Rachmaninoff

The Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) has long occupied a prominent place in the concert repertoire, but his critical standing has been ambiguous: some have viewed him as one of the greatest of his time, while others have strongly questioned the value of his music. Although many writings on the composer note this paradox, his critical reception has not previously been the subject of a thorough independent study, and, as a result, there is little consensus concerning its basic ideological, temporal, and geographical circumstances. This dissertation begins the task of elucidating Rachmaninoff’s international critical reception by examining his treatment in 226 music lexicons published from 1900 to 2013 in eleven European languages, employing a straightforward mode of reception history within the theoretical context of canon formation.

The dissertation presents two principal findings. First, the ideological composition of the critical reception is more complex than has generally been believed. Rachmaninoff’s music was disparaged not only by modernists, who found it old-fashioned, but also by nationalists, who considered it cosmopolitan for not adhering overtly to the idiom of the "kuchka," as well as from the broader critical standpoint of classicism itself—that is, from the nexus of values that has defined the tradition of Western “classical music” since the nineteenth century. Second, this criticism notwithstanding, most critical evaluations of the composer, as in music lexicons, have been affirmative. Rachmaninoff elicited not a single negative assessment in the genre until 1938, and Eric Blom’s oft-cited belittling of the composer in the 1954 edition of Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians was exceptional for its period. The highest concentration of negative assessments occurred in the 1970s on the European continent. These still constituted a minority, however, and the same decade also witnessed the rise, in Great Britain, of an affirmative reappraisal of the composer in music lexicons that would spread, by the early-twenty-first century, to every region surveyed. A new international consensus emerged as negative assessments were replaced with affirmative ones and those that were already affirmative increased in detail and favorability.

As a long-time admirer of classical music, I was always particularly interested in symphonic descriptions of the Sea. Since several years I began taking notes of the pieces on the subject and finally it took a form of the current compilation. This program is not pretended to be comprehensive as it is based on my personal musical preferences which would equally explain the domination of the Russian composers.
I would like to address this program to my family that admires the Sea, to my shipmates of archaeological missions in Egypt and those of the sailing frigate ‘L’Hermione’, as well as to all people that love symphonic music and the Sea.
The accompanying text section (in English, Russian and French) includes general information and some curious facts concerning the creation of each piece.
I wish you a nice listening,
A.B.

Questions regarding intersemiotic translation – the transposition of an artistic work from one form of expression to another – have been discussed by many researchers, such as Julio Plaza in his book Tradução Intersemiótica [Intersemiotic Translation] (São Paulo 1987) or Claus Cluver and Burton Watson in their article ‘On Intersemiotic Transposition’ (Poetics Today, vol. 10 (1989), no. 1). None- theless, none of these authors were interested in the very specific problematics regarding the analysis of different versions of a single musical work. What kind of impact would a different orchestration have on the meaning of a musical piece? And what can we learn about the perception an author has about his own work when we compare the different versions he has produced of a composition? Rachmaninoff has written his Vocalise, Op. 34 No. 14 both for a simple voice and piano configuration

Discourse, Interdiscourse and Intertextuality in the Process of Construction of the Musical Meaning... |307
and for a soprano accompanied by a whole orchestra, besides another orchestral version with a vi- olin soloist. If exceptional artists like Ciurlionis were able to express the same artistic idea both in music and in painting, the simpler case of different musical versions of a single composition allows a most interesting perspective to analyze the different possibilities of interpretation of counterpoint passages, besides providing evidences of the author’s own conception about their structural role and hierarchic organisation. A semiotic perspective regarding the process of intersemiotic transposition can also enrich certain traditional procedures in musicology, such as considering the biographical and historical context of the production of an artistic piece by proposing – in some very specific and well documented cases – the hypothesis of an intersemiotic translation of some meaningful events in an artist’s life to some of his works.

The songs by Rachmaninoff represent the superlative manifestation of Russian vocal lyrics, what makes these songs a perfect material to research interrelations between music and poetry. Structural interaction between poetry and musical components in Rachmaninoff's songs is studies by using the method of time series analysis. Time dynamics of two indices are compared. Stress index is used for describing poetry component of the song and pitch/duration index is used for describing its musical part. The methodology of comparative study is demonstrated on the example of three songs: All was Taken from Me, The Fountain and What Happiness. Time dynamics of pitch/duration index is turned out to be a complex phenomenon. It combines a general trend with cyclical fluctuations, for description of which the notion of a poetry-musical period (strophe) was introduced. As a rule, a whole period corresponds to four lines. The intonation contrasts are more explicitly expressed in musical components of the songs than in poetry ones.

