February 20, 2013

  • Review: Classic Russian Music by Anton Rubinstein

     

    Rubinstein: Don Quichote; Ivan IV
    State Symphony Orchestra of Russia/Igor Golovchin
    Delos 2011
    Total Time:  51:25
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

     

    The resurrection of the Delos label continues to return to light many recordings of historical interest.  Of these are their American re-issues of classic Russian Disc recordings of which this present release is one.  Golovchin’s recordings of Russian music are often considered to be the best in the field and his coupling of two revered larger symphonic “pictures” of these two Anton Rubinstein pieces are hard to beat.

    At the end of the 1980s, I attended a musicology conference where several eminent Russian musicologists were discussing the important composers of their country.  Many of us sat awestruck at who was often left off that list in favor of composers most of us had grown up feeling were a bit more pedantic and overblown.  Glazunov over Prokofiev or Shostakovich?  Seriously?  Well, such was the case with Soviet Russia.  But the results now are that we can be treated to a connection to a 19th-century performing tradition being maintained and transferred into other lesser known and more standard repertoire.

    Anton Rubinstein (1829-1894) most certainly falls into that “lost” category of composer for most Western listeners.  This is the composer of the famous “Melody in F” that graces most standard piano repertoire books for beginners.  But his other works, especially the piano concerti, appear from time to time.  Such is the dilemma of being overshadowed by the Mighty Five and Tchaikovsky in Western audiences experience.  Both these works come in that crucial transitional period of 1869-1870 where the symphonic poems of Liszt and Wagnerian harmonies are beginning to impact music in the outer reaches of Europe and Russia.  One might place these “musical pictures” as the composer calls them in a line with the large-scale symphonic poems of Dvorak.

    Don Quichote, Op. 87 (1870) is a larger-scale suite of several connected episodes that tend to focus more on the Don’s self-sacrifice in somewhat comedic fashion (a slight shift aesthetically from Richard Strauss’ more familiar work).  One particularly unique section features a rather simplistic waltz set against another thematic thread with the orchestra divided so that they are playing in different time signatures, a rather bold move for the period.  Tchaikovsky himself found the work “interesting” and this is a rather apt description.  The episodic nature of the work can make it feel a bit overlong in places.  It receives a very committed performance here however and its dramatic sense is well-achieved.

    Appearing the previous year, Rubinstein’s musical picture of Tsar Ivan IV, Op. 79 grew out of an abandoned opera project he had started in 1866.  The work is unique in its more psychological approach to trying to set in music the mania and power of this infamous ruler.  A fugato section suggestions mental “difficulties” while other sections depict more grand moments.  There is even a quotation of a Russian choral theme set for four cellos with double bass.  (Some listeners will certainly here parallels here in a similar section from Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture.)  The work is a bit shorter (at 24 minutes) than the later piece and can be a rather sober and bleak affair.  Most will find it a rather intriguing piece for the period that is rare in its attempt to set a character’s inner life in symphonic music.  Balakirev conducted the work’s premiere in 1869.  It is a bit of a touchstone for the composer as many felt that this was the first work that broke similarities to earlier musical styles (i.e., Mendelssohn) and felt even less than what Rubinstein had created as his own style to that point.  One certainly senses some dramatic touches and gestures which Tchaikovsky would further perfect in the following decade. 

    Both of these works are performed superbly by the Russian orchestra with Golovchin making Ivan IV work very well dramatically and showing off some of the soloists in the orchestra.  Both works are well worth discovering and you will likely find no better performances.  The sound is better than many Russian recordings of even the previous decade having been made in 1993 at the Moscow Conservatory.  Easily recommended to those interested in the development of Russian music.