The year 1924 was the last in the life of the Bolshevik leader,
Vladimir Lenin, whose death triggered widespread artistic response.
Shortly after Vladimir Lenin died on January 21st of 1924, Alexander
Kastalsky unveiled a dedicatory oratorio letting loose decades of well-paid
literary and musical exaltations whose authors attributed all imaginary
virtues to the late leader…
The new times had breathed new vigor into Moscow's long-staid
concert life with people flocking en masse to attend performances by the
hugely popular Persimfans symphony orchestra who played without a conductor.
Which, by the way, was very much in line with the times. Now that everyone
was declared equal in Soviet Russia, then why bother to have a dictatorial
conductor telling people how to play and when?
The acoustically-innovative Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatory
was still being used as a movie theater and classical music remained banished
to sometimes absolutely unfit venues, like, for example, the Moscow Art
Theater.
The younger musicians were making do with much simpler venues
which were now everywhere, including in the old mansions once owned by
Russia's rich and famous and which had since been turned into the so-called
"workers' clubs". Gathering in the ornate state-rooms were their
former owners' servants, playing the accordion and singing Russian folk
songs and conservatory students honing their more classical skills…
To attract the less affluent audiences, the city authorities
organized a large number of affordable concerts played by such leading
Conservatory professors as pianist Konstantin Igumnov.
Apparently impressed by Igumnov's masterful performance, one
of the Moscow newspapers provided the following rave account which came
out on February 3rd of 1924: "Konstantin Igumnov is an absolutely
unique phenomenon. He is not trying to impress the listener with his flash
or the sheer power of his playing. What he is doing, however, is immersing
you in the warm and melodious atmosphere of his music. He makes the piano
sing the way that is so hard to find these days and that is so immediately
reminiscent of John Field and Frederic Chopin…"
Tchaikovsky was a very important part of Konstantin Igumnov's
extensive repertoire. "It's hard to imagine a more refined performance
of Tchaikovsky's music," one of the critics wrote in 1924. "Konstantin
Igumnov's performance differs from the rest inasmuch a genuine masterpiece
differs from a cheap imitation. His every nuance is absolutely admirable
and worthy of most diligent emulation…"
The Bolshoi Theater which was now the country's number one stage
venue, played host to all kinds of political gatherings, such as the Congresses
of People's Deputies and other major functions. Now that music and ballet
were increasingly making way for political haranguing by Bolshevik leaders,
the Bolshoi was expanded to take in the former Private Opera House which
now served as a back up stage for the country's main theater.
A great deal of attention was being paid to make the Bolshoi
company the very best the country could possibly offer the Communist party
bigwigs. As a result, the Bolshoi lead singers and dancers enjoyed all
kinds of fringe benefits, such as top salaries, luxury apartments in the
city center, special food rations, free-provided chauffeured-cars and other
perks.
In 1924 Alexander Pirogov, then a 25 year-old Moscow Conservatory
graduate, came to sing at the Bolshoi. The owner of an exceptional bass,
he perfectly filled the void left by the great Fyodor Chaliapin who, three
years before that, had emigrated to France…
Opera was making a strong comeback and new theaters and operatic
studios were opening up all across the country…
In Nizhny Novgorod, the newly-formed Opera Concert Ensemble offered
a slew of concert adaptations of popular operas. The 60-strong troupe,
highlighted by the young soprano Natalya Rozhdestvenskaya, paid their way
by performing once, twice and, sometimes, even three times a day.
In Petrograd, which had just been renamed Leningrad in the memory
of the late Bolshevik leader, members of the newly-formed Monumental Theater
Workshop were also going after the more hooky opera classics. They were
changing beyond recognition the original contents adding revolutionary
flavor to the lyrical dramas of old. Giacomo Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots
five act opera set in medieval France, was now about the Russian army officers
who in 1825 refused to pledge allegiance to the new Emperor Nicholas the
First. Giacomo Puccini's remarkable theatrical tour de force, Tosca, was
similarly renamed into The Struggle for the Commune where the moderately
pro-Carbonari-minded artist Cavaradossi was now portrayed as a die-hard
revolutionary fighter… Performing artists from all over the world started
coming in, eager to see with their own eyes what was going on in post-revolutionary
Russia which was now building a new Utopian society of freedom, equality
and justice for all…
In 1924, conductor Otto Klemperer, violinist Josef Sygethy and
pianist Arthur Schnabel played a series of concerts in Moscow and Leningrad.
In Leningrad, the young singer Vadim Kozin was making a big stir
with the local admirers of the heart-rending old Russian love songs. The
word about the young crooner who was singing with a small band entertaining
cinema-goers before the shows, spread like a brushfire and before he knew
it, people were already coming in more to see him than the movies…
Vadim Kozin lived a life where phenomenal success was followed
by total oblivion deep inside Stalin's dreaded GULAG archipelago where
he spent long years trying to guess whether they had arrested him for refusing
to sing a song about Josef Stalin or for loving an actress courted by one
of Stalin's henchmen…
THE RUSSIAN MUSICAL HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 20TH
CENTURY is prepared for you by Olga Fyodorova.