The recordings of pianists born before the turn of the century provide perhaps the most tangible link available to a previous performance practice. Evidence such as eye-witness accounts of live performances, editions and recorded performances of pianists born before 1900 suggest overwhelmingly that in the 19th century the printed page had nowhere near its present significance. This dissertation documents and compares temporal and dynamic deviations employed by a representative group of early recorded pianists with respect to both Chopin’s score and 19th century performance treatises. It features a unique methodology for evaluating and summarizing common piano performance approaches of the 19th century in fine detail.

I want to speak of music….as a country, our native country which determines our musicians’ nationality, our musicality, a country in relation to which all our “ideologies”, schools, individualities, are merely sides.

This was how Nikolai Medtner (1880-1951) began his book, The Muse and the Fashion.  But was this nationality - outlined by a man described by many as the ‘Russian Brahms’ - a country of Europe (such as the Classical Viennese tradition) Russia, or a combination?  The twentieth century was a booming era for Russian music with the emergence of Rachmaninov, Scriabin, Shostakovich and Prokofiev, following on from The Mighty Handful’s attempts to bring nationalism to the forefront of consciousness.  Thus Medtner went relatively unnoticed during his lifetime.  Born in Moscow, but with a family that descended from Europe, Medtner was influenced by the West and Russia in life as well as in music.  War and Revolution had major impacts on the Russian people, economy  and arts.  Against this backdrop, Medtner lived a complex but impoverished life, only finding financial security much later and after moving to Europe.  Nonetheless, he was an educated composer, influenced by great philosophers, as well as his personal passions, from nature to faith.  Thus his music was open to a variety of influences, but above all sits that of nationality.  Great composers and philosophers from both Europe and Russia had preceded Medtner, with yet more working alongside him - particularly his friend and fellow pianist, Rachmaninov.  By looking at Medtner’s life, philosophy and solo piano music - focussing on several poignant examples - this thesis will attempt to ascertain the extent to which Medtner’s music can be heard as Russian or European.

The posthumous critical receptions of Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky have differed greatly with respect to their historical importance, the former being regarded as relatively unimportant and the latter as fundamentally important to twentieth-century music. Their critical reception in Los Angeles during the first four decades of the twentieth century presents a contrasting view in which the two were regarded as equally important, each in his own way. Rachmaninoff's music had already gained firm critical support in Los Angeles before Stravinsky's name had ever been mentioned in the Los Angeles Times, and though the rise of Stravinsky's music eventually effected a redefinition of musical modernity in Los Angeles that rendered Rachmaninoff's style old-fashioned, critical esteem for both composers remained high into the 1940s.

The works that Sergei Rachmaninoff composed from his emigration to the United States in 1918 to his death in 1943 were generally dismissed at the time of the premieres as old-fashioned, and writings on this group of works written since that time, though substantially more sympathetic, have not established a perspective by which the works might be viewed as products of their time. Synthesizing existing research on Rachmaninoff, this conference paper ventures such a perspective by arguing hermeneutically that the newly prominent, angularly dissonant linear progressions in his music of this period represent the alienation that he felt as an emigre by objectifying the music's lyrical elements. It is this element of alienation, a condition of modern life, that links Rachmaninoff's music to its time.

Интерес к описаниям моря в симфонической музыке у меня появился довольно давно. И вдруг несколько лет назад появилась мысль собрать вместе наиболее интересную, на мой взгляд, музыку по данной тематике. В результате получился сборник из трех дисков, который я и предлагаю Вашему вниманию. Данная программа, разумеется, не может охватить все существующие симфонические описания моря. При выборе произведений я руководствовался своими музыкальными пристрастиями, что, в частности, объясняет господство русских композиторов.
Мне хотелось бы посвятить данный сборник моей семье, в которой море и все что с ним связано вызывает неизменный интерес, а также моим коллегам по подводным раскопкам в Египте, товарищам-морякам с французского фрегата «Гермиона», а также всем людям, которым близко море и классическая музыка.
Ниже приводятся ссылки на музыкальные файлы, файлы графического оформления дисков, а также общее описание музыки и некоторые интересные факты, связанные с созданием некоторых произведений.
Желаю Вам приятного прослушивания!
А.Б.

