Rodion Shchedrin (b. 1932) is one of the most significant and well-known composers of the second half of the 20th and the beginning of 21st century, who is also a pianist, a People’s Artist of the USSR, a recipient of State Premiums of the USSR and Russia, numerous honorary awards and titles, including the Best Composer in the Golden Mask competition of 2009. Endowed with an acute contemporary musical language, possessing knowledge of the newest technique of composition, he could create compositions, which were accessible to broad circles of listeners: “great music should possess a great audience”. At that, he was able to develop in his works the Russian theme, at a deeper level than any of the composers of his generation: his operas and ballets were written on the subjects of the greatest Russian writers – Gogol, Chekhov, Tolstoy, Nabokov and Leskov, and a number of his compositions includes chastooshka folk songs, intonations of old Russian plainchant as well as tunes of buglers. Especially well-known are his operas Not Love Alone, Dead Souls, Lolita, and The Enchanted Wanderer, his ballets The Little Humpbacked Horse, Anna Karenina and The Seagull, concertos for piano, cello, violin, viola, trumpet, Concertos for Orchestra and piano pieces. His Russian liturgy for chorus The Sealed Angel is distinct for its lofty, spiritual content. Almost on a daily basis, in various parts of the world his Carmen Suite is performed – either on stage, or in concert halls.
Evgeny Svetlanov (1928–2002) is an outstanding conductor, who was called the Michelangelo of conducting, a People’s Artist of the USSR and Russia, Laureate of the State Premiums of the USSR or Russia, conferred with numerous honorary awards and titles, also a composer and pianist. He was distinct for his significant and bright manner of performance. As a conductor of the Bolshoi Theater, he participated in productions of operas of the general stage repertoire: Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar, Borodin’s Prince Igor, Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, Gounod’s Faust, Verdi’s Rigoletto, Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tale of the Invisible City of Kitezh and The Golden Cockerel. As a conductor of the USSR Symphony Orchestra he made outstanding interpretations of compositions of all the Russian classic composers, from Glinka to Myaskovsky and Shostakovich, with especially impressive renditions of music by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff. He had also conducted Wagner and Mahler. He was the first to create an entire anthology of his own performances of Russian composers. Of Shchedrin’s music, besides that which is presented on this compact disc, Svetlanov was also drawn to the Concerto for Orchestra The Chimes and certain numbers from The Little Humpbacked Horse.
Concerto for Orchestra No. 1 “Naughty Limericks” (1963) is an innovative composition which includes about seventy themes, where by symphonic means the chastooshka manner of successive entrances by new participants against the background of ceaseless playing of folk related music material on the accordion. The composers saw in it, essentially, a toccata, with thematic roles assigned not only to the melodies but also to timbres and registers. A variant of the composition was written as Naughty Limericks, Concerto for Solo Piano (1999).
Shchedrin’s first opera, “Not Love Alone” (1961, second version, 1971) was based on the subject matter of stories by S. Antonov with inclusion of texts of the chastooshkas; it is dedicated to M. Plisetskaya. I am writing a “kolkhoz variant of Eugene Onegin” the composer stated. The premiere at the Bolshoi Theater was conducted by Evgeny Svetlanov. The performance of this opera opened the Moscow Chamber Music Theater of B. Pokrovsky. The Symphonic Suite from the opera Not Love Alone (1964), the respective movements of which are titled Introduction, Rain, Quadrille, Night Meeting and Finale demonstrates all the richness and inventiveness of Shchedrin’s orchestral writing.
“Solemn Overture” (1982) was written as an orchestral homage to the 60th anniversary of the creation of the USSR; it is full of fanfare sounds and energy. It was performed during Shchedrin’s 75th birthday jubilee in Kiev.
Piano Concerto No. 2 (1964–1966) in three movements, titled Dialogues, Improvisations and Contrasts is a brilliant composition, in which the composer synthesizes the twelve-tone technique, aleatory writing and stylistic collage – an insert of jazz music into the Finale.
Valentina Kholopova
Doctor of Arts, Professor of Moscow Conservatory
