…On a stormy winter day of February 22, the stage at the Maly
Opera Theater in Leningrad was all awash with the warm sun of the merry
Burgundy. At least that was the atmosphere created by the new opera written
by the 33 year-old composer Dmitry Kabalevsky.
The opera based on Romaine Rolland's burlesque fantasy Colas
Breugnon about a good-natured sculptor who, at 60, is still bubbling with
new ideas and madly in love with a young girl.
The joyous plot and catchy melodies quickly made Kabalevsky's
new opera one of the theater's best loved offerings. After hearing the
opera, Rolland, who was a great connoisseur of music, dropped the following
lines to the composer:
"Your music is crystal-clear and full of live and movement.
You made great use of the French folklore tunes, perfectly grasping their
essence and combining them with Your own melodies. Overall, Your composition
is one of the very best one can find in contemporary Russian stage music."
Early in the year, composer Sergei Prokofyev went on a world
tour playing concerts in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Britain and the United
States. Prokofyev was already a world celebrity and his sold-out concerts
were attended by the likes of composer Arnold Schonberg and actresses Mary
Pickford and Marlene Dietrich. It was the last time Prokofyev was allowed
to perform abroad, though. The Iron Curtain which Joseph Stalin had busily
been building between the Soviet Union and the rest of the world finally
came down…
Prokofyev returned to Moscow just in time to see the premiere
of the motion picture, Alexander Nevsky, for which he had composed the
musical score. It was his first brush with cinema and Prokofyev, who was
a very imaginative and, at the same time, extremely disciplined man, plunged
himself headlong into the fantasy world of film…
The great movie director Sergei Eizenstein thus described the
way Prokofyev worked on his movie:
Watching an episode we had just finished shooting, Prokofyev
quickly grasped all its specific features and immediately sat down to work
to provide a musical equivalent. At midnight he would tell me: "Tomorrow
at noon you'll have the music," and I knew that, five minutes to the
designated hour, I would see his dark-blue car passing through the studio
gate and the next moment he would be coming out with the score in hand…"
Alexander Nevsky celebrated the rout of the Teutonic Knights
on the frozen surface of Lake Peipus on April 5, 1242.
Writing the soundtrack to the movie, Prokofyev moved away from
the old archaic musical forms arguing that "in the 20th century it
doesn't sound right and will fail to produce the desirable effect."
The music he wrote for the film were absolutely germane to what was happening
on the screen. Prokofyev later expanded this music into a cantata and conducted
it in Moscow on May 17, 1939.
One year before that, some of the world's best violinists were
in Brussels showcasing their skills in the newly-instituted Eugene Izayi
International Competition. The Russians made a formidable performance taking
away four prizes. Now it was time for the pianists to prove their bona
fides. On May 15, 1938 Cabinet ministers, diplomats and a posse of cultural
celebrities gathered in the Grand Hall of the Brussels Conservatory for
the opening of the Second Eugene Izayi Competition which had brought together
87 musicians from 23 countries.
Many of the laureates of the 1938 competition later became world
luminaries. The 12th place went to Christine Gaveaux, Arturo Benedetti-Michelangeli
came in seventh. Russia's Yakov Fliyer was in third [place and the gold
went to Emil Gilels, also from Russia.
From day one, the 22 year-old Gilels emerged as a hands down
leader…
"The Russian pianist's playing is filled with the irresistible
energy of life, literally electrifying the audience," raved one newspaper
account. "The listeners are acting like children, their eyes shining
and their heartbeat quickening…"
In October they were holding the first national competition of
conductors in Moscow. And with a good reason too, because the exodus of
foreigners who once led the country's best orchestras had severely denuded
the national scene. 46 conductors were taking part and five of them made
it into the finals, each boasting formidable professional skills and a
larger than life personality. And of them all, Leningrad's very own Yevgeny
Mravinsky was the best…And the best he remained until the very last day
of his life. Each concert was a celebration, every performance like a premiere…
Later in the year Yevgeny Mravinsky was appointed head of the
Leningrad Philharmonic orchestra and held the post for more than fifty
years. Under his masterful hand, the orchestra earned an exemplary reputation
of the country's finest and the official title of Merited Orchestra of
the Russian Federation. The people lovingly called it "the Mravinsky
Orchestra" which was the best appreciation the musicians could ever
dream of…
On April 12 there came the sad news of Fyodor Chaliapin's demise
in Paris. The agony of the Russian genius had been long and painful, caused
by many diseases, the most serious being leukemia.
Chaliapin spent his final days surrounded by his loved ones -
his wife, children and closest friends - the writer Ivan Bunin and composer
Sergei Rakhmaninoff. They reminded him of his native Russia which he left
back in 1922. On his deathbed, the great operatic bass fancied himself
in Russia, singing on the stage of a Russian theater…
"Chaliapin was a veritable wizard, a man endowed with enormous
talent," Rakhmaninoff wrote in an obituary. "He will be a legend
for the generations to come…"
In 1984 Chaliapin's remains were brought to Russia and buried
in the exclusive Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow…
In 1936 they started setting up the so-called State Orchestras
in the Soviet Union. It was made up of the country's very best musicians.
The first to appear was the State Symphony Orchestra, and in 1938 they
formed the State Jazz Orchestra which played jazz arrangements of Tchaikovsky,
popular tunes, folk songs and variety pieces. The State Jazz Orchestra
was the first to play the song Katyusha, written by one of its conductors,
Matvei Blanter. Katyusha was so popular that, during World War Two, they
gave its name to the famous Katyusha rocket launchers .
THE RUSSIAN MUSICAL HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 20TH
CENTURY is prepared for you by Olga Fyodorova.