Sergei Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil is often hailed as one of the great choral achievements of the twentieth century. Composed for the idiosyncratic and oft not done “all-night rite” of the Eastern Orthodox liturgy, the service—part of the canonical hours—consists of Vespers, Matins, and Prime, also known as “the First Hour.” A frequently enraging misnomer to Rachmaninoff’s op. 37 is simply referring to it as “Rachmaninoff’s Vespers.”  For musicologists who are also versed in liturgical theology, this gross simplification of the all-night vigil to only its first canonical section is not only factually inaccurate, but it discounts the rich theology present in the First Hour and in Rachmaninoff’s musical treatment of the text from the office. Since the early days of Christianity, monastic communities and early developments in liturgical theology held a primacy for the first hour of daylight in the Divine Office. The abatement of a night relenting to the morning was a daily and physical reminder of John 1:5: “the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Indeed, the etymology of “vigil” from the Latin vigilia (“to keep watch”) is laden with biblical symbolism of the soul waiting for Christ as the warden waits for the dawn. Despite Rachmaninoff’s somewhat unorthodox adoption of Russian Orthodox Christianity (that is, the lack thereof), this paper presents that his treatment of this ancient liturgical service was more adept than mere musical aesthetic. Rather, the following study argues that Rachmaninoff’s extremely sensitive and affective handling of the all-night vigil service is in line with Eastern Orthodox theology of the aforementioned canonical hours, culminating in a musico-theological summa on the final movement of the work, when praise is given to the Theotokos, the Mother of God, who gave birth to the Living Light.

Although Rachmaninoff has not generally been associated with Symbolism (whether Russian or generally), a close reading of his opera "Francesca da Rimini" exhibits certain features that have generally been considered representative of musical Symbolism. These include the disruption of functional harmonic syntax, the recurring use of distinctive harmonies to signify extra-musical content, and the disruption of linear temporal narrative through musical cyclicism.

Professional musicians and connoisseurs have frequently questioned the performance authenticity of piano roll renditions. Do they give a fair representation of the artist’s expressive intention, or were so-called hand-played reproducing piano roll performances so constrained by technological limitations that in order to produce salable product, the artist’s live rendition needed to be significantly modified? Artis Wodehouse seeks to open a discussion of these questions through a new analytic method.

From Tchaikovsky’s Lullaby to Rachmaninoff’s “Anxiety Dream”: A Psychoanalytic Transcription?

What will be a plausible interpretation of a lullaby that keeps disturbing the slumber? In Rachmaninoff’s piano transcription of Tchaikovsky’s song op.16 no.1, a chromatic passage with cradle-rocking rhythm within the prelude and interlude of every A section—the piece alternates between sections of A in minor with many flats and B and C in major with many sharps—grows rampantly until a whole-tone climax breaks down the rhythm. The interactions between chromatics and the whole-tone scale, major and minor keys, sections with and without words can be interpreted as a wrestling between two different characters, resembling the “anxious dream” in Freud’s typology. Examining the reasonable range of applying psychoanalysis to musical interpretation, this article works toward a “fusion of horizons” that can serve as the “pre-understanding” of both author and audience, thus reinforcing the platform for musical creativity and hermeneutics.

This dissertation takes as its subject the performing style of the great composer, conductor and pianist, Sergei Rachmaninov (1873–1943). More specifically, it analyses characteristics of temporal fluctuation in his recordings. By focusing on Rachmaninov’s four recorded performances of his Polka de W.R., written in 1911—one on piano roll and three on record, spanning nine years from the earliest (1919) to the latest (1928)—we are able to determine firstly how characteristics of his style are manifested in these performances, and secondly, the extent to which they differ. Brief analysis of other pieces Rachmaninov recorded more than once throughout the 1920s is then carried out to determine whether chronological patterns of interpretative change may be observed, taking any differences between Rachmaninov’s Polka recordings as a starting point.
The study begins with a section concerning approach and methodology when analysing temporal aspects of performance, and the analysis itself (in Sections 2 and 3) makes reference to graphic representation of the recordings through the use of the purpose-built computer software Sonic Visualiser (developed in conjunction with the research carried out in the first decade of this century by the Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music).
By viewing Rachmaninov’s temporal fluctuation in this way, in relation to a specific piece, we are able to see clearly how this aspect of performance practice operates in the recorded style of possibly one of the foremost respected and successful pianists of all time.

