RUSSIAN MUSICAL HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 20TH CENTURY

1901

1902

1903

1904

1905

1905 was one of the most tragic years in Russian history. The air was thick with heavy premonitions of even bigger upheavals waiting ahead. Reflecting this general unease, Valery Bryusov wrote that "The flames of future fires are burning like a fiery lava high above..." Nearly a thousand people died when troops fired on a peaceful demonstration on their way to the Winter Palace in St.Petersburg on January 9th. The massacre caused an angry public outcry, setting off a wave of countrywide protests. On February 3rd newspapers published an open letter signed by Sergei Rakhmaninoff, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Sergei Taneyev, Fyodor Chaliapin and other leading Russian musicians.

"When there is no freedom of thought and the press, when any attempt to do something that is alive and good is stifled, people simply stop thinking..." the letter said. "We are the rightless victims of an abnormal society and we believe that fundamental, deep-going reforms are the only way we can ride out of this crisis." Outraged by the January 9th tragedy, students were striking and rallying all across the land, including at the Moscow and St.Petersburg Conservatories. What started off as an unorganized protest against the Bloody Sunday massacre, eventually escalated into an all-out rebellion against conservatism and stupid administering by incompetent bureaucrats.

The outstanding composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov showed sympathy with the revolutionary students only to be dismissed from his professorship at the Petersburg Conservatory. He at once became a sort of a martyr-hero and was overwhelmed with letters and addresses of sympathy, deputations and newspaper publications which were literally dragging the Conservatory management in the mire...

As a gesture of defiance composers Alexander Glazunov, Anatoly Lyadov, pianist Anna Yesipova and cellist Alexander Verzhbilovich also quit their professorial jobs. Rimsky-Korsakov was placed under police surveillance and for two months the performance of any of his compositions was forbidden in St.Petersburg and in various provincial cities apparently to prevent spontaneous and politically-charged shows of sympathy with the persecuted composer. When he did manage to play his music, the audience always went on their feet thus showing their respect and solidarity. Rimsky-Korsakov and other democratically-minded professors were later reinstated in their professorship after the Imperial Musical Society had climbed down to the musicians' demands giving the Petersburg Conservatory a freer hand including the right to elect the director and professors from among their own staff. Down in Moscow passions were also flying high with the widely-respected composer Sergei Taneyev, whom people called the city's "musical conscience" forced to give up his professorship at the Moscow Conservatory. Many leading Russian musicians showed their sympathy with Taneyev and Rimsky-Korsakov even sent him a telegram where he sincerely sympathized with his colleague whom he extolled as a wonderful musician, an irreconcilable enemy of arbitrariness and a tireless champion of truth.

Rimsky-Korsakov was echoed by his fellow composer Anatoly Lyadov who wrote: "I'm really outraged by all this. It's not so much you that I worry about as the Conservatory which has deprived itself of a man like you. You are not only a brilliant musician but also an honest person always ready to stand up for everything that is true. You are the pride and glory of the Moscow Conservatory."

The reforms eventually reached the Moscow Conservatory, but Sergei Taneyev, its first graduate, first gold medallist and a professor of 27 years, never came back again, concentrating wholly and very successfully on composition. Later that same year he won the Mikhail Glinka award annually given to the best Russian composer of the year. Taneyev received the prize in recognition of one of his four symphonies whose sheer scope was so reminiscent of the frescoes made by the larger-than-life Old Masters of the Rennaissance period... "Protest rallies and strikes are fast becoming a daily routine," lamented a Russian newspaper back in 1905. The rising waves of popular discontent had spilled over to the Imperial Theaters whose director Vladimir Telyakovsky filed the following report to the Czar:

"There was big unrest brewing at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. I rushed to give a raise to the stage hands and the choir singers whom all these agitators are inciting to strike. People in the orchestra have also been restless apparently ready to strike too. Their chief conductor Sergei Rakhmaninoff is not the kind of a man you need to prevent a walkout. He even seems ready to join the protesters himself and has more than once complained about the musicians being underpaid."

The famous bass singer Fyodor Chaliapin added fuel to the flames thundering the revolutionary song Dubinushka on stage at the Bolshoi. Nicholas the Second demanded that the man he called "this loud-mouthed hoodlum" be thrown out of the Imperial Theaters, but the directors never dared to obey rightfully fearing that Chaliapin's dismissal would immediately snap into a revolution...

In 1905 Chaliapin performed Dubinushka in countless charity concerts one of which was attended by a staggering 5,000 workers. "I asked them to sing along in the chorus and the answer was a deafening "Hurray!",' Chaliapin reminisced a year later. "I went ahead, reached the chorus and when I heard all these 5,000 people joining in all at the same time, I felt I was going up into the air like you do during a Lenten Mass. I don't know whether the song was more about revolution or a fiery anthem to human work and happiness. Ecstatic, I was just singing on and on and couldn't care less if it was Paradise or Hell I was headed for..." In 1905 composer Anatoly Luyadov wrote symphonic arrangements of eight Russian folk songs. It was not the first brush with folk tunes for the composer who had already made a number of vocal and instrumental arrangements. The 1905 effort, however, was his first attempt at orchestrating Russian folk songs. "The Eight Russian Folk Songs" is one of the most elegant national symphony compositions around. By the time Ksenia Erdeli started teaching at the Moscow Conservatory in 1905 she was already a nationally-acclaimed harpist with several years' experience of playing with the Bolshoi Theater's orchestra. Ksenia Erdeli spent a staggering 66 years teaching at the Moscow Conservatory and she only quit in 1971! She is the founder of this country's school of harp playing which eventually gained worldwide recognition.

Also in 1905, at the very height of Russia's infamous war with Japan, a military bandleader Ilya Shatrov wrote The Hills of Manchuria waltz that became an immediate hit, was later put to words and has since been one of the best-loved pieces of Russian dance music ever.

THE RUSSIAN MUSICAL HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 20TH CENTURY is prepared for you by Olga Fyodorova.

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