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1911
1912
             
The Conservatory's formidable reputation, built by its great founding father Anton Rubinstein, was then in the hands of its new director, Alexander Glazunov. An outstanding teacher, Glazunov was rightfully proud of the fact that he had never "ignored nor suppressed a single gifted student", even those who didn't share his musical preferences.
One such hopeful was the 21 year-old composer and pianist Sergei Prokofyev, a tall, smart-looking and energetic young man with an impressive shock of red hair on top. In July he unveiled his First Piano Concerto to the public. The general response was rather lukewarm, however, with the majority of listeners failing to appreciate the groundbreaking beauty of Prokofyav's music. Critics dismissed it as "musically imperfect", "athletic, good for the muscles but giving nothing to the soul" and "empty blather"...
Those critics would be very surprised to know that someday the First Piano Concerto would find its way into the playlist of each and every performing musician in the world... Another outstanding Russian composer, Alexander Skryabin, was entering the incoming year of 1912 with a heavy heart and stone broke after his onetime friend and music publisher Sergei Kusevitsky had demanded that he give him back more than 13,000 rubles which was a whole lot of money back in those days!
Skryabin had indeed been receiving money from Kusevitsky because he thought Kusevitsky was sponsoring him. Kusevitsky thought otherwise, however... He believed he was paying for the compositions Skryabin was only going to write...
Skryabin had spent the money a long time ago because he had a large family to support and now had to work hard to repay what he said was a "debt of honor"...
Skryabin was working day and night writing piano pieces and sending them to Kusevitsky to publish. He also worked as a performing pianist playing his own music. After playing a series of concerts in Moscow, St.Petersburg, Amasterdam, The Hague and in Frankfurt-on-Maine in 1912, Alexander Skryabin finally settled his financial accounts with Sergei Kusevitsky. In 1912 singer Antonina Nezhdanova was celebrating her first ten years with the Bolshoi Theater. Speaking at the birthday party, organized by members of the Bolshoi's choir who adored Nezhdanova, the famous theater director Vladimir Nemirovich Danchenko said:
"Nezhdanova's singing is so amazingly sincere, pristine and noblehearted. Her sense of truth, coupled with a wonderful voice come together in a harmony which is so hard to find these days..."
Later that same year, Nezhdanova premiered on stage of Paris' world-famous Grand Opera theater in the company of two all-time greats Enrico Caruso and Tito Ruffo. Just imagine how nervous she was singing in such a stellar company!
Nezhdanova had one more reason to be worried, however. After the first rehearsal, she was approached by a stranger who said he was one of those people who, if need be, could either ruin her performance or make it a sensation. "We're taking 2,000 francs for a curtain call after an aria," he said, "1,000 francs after a duet and so on and so forth..."
Enraged by the offer, Nezhdanova told the man to go to hell. She knew she had no one to lean on, but she also knew that money couldn't buy real success". She was right. The premiere was a sensation which exceeded all her expectations...
"Her voice is so gentle, charming and pure," raved a French critic. "Her technique verges on the impossible, she is so perfect and natural and she sings like a bird in heaven..." A month after Nezhdanova's triumphal debut at the Grand Opera, Sergei Dyagilev's Russian Seasons kicked off again at the Theatre du Chatelet with Maurice Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe ballet. Maurice Ravel had been commissioned to write the ballet three years before, but the work had dragged on until 1912. "My idea was to present a large musical fresco," Ravel wrote in his autobiography, "not so much recreating genuine antiquity, as bringing back the Hellas of my dreams, which was so dear to the hearts and souls of the 18th century French writers and painters..." Daphnis and Chloe was staged by the prominent choreographer Michel Fokine who was looking for a moveable feast, always going on and not divided into customary dancing numbers.
"I want none of these waltzes, gallops and things like that," Fokine wrote in one of his letters to Ravel, "You're absolutely free to choose the musical forms, rhythms and measures."
Called a "choreographic symphony" by its author, Daphnis and Chloe, ordered and staged by Russians, was a highlight of Ravel's musical career... Also in 1912 they opened a conservatory in the old Russian city of Saratov on the Volga. The Saratov Conservatory was already the third institute of higher musical learning in Russia. In the same year they opened a memorial museum at the Moscow Conservatory devoted to the life and work of the Conservatory's founding father Nikolai Rubinstein. The display offered a look at Rubinstein's grand piano, notational paper, books and a woodcarved conductor's desk and other memorabilia recreating the Conservatory's 46 year-old history, its original Charter, billboards and programs of concerts played by the Conservatory professors and students. In 1912 they opened an opera theater in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg made up of members of a local amateur orchestra, a small choir and several lead singers. Luminaries like Antonina Nezhdanova and Leonid Sobinov came down from Moscow expressly to perform in the first few opening nights at the newly-opened theater.... Also in 1912 they started publishing songbooks with note-for-note transcriptions meant for home practicing. The songbooks were extremely popular and were coming out each month until the October Revolution of 1917...
THE RUSSIAN MUSICAL HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 20TH CENTURY is prepared for you by Olga Fyodorova.


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