RUSSIAN MUSICAL HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 20TH CENTURY

1901

1902

1903

1904

The 20h century has been really hard on Russia, but the wars, political upheavals and the eternal suffering of its people never managed to stifle the vigorous upswing of Russian culture as a whole, and music in particular. In this series we'll try to recreate the musical history of this outgoing century. The year was 1904...

..."In the morning of September 27th I was finally through with the Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh", composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov entered in his diary ending five years of writing what the critics would later call a "Christian mystery" and "a Russian Parcifal."

The Legend was a curious attempt at the reconciliation of the composer's personal pantheism with a typically Slavonic concept of Christianity, supreme justice and kindness capable of working miracles. Still, the opera's plot was anything but a romantic idyll. Set in the 13th century, probably the most terrible in the entire Russian history, the opera brings back the time when Russia was being torn apart by invading Tatar hordes. The people's heroic resistance to the invaders is the bottomline of Rimsky-Korsakov's opera. The Legend... is about a young girl named Fevronia whose icon-like image is probably without parallel in the entire operatic genre. Fevronia is emblematic of everything that is good, fair, pristine, wise and selflessly loyal...

Born in the woods, the girl is surrounded by Nature and is herself part and parcel of this ever-present natural environment... Falling prisoner to the Tatars, Fevronia refuses, even under torture, to show the enemy the road leading to the capital city of Kitezh. After 10 days and nights of searching around, the Tatars finally reached the lake where the city was supposed to be. But it wasn't there! All they could see were reflections of onion-shaped church domes and the muffled sounds of bells chiming somewhere deep underneath the waves... The city was gone, but it was the only way it could possibly survive destruction. Fevronia was the only living soul who somehow managed to get there and send back a letter telling the people that the city of Kitezh was alive, hiding from the enemy eyes... Almost every composer, writer or painter has a composition, book or canvas he spends his whole life preparing for and which fully reflects his esthetical principles. Goethe's Faust, Raphael's Sistina Madonna, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Tolstoy's War and Peace and, of course, Rimsky-Korsakov's Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh, are exactly such lifetime achievements... In November the managers of La Scala invited the Russian tenor Leonid Sobinov to come down to Milan to perform on the stage of this world-famous opera house. Hugely popular in Russia, Sobinov was then a virtually unknown entity in Europe and successful performances in the birthplace of "bel canto" would catapult him to international stardom especially now that he was preparing to sing in Gaetano Donizetti's hugely popular Don Pasquale opera.

Some of Sobinov's most devout fans followed their idol to Italy, among them the prominent impresario Matvei Kirikov who left behind the following eye-opening account of Sobinov's first performance in Italy:

"Sobinov started off just fine... The Italians stiffened up apparently impressed both by his mesmerizing voice and his artistic presence. Sobinov's voice was so beautiful and his Italian pronunciation so impeccable that the Italians were going around telling everyone that he was one of their own... Leonid Sobinov was 100-percent Russian, of course, and he made the Italians take a new look at the whole art of opera singing. After him it was absolutely impossible to just walk out on the stage and sing because people were now expecting singers to act out their songs...

Sobinov's premiere in Milan was a resounding success unseen there ever since the great Fyodor Chaliapin conquered the Italians's hearts a few years before him. The Russian tenor became a celebrity in just overnight which was very important for us, Russians, long looked upon in Europe as a country of vodka and bears. Now, thanks to Chaliapin and Sobinov, this bias, resulting entirely from the Europeans' unawareness of the Russian culture and talent, this superstition is finally gone..."

On September 3rd the already well-known pianist and composer Sergei Rakhmaninoff was invited to conduct the orchestra at Moscow's venerable Bolshoi Theater. The very first thing he did there was moving the conductor's stand away from the footlights and closer to the outer rim of the pit. Before that the conductor used to stand facing the audience while now it was the other way around making it easier for him to see what was happening on the stage and be able to run the musical part of the performance.

In the fall of 1904 music lovers in Moscow and St.Petersburg were enjoying performances by the great Spanish violinist Pablo Sarazate. The 60 year-old musician stunned the audiences with his bubbling energy, phenomenal technique and his full, yet transparent, sound. Sarazate's repertoire had changed markedly from his previous concerts with sheer flash having taken a back seat to deeper and more soulful playing.

Critics appreciated the change seeing it as a sign of a great musician always trying to improve and looking for the very best in his art... Also in 1904 the world-acclaimed Italian operatic diva Adelina Patti was singing at the Noble Assembly in St.Petersburg. Patti felt very specially about Russia, the country where she had originally evolved as a professional singer. The 1904 concerts were charity performances and, knowing that Russia was then making war with Japan, Patti donated all the proceeds to buy and equip a medical train for wounded Russian soldiers... The first issue of the Guitar Player magazine was published in Moscow for those who played the seven-string guitar also known as the Russian guitar. The new magazine also published note-for-note arrangements of popular tunes.

In 1904 the popular Russian composer Anatoly Lyadov wrote a symphonic poem he called Baba Yaga and subtitled as "a scene from a Russian folk tale."

Baba Yaga is a traditional Russian folk tale character. She is an evil old witch always playing dirty tricks on everyone who comes her way...

Lyadov provided his new composition with the following description:

"Baba Yaga walks out the door and gives out a loud whistle. The next moment her mortar, pestle and broomstick spring to attention ready to be used... Baba Yaga jumps in and drives out, spurring up the mortar with her pestle and wiping off the traces with her broomstick... A few moments later, she takes off and now she is flying in the air to the deafening sound of trees crackling and dry leaves rustling down below...

Baba Yaga premiered later that same year and was such a great success that they had to play it all over again... Critics called it a new trail blazed in Russian repertory music and saw in it signs of fledgling Russian impressionism.

THE RUSSIAN MUSICAL HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 20 CENTURY are written by Olga Fyodorova.

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