En tant que l’admirateur de la musique classique, je prenais toujours beaucoup d’intérêt dans les descriptions symphoniques de la mer. Depuis plusieurs années donc je collectionnais les morceaux qui sont maintenant réunis dans ce coffret de trois CDs. Le programme reflet mes préférences musicales personnelles, ce qui explique aussi la partie importante attribuée aux compositeurs russes. 
J’aimerais adresser ce programme à ma famille qui adore la mer, aux mes camarades des fouilles sous-marines en Egypte, aux mes coéquipiers de la frégate « L’Hermione », aussi bien qu’aux tous les gens qui aiment la musique symphonique et la mer.
Le programme est disponible en trois langues (français, anglais, russe) et inclut les liens vers la musique en différents formats, la description générale et les faits intéressants sur chaque pièce.
Je vous souhaite une bonne écoute,
A.B.

Статья посвящена изменениям, которые активно происходили в музыкальном языке С.В. Рахманинова в начале ХХ века. На примере романсов ор. 38 (1916) анализируются новые принципы работы композитора с поэтическим текстом, а также элементы мелодики, гармонии, формы, фортепианной фактуры. The article is devoted to the changes that were especially active in Rachmaninoff's style at the beginning of the 20th century. On the example of his Romances op. 38 (1916) the new principles of the composer's work with the poetic text, as well as melodics, harmony, form, piano texture features are analyzed.

A prevailing belief among Russia’s cultural elite in the early twentieth century was that the music of composers such as Sergei Rachmaninoff, Aleksandr Scriabin, and Nikolai Medtner could forge a shared identity for the Russian people across social and economic divides. In this illuminating study of competing artistic and ideological visions at the close of Russia’s “Silver Age,” author Rebecca Mitchell interweaves cultural history, music, and philosophy to explore how “Nietzsche’s orphans” strove to find in music a means to overcome the disunity of modern life in the final tumultuous years before World War I and the Communist Revolution.

La musicologie de l'interprétation vise à une étude critique de la réception et du vécu de l'oeuvre musicale. Cette orientation permet de réunir et de confronter les travaux de théoriciens et de praticiens de la musique. Le présent volume constitue une refonte des actes du premier colloque international consacré, en France, à l'interprétation pianistique. Cette rencontre organisée par le groupe de recherche RASM (Réception-Arts-Spectacle-Musique), s'est tenue en juin 2003 à l'université d'Evry-Val-d'Essonne, sous la direction de Jean-Pierre Armengaud et de Damien Ehrhardt. Il a conduit à l'élaboration du concept d'"ingénierie artistique" comme fondement méthodologique.
Les quatorze contributions de cet ouvrage abordent divers aspects de la musicologie de l'interprétation : les gestes du musicien ont été traités dans des articles consacrés à la métamorphose du piano contemporain, aux gestes du pianiste et du chef d'orchestre et au tempo rubato; les relations entre interprète et compositeur sont étudiées à travers des analyses de Beethoven, Debussy, Satie, Duparc, Rachmaninov, Ives... Les rapports entre interprétation et musicologie font l'objet de recherches sur la vision critique du musicien ainsi que sur les conceptions de Schenker et de RIemann. D'autres contributions transdisciplinaires,dont un article concernant l'Erratum musical de Marcel Duchamp, sont venues compléter ce corpus de textes.

As recording devices, the reproducing piano and phonograph decouple the time of listening to music from the time of the body laboring to make music. That is, recording technologies divide musical experience into listening and performing. They thereby construct an abstract interval between them that is filled or traversed by a new commodity, the recording. As numerous scholars have shown, the recording and its efficient commodity form fundamentally transformed both performance and listening. Less understood is how different modalities of recorded performance — the reproducing piano and phonograph — establish different theoretical models for capturing and storing music. In this paper I explore the ways in which the roll and record emphasize and embody these different models with what they capture and store. Each technology filters and amplifies a performance by taking and storing certain aspects while discarding others. For example, neither the reproducing piano nor phonograph reproduces the visual spectacle of the performer's laboring body over the keys (although many models of player piano require a skilled operator to draw out a musical performance from the roll's stored data). The phonograph provides only the aural portion of a performance, while the reproducing piano roll's dancing keys indexically signify the movements of the performer's laboring hands and simultaneously draw attention to the empty bench, to the negative space where the performer's body should be. To illustrate the depth of ideological difference between these technologies, I use

