After two revolutions which had swept across the country in a
single year, Russian history was left bitterly split in two with people
dividing their life into how it was before and after the 1917 revolutions...
The new times had ushered in new songs and revolutionary marches so much
liked by the Bolsheviks and their leader Vladimir Lenin... A song that
could then often be heard in the streets of the revolution-gripped Petrograd
was about young and strong-willed people forging the keys of a happy life
for all... It was written by Fyodor Shkulyov who, like many Russian intellectuals
before him, saw the revolution as man's only road to happiness...
The February revolution sent fresh winds of freedom blowing all
across the Russian Empire and Councils of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies
in the big cities were busily setting up special commissions on arts. In
Moscow, a concert organizing commission was led by famous pianist, composer
and Conservatory professor Alexander Goldenweiser.
The commission was holding concerts for workers and other people
of meagre means offering the largely unknowledgeable audiences more easy-to-comprehend
programs appropriately preceded by introductory lectures. Folklore-based
Russian classical music was especially popular... Meanwhile, the leading
tenor Leonid Sobinov was elected to lead the Corporation of Opera and Ballet
Artists which had just been established at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow.
A few months later, the Corporation had already organized more than 40
star-studded performances for the poor, including the great Sobinov himself.
The whole country was greedily breathing the intoxicating air of freedom,
brought by the revolution, that was holding promises of a speedy end to
the terrible war which had killed millions of people and ruined as many
talents... Meanwhile, the war was still raging on threatening to suck in
ever more lives, including that of the budding composer Sergei Prokofyev.
When he, too, was called up, the famous writer Maxim Gorky waded in writing
a letter to Alexander Kerensky who, after the February Revolution, was
elected to head the Provisional Government:
"We can't afford using golden nails on soldiers' boots"
he wrote. His protestation did not go unheard and Prokofyev was spared
the draft.
Gorky's letter couldn't come at a more appropriate time now that
Prokofyev was neck-deep in work writing two piano sonatas, a concerto for
the violin, a symphony and the Visions Fugitives cycle which he provided
with the following epigraph: "In each fleeting moment I see whole
worlds of changing colors..." Sergei Prokofyev was going to spend
the summer of 1917 at his country house just outside Petrograd. When the
German armies were poised to ceise the capital in July, Prokoyfev headed
down south to join his ailing mother who was then vacationing in the Caucasus.
Shortly after, there was a regional takeover in the Cossack region of Don
in support of the rebellious General Kornilov which effectively cut off
the Caucasus from the rest of the country. The Prokofyevs tried unsuccessfully
to get back to Petrograd amid growing fears that something terrible was
coming up... Still stranded in the south, they learned about the new revolution
which had just happened in Russia...
The revolutionary ideas were enthusiastically embraced by many
leading Russian writers, painters and musicians, among them the great operatic
bass Fyodor Chaliapin who said that the unusual takeover had set in motion
all segments of the Russian society, encouraging people to work hard to
reform the ailing country. "I spend my days going to all kinds of
meetings, working in the Arts Commission and a host of other commissions",
he wrote. "Listening to people, with banners and streamers, singing
all these doleful songs, I decided to mark my entrance into this brave
new life by singing something bold and stirring only to realize that I
had one old barge haulers' song left in my whole program..."
Chaliapin performed Dubinushka in the summer of that same year
in Sevastople. The news about the great Chaliapin putting together a sailors'
choir immediately swept through the crews of the many warships anchored
in the Sevastople harbor. After more than two weeks of preparations, Chaliapin
sang to the strains of a hundred-strong choir of sailors carefully handpicked
from among various crews. More than 30,000 people thronged the city's magnificent
Waterfront Boulevard to hear the great Russian singer who donated all the
proceeds for the care of the wounded soldiers and sailors... On October
25th, the day when the Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional government,
Chaliapin was in Petrograd preparing to appear in Giuseppe Verdi's Don
Carlos opera. The performance was delayed as the audience was busily discussing
an appeal to the Russian people and continued doing so even after the orchestra
had started playing the ouverture. When it came time for Chaliapin to hit
the stage, there came a deafening sound of a cannon firing nearby. It was
the cruiser Avrora opening up on the Winter Palace... Panicked, the audience
headed towards the exits and they had to call off the performance...
After the Bolshevik takeover in October, occasional shootouts
became a daily occurrence in Moscow. One day an artillery shell punctured
a giant hole in the roof of the Bolshoi Theater and windows in the city
center were all shattered by the detonations...
It was during those terrible days and nights that Alexander Grechaninov
wrote his Liturgy which blended together various Christian traditions.
The composer later said that he was "writing the music in the days
of the Bolshevist uprising and its bittersweet taste is a reflection of
the horrible time we were all going through. It comes back to me each time
I hear someone playing this Liturgy..." Sergei Rakhmaninoff was in
Moscow when the Bolsheviks ceised power. Absorbed in work, as he usually
was, he might have never noticed the change had it not been for the shootouts
that were going non-stop day and night... Before long, the new powers that
be reminded the great composer of his constitutional duties ordering him
and his neighbors to take turns guarding their house and attend all kinds
of meetings and rallies...
"As soon as I got to know better the people who had taken
into their hands the fate of our people, I realized with frightening clarity
that it was the beginning of the end," Rakhmaninoff later reminisced.
"I was trying in vain to find a way out of this witches' sabbath when,
all of a sudden, I was invited to play a series of concerts in Scandinavia.
The contract was less than lucrative, but who was I to say no at a time
like that?! We were leaving behind our home, the hard-earned money and
my personal papers. It was in late November of 1917. We were making our
way to the station walking down the darkened streets under the driving
rain and to the sound of occasional shots being fired somewhere in the
distance..." "...When our train reached the border, I walked
out and, finding a deserted place, picked up a handful of my native Russian
soil and kissed it..." The great Russian musician never came back
and spent many years without writing anything at all... "Leaving Russia
I also left behind my ability to write music..." Rakhmaninoff wrote
in his diary .
THE RUSSIAN MUSICAL HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 20TH
CENTURY is prepared for you by Olga Fyodorova.
