"The time has come of trouble and gloom"... Russia's
foremost early-century poet Alexander Blok wrote in 1913. ... Sergei Rakhmaninoff
was spending the summer of 1913 at his Ivanovka family estate in the southern
speppelands. He was working on a new big composition and thought it was
going to be a symphony with a choir and lead voices. Finishing the work,
he realized, however, that it was a choral symphony for solo soprano, tenor
and baritone which he called The Bells.
"The inspiration to write The Bells came to me from a very
unexpected source," Rakhmaninoff reminisced afterwards. "One
day I got an anonymous letter from one of those people who keep pestering
artists with their sometimes more, sometimes less, pleasant attention.
Enclosed was Konstantin Balmont's absolutely brilliant translation of Edgar
Allan Poe's poem, The Bells, which the sender asked me to read. I did and
was immediately hooked! Enraptured by Poe's verse, I started working right
away... I think the excitement I felt helped me write one of the best compositions
I have ever written in my whole life..." It was not the first time
Rakhmaninoff was injecting the chiming of bells into his music, but here
the bells carried a very definite philosophical symbolism, something people
live with all their life... The "golden" ringing of a wedding,
the howling sound of firebells and the "dark" sound of the bells
ringing for the dead... The Bells begin with the "silver" trill
of little bells ringing under the shaft-bow of a racing troika... The bells
of the road... Sergei Rakhmaninoff dedicated The Bells to the Dutch conductor
Willem Mengelberg and his Konzertgebau orchestra, he had had so much fun
playing with in Amsterdam. There, in 1913, Kazimir Malevich finished his
famous Black Quadrangle which had its musical analogue in Sergei Prokofyev's
Second Concerto played for the first time in St.Petersburg on August 23rd,
1913. The Peterburgskaya Gazeta newspaper gave the following account of
the premiere:
The curtain went up and we saw walking out on stage a baby-faced
young man. It was Sergei Prokofyev. He sat down in front of the grand piano
and started running his fingers up and down the keys, as if trying to clean
them up or find out which one was playing and which one was not... Enraged,
people started filing out... Prokofyev kept pounding away, extracting custers
of dry and dissonant chords from his instrument... People started booing,
making catcalls and going up on their feet! It was outrageous! Adding insult
to injury, Prokofyev bowed to the audience and started playing it all over
again as if someone had asked him to..."
The newspapers unleashed an avalanche of abusive comments against
Prokofyev's new work. The only voice of reason came from the wisened critic
Vyacheslav Karatygin who wrote: "The public was crying bloody murder,
but ten years from now they will repent their yesterday's whistles by giving
standing ovations to a newly-famous composer with European acclaim."
1913 brought a record number of scandals. On May 23rd, there was something
unspeakable happening at the Champs Elysee Theatre in Paris where Sergei
Dyagilev's Ballet Russe company was presenting Igor Stravinsky's new ballet
The Rite of Spring. Costumes and stage design were by Nikolai Roerich and
choreography was by Vaclav Nijinsky.
French author Jean Cocteau, who was at the premiere, decried
what he said was a total "incompatibility of the music, so bristling
with youthful energy, and the decadent audience, so laid back and used
to Louis XVI sweet niceties."
People were crying their lungs out, whistling and stomping their
feet, forcing a bewildered Stravinsky to leave the place. Dyagilev kept
asking the audience to let the company complete their performance, but
no one was listening... The only man who looked unfazed by the ruckus was
the French conductor Pierre Monte, who somehow managed to steer the scandalous
ballet through to the end.
On the following day, the newspapers viciously lambasted The
Rite... accusing the choreographer of complete lack of finesse and willful
"savagery", and the composer for his "vulgar flouting of
the beautiful" and "futuristic affectation." Cuban novelist
and art critic Alejo Carpentier was the only one who embraced the new production
writing at the end of a rave account, that "those 33 minutes turned
the musical world all around..." On December 4th, the audience gathered
at St.Petersburg's venerable Mariinsky Theater was celebrating conductor
Nikolai Napravnik's 50 years in the music business. A Czech by birth, Nikolai
Napravnik came to Russia as a 22 year-old young man and, shortly afterwards,
landed the job of conductor of Russia's leading Imperial Theater. The legendary
maestro contributed heavily to the advancement of Russian classical music,
presiding over the premieres of major operas by Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov,
Tchaikovsky and Rubinstein...
During the celebration, they put up Nikolai Napravnik's bronze
bust in the theater's lobby. The Mariinsky management awarded him a 9,000
ruble bonus which he immediately handed over to members of the theater's
orchestra and choir who really idolized him. During the anniversary party,
they presented the maestro with an autographed copy of a golden harp.
There was a lot of music played that memorable night, including
one written by Napravnik himself who, besides being a famous conductor,
was also known as the author of many good operas, symphonies, quartets,
instrumental pieces and love songs... A few days before that, they were
celebrating Anatoly Lyadov's 35 years in music. A prominent composer and
teacher, Lyadov was a respected musical authority and so the St.Petersburg
Conservatory used the very best musicians they had for the occasion. They
also established two Anatoly Lyadov scholarships for gifted students.
The celebration was held in grand style with telegrams read out
and congratulatory speeches delivered. The only thing that was missing
was Anatoly Lyadov himself who never showed up because he hated large gathering,
celebrations and over-the-top official glorification... Also in 1913 conductor
Sergei Kusevitsky invited the famous French composer Claude Debussis for
a series of concerts in Russia. The performances in Moscow and St.Petersburg,
were a great success and played to jam-packed audiences... In the fall
of that same year Italian conductor Willie Ferrero took Moscow and St.Petersburg
by storm ad libbing symphonies by Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, the Per Gynt
suite by Grieg and ouvertures to several operas by Wagner and doing all
that in an amazingly mature and convincing way. What made the whole thing
so one-of-a-kind, however, was the age of the conductor who had just tuned
7 years old! In 1913 the balalaika virtuoso Boris Troyanovsky set up a
balalaika band in Moscow. Other Russian folk instruments were later added
to the lineup, resulting in a full-scale orchestra which is still at work
bearing the name the of its onetime conductor, Nikolai Osipov.
THE RUSSIAN MUSICAL HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 20TH
CENTURY is prepared for you by Olga Fyodorova.
BACK TO MAIN PAGE