倫敦交響樂團
London Symphony Orchestra

丹尼爾 ‧ 哈丁
Daniel Harding
首席客席指揮
Principal Guest Conductor
王羽佳
Yuja Wang
鋼琴
Piano

拉赫曼尼諾夫
D 小調第三鋼琴協奏曲,作品 30 從容的快板 間奏曲:慢板 終曲:二二拍
Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943)
Piano Concerto No 3 in D minor, Op 30 Allegro ma non tanto
Intermezzo: Adagio Finale: Alla breve
馬勒
D 大調第一交響曲 緩慢拖延地,保持從容 有力地前進,但不太快
莊嚴準確,不拖延地-簡單謙遜,像民歌
            狂暴地進行
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
Symphony No 1 in D
Langsam. Schleppend
Kräftig bewegt, doch nicht zu Schnell Feierlich und gemessen, ohne zu schleppen Stürmisch bewegt

Construction grammar, recently described as “the fastest growing linguistic and interdisciplinary approach to language” (Goldberg 2013, 30) has its foundations in the psychology of human categorization and other general cognitive abilities. So does schema theory in music. In the first extended comparison of these research programs, we present six central principles of construction grammar and demonstrate their relevance and applicability to schema-theoretic studies of music: 1) grammatical constructions, 2) surface structure, 3) a network of constructions, 4) cross-linguistic variability and generalization, 5) usage-based knowledge, and 6) exemplar models. Because studies in child development have played such an important role in changing how scholars view language acquisition and grammar formation (Tomasello 2003) we have chosen to illustrate many of the arguments with musical examples drawn from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century conservatories. An orphan at one of the eighteenth-century conservatories in Naples, the prodigy Henri Fissot at the Paris Conservatory in the 1850s, and the young Rachmaninoff at the Moscow Conservatory in the 1890s all learned the art of composition through the age-old practice of child apprenticeship. From the musical utterances made by these apprentices in response to exercises and contests one can infer much about the grammar being acquired. Extensive musical examples suggest that construction grammar can provide a model for how a large repertory of learned patterns of varying dimensions can collectively function as a flexible and adaptive music grammar.

La produzione per pianoforte e orchestra di Sergej Rachmaninov viene oggi considerata – a torto o a ragione – il contributo più significativo del compositore russo alla letteratura musicale. Eppure sarebbe alquanto riduttivo considerare Rachmaninov un mero epigono della tradizione virtuosistica ottocentesca, limitato nell’impulso creativo dal gesto performativo.
I Quattro concerti e la Rapsodia su un tema di Paganini – lungi dal caratterizzarsi come showpieces di un concertista itinerante, bisognoso di accattivarsi la folla con fantasie, parafrasi o Konzertstücke – segnano di fatto le tappe di maturazione stilistica del compositore, dall’irruente apertura del giovanile Concerto in Fa# minore alla sardonica chiusa del ‘senile’ ciclo di variazioni sul celebre capriccio paganiniano. Spiegato lirismo, afflato epico e virtuosismo trascendentale si compenetrano inscindibilmente nel Secondo e nel Terzo Concerto, mentre l’esitante modernismo del Quarto viene brillantemente risolto nella Rapsodia grazie al mirabile principio variativo che la struttura.
All’analisi formale dei concerti, che rimane obiettivo precipuo di questo seminario, si affiancherà una riflessione critica sulla loro ormai pluridecennale tradizione esecutiva, che avrà come punto di partenza le incisioni effettuate dal compositore stesso negli anni ’30 e ’40 con la Philadelphia Orchestra.

