-rate artists who play together elsewhere throughout the year, enabling wonderful chamber music encounters at Heimbach.

Although folk dances have a special place in Russian music, being raised to the status of character dances in works for the stage, the more classical forms taken over from the west are not neglected. During the nineteenth century the waltz, for example, tended more and more towards ‘pure’ music, giving rise to some highly virtuosic works in the manner of those by Weber or Liszt.

Thus, in 1856 Glinka (1804-1857), founder of the Russian nationalist school, produced the definitive version of a Valse which had already aroused the enthusiasm of Berlioz. Its slightly melancholy principal theme reappears as a refrain between episodes in various keys, which give rise to passages of instrumental dialogue and to such bold strokes such as the cantabile for solo trombone in the third episode. Witty or ironic comments by the flutes or strings turn it virtually into a fantasia – which Shostakovich was to recall later.

Scenes at parties and balls abound in opera. Tchaikovsky composed the waltz for Act Two of Eugene Onegin (1877) – with a chorus in its original version – so as to reflect the humdrum pretentiousness of the lesser, countrified aristocracy: it is closer to the waltz in Faust than to those he was to write for his ballets. This is in clear contrast to the majestic Act Three Polonaise, with its trio incorporating the traditional mazurka, which as the dance of aristocratic St Petersburg receptions is in a differ­ent class altogether.

Marius Petipa, who became chief ballet master at the imperial ballet in 1869, restored to the art of dance the nobility and charm which had been killed off by an emphasis on technique. Tchaikovsky provided him with music suffused with the poetic inspiration lacking in the more straightforwardly rhythmic scores of composers like Drigo and Pugni. He was, however, criticised by those ballet-lovers who found his music too symphonic; his waltzes, refined rather than brilliant and frivolous, are often tinged with dramatic lyricism, even a sense of anxiety. The unusual flavour of the Waltz of the Flowers from The Nutcracker (1892) is largely created by the mysterious other-worldly horn-calls answered by rippling clarinet figures.

Raymonda (1898) is a medieval romance choreographed by Petipa to music by Glazunov. Always melodious, subtle and graceful, it is sometimes highly evocative, as in the trance-like atmosphere in the dreamy slow-motion accompanying the heroine’s sleep (andante sostenuto) in the interlude before the second scene.

The tradition of the grand ballet d’action persisted right up to the revolution brought about by Sergei Diaghilev. Reacting against the ‘double pirouettes and detestable sets of thirty-two fouettés’, the director of the Ballets Russes sought the character of the various folk-dances of Russia and other countries, which he remodelled for the stage using a basically classical technique. In his Parisian season in 1909 he presented the second act of Prince Igor (1887) against the background of a tawny-coloured desert steppe. The Polovtsian Dances, alternating spellbinding movements for the women and pounding, savage rhythms for the warriors, were directed by Mikhail Fokine: when a tumultuous wave of dancers rushed downstage at the end, stopping dead just short of the foot­lights, it brought the house down!

Even Anatole Liadov, the composer of backwoods Russia, gave in to the infatuation of the Russian intelligentsia of around 1900 with ancient Greece. His Dance of the Amazon (1910), for Ida Rubinstein, employs two Greek chants, heavily reworked: the first theme suggests the Amazon riding on horseback, the second (meno mosso) emphasises the oriental atmosphere; brass and percussion suggest warlike activity – ushered in by a fanfare.

After the 1917 Revolution it was thought that the creations of the Tsarist era would be unappealing to the sensibilities of the new Bolshevik listener. New themes and characters – stadiums and factories, sportsmen and workers – figured in ‘futurist’ (that is, revolutionary) musical experiments. In Shostakovich’s ballet The Golden Age (1930), which portrays the misadventures of a Soviet football team in a capitalist country, a clownish polka caricatures decadent western society. In Tahiti Trot (1928) Shostakovich pulled off the challenge of re-orchestrating Vincent Youmans’ Tea for Two in record time, and in so doing exploited all the expressive and comic possibilities, as well as the shock tactics, of avant-garde experiments. But offerings like these, from an enfant terrible ‘who had nothing to say to the people’, led the Communist Party, around 1932, to rein back cultural activity and reinstate a classical, academic aesthetic, which also extended to opera and ballet.

