27.01.2020
‘I can’t do without Russian people!’
The next in a series of concerts by the Mikhailovsky Theatre Symphony Orchestra under Alexander Vedernikov, which began in December to great acclaim, will take place on 12 February. The programme will feature works for choir and orchestra by Sergey Rachmaninov: Three Russian Songs for Choir and Orchestra, the cantata Spring, and the symphonic poem The Bells. On stage will be the Mikhailovsky Theatre Chorus along with soloists Anastasia Moskvina (soprano), Giorgi Sturua (tenor), and Boris Pinkhasovich (baritone).
The programme has a distinctly Russian flavour. “I can’t do without Russian people!”, Rachmaninov confessed to his friend Fyodor Chaliapin. His native land occupied a central place in Rachmaninov’s work: even after emigrating, he remained a “hymnist of Russia”, and Russian folk art continued to be a natural source of inspiration for the composer to the end of his days. Leaving Russia provoked a profound creative crisis for Rachmaninov: for several years, he composed nothing. The subjects of the Three Russian Songs were suggested to him by Boris Asafiev in 1917, while he was still in Russia. Rachmaninov took these poetic images with him when he left the country, but picked them up again only years later, finishing the piece in 1926. The Songs were his first composition abroad; it was as though he turned to these Russian motifs in search of spiritual support, in order to feel the earth beneath his feet once more and find the strength to compose in a foreign land.
Spring, the cantata based on Nikolay Nekrasov’s poem Green Noise, is one of Rachmaninov’s early works. In 1902 Rachmaninov married Natalya Satina. In love, he blossomed as a composer. “In his cantata Spring, imbued with the vernal generosity of a wonderfully gifted lyric poet, Rachmaninov conveyed his unforgettable impressions of the Russian spring, when green noise really does grow and spread — the noise of the trees coming into leaf, the birds, the flowing streams and violent winds, the noise in which painful, distressing quarrels dissolve, passionate anger fades, and man is entirely permeated by the joie de vivre and heartfelt clarity of spring,” wrote Boris Asafiev. New features of the cantata genre are evident in Spring, and these were further developed in the choral symphony The Bells, which was written in 1913 to the words of a poem by Edgar Allan Poe and translated into Russian by Konstantin Balmont. The Bells differs noticeably from Spring in its mood and emotional tone: Rachmaninov was keenly aware of the situation at the time and sensed the storms and upheavals heading for his country. As scholars have noted, “the silvery, tender, festively exultant sound of the first sections, describing the bright dreams of youth and the joy of love, gives way to the disturbing alarm in the fire scene and the majestic funeral procession in the finale. In this work Rachmaninov showed himself to be a master of elegant and colourful orchestral writing.”
The programme has a distinctly Russian flavour. “I can’t do without Russian people!”, Rachmaninov confessed to his friend Fyodor Chaliapin. His native land occupied a central place in Rachmaninov’s work: even after emigrating, he remained a “hymnist of Russia”, and Russian folk art continued to be a natural source of inspiration for the composer to the end of his days. Leaving Russia provoked a profound creative crisis for Rachmaninov: for several years, he composed nothing. The subjects of the Three Russian Songs were suggested to him by Boris Asafiev in 1917, while he was still in Russia. Rachmaninov took these poetic images with him when he left the country, but picked them up again only years later, finishing the piece in 1926. The Songs were his first composition abroad; it was as though he turned to these Russian motifs in search of spiritual support, in order to feel the earth beneath his feet once more and find the strength to compose in a foreign land.
Spring, the cantata based on Nikolay Nekrasov’s poem Green Noise, is one of Rachmaninov’s early works. In 1902 Rachmaninov married Natalya Satina. In love, he blossomed as a composer. “In his cantata Spring, imbued with the vernal generosity of a wonderfully gifted lyric poet, Rachmaninov conveyed his unforgettable impressions of the Russian spring, when green noise really does grow and spread — the noise of the trees coming into leaf, the birds, the flowing streams and violent winds, the noise in which painful, distressing quarrels dissolve, passionate anger fades, and man is entirely permeated by the joie de vivre and heartfelt clarity of spring,” wrote Boris Asafiev. New features of the cantata genre are evident in Spring, and these were further developed in the choral symphony The Bells, which was written in 1913 to the words of a poem by Edgar Allan Poe and translated into Russian by Konstantin Balmont. The Bells differs noticeably from Spring in its mood and emotional tone: Rachmaninov was keenly aware of the situation at the time and sensed the storms and upheavals heading for his country. As scholars have noted, “the silvery, tender, festively exultant sound of the first sections, describing the bright dreams of youth and the joy of love, gives way to the disturbing alarm in the fire scene and the majestic funeral procession in the finale. In this work Rachmaninov showed himself to be a master of elegant and colourful orchestral writing.”
