The World Service of the Voice of Russia presents a new series of programs we called the Russian Musical Highlights of the 20th Century.
1901
The 20th century has been one of the most tragic periods in Russian history, a time when wars, revolutions, devastation and economic crises have alternated with spiritual revelations which have changed the cultural life of the entire world. The series we are launching today is an attempt to take a look at the musical highlights of this outgoing century. We begin with the year 1901.

On April 20th, 1901, the Bolshaya Nikitskaya street in downtown Moscow was abuzz with hundreds of cultured Muscovites crowding to attend the opening of the newly-built Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatory.
The Grand Hall, designed by architect Zagorsky, was an
unusual sight illuminated simultaneously by electricity and the daylight pouring in though large windows lined above the side galleries. Almost 2,000 people could take their seats in the almost quadrangular stalls and the two circles which were steeply rising to the ceiling. 14 large medallions with the portraits of the best Russian and Western European composers made by Bondarevsky graced the walls of the first circle. Right above the stage there was a bas relief featuring the Conservatory's founding father, Nikolai Rubinstein. The whole place was dominated by a giant organ presented by the well-known art sponsor von Derviz set up under the expert supervision of the famous French composer and organist Charles Vidor.
Vidor was stunned by the acoustic qualities of the Grand Hall. In an enthusiastic account that was later run by a Paris-based newspaper, he wrote that "of all the concert halls I know this one sounds the best conveying with inimitable clarity the powerful charm of the orchestra, the beauty of the organ, the easy-flowing fragrance of the singer's voice and the full sound of the piano and the harp..."
Charles Vidor composed a special piece dedicated to the Grand Hall's April 20th opening.
In the spring of 1901 the 28 year-old Russian bass Fyodor Chaliapin, then a brand new name in Europe, was in Milan invited there by the great conductor Arturo Toskanini to sing the lead part in Arrigo Boito's Mephistopheles opera. It was the first attempt to revive the opera after it flopped more than 30 years earlier on the stage of Milan's venerable La Scala opera house. All set to make it this time, Toskanini asked the singers not to hold back their voices and go all the way already during rehearsals. After Chaliapin had finished his first aria, there was a momentary silence followed by a husky "Bravo!" uttered by a visibly stunned maestro.
After that first rehearsal, Toskanini suggested that Chaliapin try Mephistopheles' costumes and was very surprised when the singer told him he had brought with him costumes designed by Nikolai Golovin. When Chaliapin said he was going to walk out on stage topless, the director's jaw almost dropped to the floor. "Do you want me to sing Mephistopheles wearing a jacket and slacks?" argued the singer and Toskanini finally said yes.
During the stage rehearsals Toskanini who was also artistically directing the project, started telling Chaliapin where to stand, how to fold his arms and legs, in a word, all the tricks so amply used by second-rate actors somewhere in Tambov. Chaliapin diligently listened to the maestro's instructions and then outlined his own vision of the character he was going to play out only to be asked to forget it and never bring up the matter again...
Both the actors and the public couldn't wait for the curtain to finally go up on Arrigo Boito's masterpiece. Chaliapin was terribly nervous... "I was trembling all over, I couldn't even feel my legs" he later wrote in his memoirs. "Bleary-eyed, I saw all this packed audience and sang as loud as I could. My heart was almost jumping out of my chest, I was breathless and couldn't see a thing. When I was finished, I heard a strange snap and instinctively I ducked only to realize that the menacing sound was actually coming from the audience which was going crazy..."
The audience had gone berserk with everyone up on his feet, crying "bravo, Chaliapin!" and waving their handkerchiefs in the air like crazy...
Looking at us from a 1901 snapshot is a young boy clad in a sailor's dress sitting uneasily in front of a piano. The sheet music sitting on the stand reads: "A Giant. An opera, written by Sergei Prokofyev." It was the first opera written by the 9 year-old composer and it was staged in the summer of 1901.
"I was spending summer with my uncle and we decided to stage The Giant there," Sergei Prokofyev reminisced, "My cousin was to play the piano part as if he were the orchestra. Auntie put on a pair of hunting top boots impersonating the Giant, I was to sing the lead part and my niece took up the main female part... I was nervous like hell. By evening we had only the first act down. Mother said: "I guess we should go for it as it is, or else the boy is going to have a nervous breakdown..." Everyone then had his makeup and costumes on and the audience was seated comfortably ready to enjoy the act. I was so nervous that I started singing another character's part, then straightened out and everybody was happy. My uncle said: "When they are playing your next opera at the Imperial Grand Theater, remember that your first one happened here, in my house..." On Saturday, October 27th of 1901 the concert hall of Moscow's Noble Assembly was reverberated to the majestic chords of Sergei Rakhmaninoff's brand new Second Concerto with the lead part played by the already popular 28 year-old composer himself. It was Rakhmaninoff's first composition after a three-year-long crisis caused by the failure of his First Symphony in St.Petersburg. "After that symphony I stopped writing music altogether," Rakhmaninoff reminisced, "I was like a man hit by a stroke, my head and my hands just refused to obey me for a long time..." Taking a break from composition, Rakhmaninoff spent some time conducting orchestras and working as a performing pianist. During his 1899 tour of Britain, he promised the London Philharmonic Society's secretary Francesco Berger to compose a piano concerto for the following year's Philharmonic concerts, but even this stimulus lost its force by the time Rakhmaninoff returned to Russia. But it was only through the intervention of a doctor, the well-known psychiatrist Nikolai Dahl, who practiced a form of daily autosuggestion on him, that Rakhmaninoff eventually regained his desire to compose.
Rakhmaninoff resumed writing music in the summer of 1901 and had the second and third parts ready by the fall. He had some problems with the first part, though. As usual, solution came suddenly, prompted by the ringing of bells... "The theme of Rakhmaninoff's most inspired concerto is all about Russia", exulted the prominent pianist Alexander Goldenveizer who attended the premiere. "With the very first sounds of the bells you feel Russia standing up tall right before your eyes..." Rakhmaninoff dedicated the Second Concerto to Dr.Dahl and this long-suffering concerto eventually became one of the most popular pieces of classical music - a really grand way to kick off a new century...
The Russian Musical Highlights of the 20th Century are prepared for you by Olga Fyodorova.
             

    


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