The music of Prokofiev’s Love for Three Oranges (Chicago, 1921; Leningrad, 1927), precise, sturdily constructed and freshly coloured – as in the festive march from Act Two – was perfectly accessible, and yet it was later ignored in the USSR because of its libretto, which makes a feature of absurdity. Romeo and Juliet (1935/6, staged in 1940), on the other hand, with its universal subject, gained unanimous acceptance. The characterisation was exemplary: in the sombre, hieratic Dance of the Knights, with its great sweeps of sound, the menacing thrusts of the basses and brass powerfully convey the arrogance of a clan – as against the fresh sensitivity of youth portrayed by the central theme.

Although Khachaturian was also suspected of ‘formalism’, his artistic approach always coincided with that of the regime. His incidental music for a 1940 production of Lermontov’s The Masked Ball portrays well the spiritual emptiness of imperial society: the entirely unsentimental waltz turns like a roundabout, relentlessly driven forward by the pursuit of pleasure. With Gayaneh (1943) Khachaturian goes back to his native Armenia. Part of the ballet’s final celebrations honouring the upbeat heroine of the ‘happy collective farm’ is the frenzied Sabre Dance, the middle section of which recalls an earlier pas de deux. It is an authentic piece of Transcaucasian folklore.

Following his Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk district, Shostakovich had fallen victim, in 1936, to official criticism. He attempted to redeem himself, or at least to behave himself, by writing lighter works, frothier, more facile – i.e. proletarian – for films, ballets, variety stages and what the USSR referred to as ‘jazz’ orchestras, which are more like our light music ensembles. The Suite No.2 for jazz orchestra (1938) was composed for one such group, run by Victor Knushevitsky. The main, somewhat sentimental, theme in its Waltz No.2, played on the saxophone, ends in a sort of good-natured refrain. This piece was used as music for film commercials in the West – and then as title music for Stanley Kubrick’s last film: what finer example of popularity could there be?

Evgeny Svetlanov (1928–2002) was, together with Mravinsky and Kondrashin, one of the greatest Russian conductors of the 20th century. He was principal conductor of the USSR State Symphony Orchestra (Russian State Symphony Orchestra) from 1965 to 2000 and became a familiar figure in London (notably with the LSO in the 1970s), France and Japan.

These performances have never been issued before on CD.

The performance of Shostakovich’s Symphony No.10 was given on the very night that Soviet tanks invaded Czechoslovakia in a concentrated effort to halt ‘The Prague Spring’, the liberal political reforms initiated by Alexander Dubcˇek. The atmosphere in the Royal Albert Hall, as can be heard from the shouts of protest, was electric and very tense. It is likely that the USSR State Symphony Orchestra had not heard the news, but after the first few bars, the disruption was finally drowned out by other members of the audience and from various accounts, Svetlanov, as can be heard here, then went on to give the performance of his life. Svetlanov’s widow, on hearing the test pressings of this CD, said that the performance brought tears to her eyes and the emotion of that evening came across very strongly.

Two short bonus titles have been added – Tchaikovsky’s Melodrama from The Snow Maiden and two excerpts from Rimsky-Korsakov’s Invisible City of Kitezh (here recorded in stereo) –, reflecting the historic three concerts Svetlanov and his orchestra gave in London at the August 1968 BBC Proms.

Born in 1888, the Russian soprano Oda Slobodskaya won a scholarship for secondary education but, having completed her schooling, to her displeasure, found herself working with her parents in a second hand clothes shop. Despite having no formal musical training, she travelled, at the age of eighteen, from her hometown of Vilno (then part of the Russian Empire) some 300 miles to St. Petersburg, to audition. She was successful. During the Russian revolution she was ordered to join other singers on obligatory tours to factories and farms to entertain the workers. At the invitation of Diaghilev she starred in the premiere of Stravinsky’s opera Mavra. The impresario Rabinoff organised for her to tour America as star soloist with The Ukranian Chorus and while there she made a successful solo debut at Carnegie Hall in New York. But, as a displaced Russian living abroad when appreciation of the Russian repertoire was minimal, Slobodskaya had difficulty finding a good manager. It was at this point that her career took a most unexpected turn. She was persuaded that as a stop-gap measure to earn some much-needed cash she might utilise her talents in the Variety Theatre rather than the opera house, and so under the assumed name of Odali Careno she made her variety debut in Baltimore in 1928. Dressed in a stunning eau-de-nile gown, she was a sensation, singing a mixture of familiar opera arias, ballads and popular songs.

Slobodskaya’s recordings are few and far between. A handful of Medtner songs with the composer at the piano were recorded early in the 20th century for HMV. In 1938 she recorded eight sides of Russian songs for a limited edition set of four 78s issued by the Rimington van Wyck record shop in Leicester Square. Slobodskaya had been heard on the radio by Mr. Frederick T. Smith, owner of RvW, and he was so overwhelmed by her voice that he paid for the records to be recorded by Decca. They were issued in May 1942 in a limited edition of 2000 in an attractive brown and gold album. Decca recorded her again in 1945 and 1946, and then in 1961.

The recordings are of cult status, much sought after by collectors of great vocal treasures, and this is their first issue on Decca CD. Andrew Dalton has compiled the collection and provided the liner notes, and the booklet is illustrated with all the album jackets as well as illustrations from program booklets, making this a real collector’s item.

This release marks the launch of an Eloquence series of notable recitals of songs and opera arias by some of the great voices of Decca and Deutsche Grammophon.

To coincide with the 30th anniversary of Gidon Kremer’s Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival in Austria, ECM releases a 5-CD box set of recordings from 1981-2008. Out-of-print material reappears here, joined by never-before-released recordings of Richard Strauss (conducted by Simon Rattle) and Messiaen.

Edition Lockenhaus is the first New Series release in ECM’s Old & New Masters range, produced as specially-priced limited edition, with 60-page booklet. It includes recordings from 1981, 1982, 1984, 1985, and 1986 – previously issued as Edition Lockenhaus Volumes 1/2 and 4/5 (ECM 1304/05 and 1347/48). These have been long unavailable on CD and LP, and are eagerly sought-after by Kremer aficionados. Lockenhaus has been, above all, a young musicians’ festival and some of the very greatest have appeared there, alongside Gidon Kremer, early in their careers – including players strongly associated with ECM: Kim Kashkashian, Thomas Zehetmair, Thomas Demenga, Robert Levin, Heinz Holliger and more.

The edition opens with unreleased recordings – from 2001 and 2008 – with Sir Simon Rattle and Roman Kofman conducting Kremerata Baltica in revelatory performances of Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen and Olivier Messiaen’s Trois petites Liturgies de la Présence Divine. The committed interpretations convey the spirit of Lockenhaus. (Kremer himself has described Rattle’s conducting of Richard Strauss’s music as “unforgettable”).

Discs two to five focus on music by César Franck, André Caplet, Francis Poulenc, Leos Janácek, Igor Stravinsky, Dmitri Shostakovich and Erwin Schulhoff.

This 4-CD specially-priced boxed set “Russian Soul” celebrates the work of the greatest composers from one of the most important national centres of musical activity during the 19th and 20th centuries. Featured artists include Grigory Sokolov, Sergey Khachatryan, Sonia Wieder-Atherton, Tugan Sokhiev and Kurt Masur. The set includes Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition”, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4, both of Shostakovich’s Violin Concertos, piano music by Scriabin and Rachmaninov, and chamber music by Prokofiev and Shostakovich.

Since the 19th century, Russia has been one the most active nations in the field of music.

Its output of masterpieces has been impressive. This collection of music is a glance at the ‘Russian soul’, a mix of Latin exuberance, Slavic strength and Oriental subtlety.

At just 11 years of age, Sarah Chang was, quite simply, an undisputed violinistic phenomenon. She appeared with Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic at the age of eight, playing Paganini's First Violin Concerto, and recorded this debut recital disc a year later. The Debut was her first of many future Classical Billboard best-selling albums. Gramophone Magazine proclaimed, “This is an astonishing disc. Sarah Chang’s playing will enthrall and captivate in equal measure.”