La produzione puškiniana – vera e propria enciclopedia della vita russa - segnò le tappe fondamentali dell’evoluzione del teatro musicale nazionale, tanto da venirne spesso a sua volta influenzata di riflesso: la ricezione di alcune opere e di alcuni personaggi immortalati dal grande poeta è infatti viziata o, a seconda dei casi e delle opinioni personali, arricchita dalla plastica presenza che questi hanno assunto nel repertorio operistico nazionale. Il seminario si pone pertanto l’obiettivo di delineare tale scambio osmotico attraverso la selezione di un campione ristretto ma significativo di opere russe della seconda metà del XIX secolo. Punto di partenza saranno il Boris Godunov di Musorgskij e l’Evgenij Onegin di Čajkovskij, esempi antitetici di realismo musicale à la russe. La travagliata gestazione del capolavoro musorgskijano verrà collocata all’interno del più ampio quadro delle metamorfosi teatrali del mito storico-letterario del falso Demetrio, che nel binomio Puškin-Musorgskij trova la sua più alta intonazione. Ci si chiederà poi quanto sia rimasto del polifonico «romanzo in versi» puškiniano nelle «scene liriche» dell’Evgenij Onegin, vivido ritratto musicale della piccola nobiltà di campagna, in cui l’«anima russa» della protagonista finisce per schiacciare il cinico disincanto dell’ “occidentale” Onegin.
Si passerà poi alle atmosfere allucinate e proto-simboliste della Donna di picche, in cui l’elegante gioco parodico di Puškin viene travolto dalle fantasmagorie del mito pietroburghese. Infine ci si soffermerà su due opere di Rachmaninov, per lo più  ignote al grande pubblico: Aleko ed Il Cavaliere avaro. L’una ci si presenta come canto del cigno dell’ “opera all’italiana”, mentre l’altra come esempio estremo di opéra dialogué (non scevra di influenze wagneriane): di fatto, un raffinato studio in «abnormal psychology», in cui l’orchestra diventa il mezzo privilegiato per l’accesso ai meandri più riposti dell’animo dei personaggi.

Fra il gennaio e il febbraio del 1902 Rachmaninov scrive una cantata di argomento profano – Vesna [Primavera] – per baritono, coro e orchestra. Il testo intonato dal compositore è tratto da un breve componimento di Nikolaj Nekrasov, Zelënyj šum [Lo Strepitio verdeggiante]. In esso il celebre poeta russo propone un apologo sulla charitas cristiana che ha come sfondo l’ebbro risvegliarsi del Creato all’arrivo della primavera. Al pari del gelo invernale, l’animo del protagonista – un uomo tradito dalla moglie, rea confessa – si scioglie in un afflato misericordioso e unisce la propria voce al cantico della Natura, che inneggia, nel suo fulgore, alla clemenza divina. Si tratta di un tipico esempio di dvoeverie (letteralmente, ‘doppia fede’, ‘bicredenza’), in cui l’animismo di ascendenza pagana (già evocato nell’eloquente sinestesia del titolo) viene riassorbito (se non addirittura risemantizzato) nell’alveo del credo ortodosso.
Lungi dall’indulgere nel colorismo che caratterizzava alcune sue composizioni giovanili, tanto da venire rimbrottato a tal riguardo da Rimskij-Korsakov, Rachmaninov preferisce porre l’attenzione sul dramma interiore del protagonista, a cui è affidato un lungo monologo patetico, tagliato su misura per le doti interpretative del celebre basso russo Fëdor Šaljapin. Gli episodi di natura sinfonico-corale, orditi in un tessuto motivico cangiante, fanno da cornice all’ipotiposi del protagonista, realizzata efficacemente tramite un fluttuante recitativo-arioso di chiara ascendenza operistica.
Ci troviamo quindi di fronte a un’ibridazione del genere ‘cantata’, che mantiene sì il suo carattere celebrativo (si tratta, in fin dei conti, di un “Trionfo della Primavera”), ma viene al contempo fecondata da elementi riconducibili al genere operistico e a quello più propriamente sinfonico. Ed è proprio nella cornice sinfonico-corale che Rachmaninov, tramite una sapiente opera di metamorfosi (se non addirittura di trasfigurazione) degli intrecci tematici, traduce in musica l’ormai pacificato sincretismo cultu(r)ale del componimento di Nekrasov.

Muchas veces el libreto de una ópera es considerado por los críticos y comentadores como un mero soporte textual cuyo funcionamiento depende exclusivamente de la música. Se afirma, por oposición a los irreprochables aciertos de la música, que un libreto es reducción, tergiversación o, en el mejor de los casos, simplificación de una obra literaria mayor. La autonomía y el prestigio de estos monumentos de la literatura no son bienes transferibles a los libretos, textos menores concebidos para ser cantados. En general, esto redunda en comentarios poco profundos sobre los libretos, y los aspectos dramatúrgicos siempre son dejados de lado.

En el caso de Aleko solemos aceptar quizás demasiado rápido que la elección del tema y el tratamiento que de este hace Vladimir Nemerovich-Danchenko responden estrictamente a la naturaleza del libreto, que como sabemos fue un encargo del Conservatorio de Moscú. El desenlace es conocido: Sergei Rachmaninov, de diecinueve años, compone en menos de tres semanas una ópera breve y contundente con la que obtiene no solamente su título de “músico libre”, sino que además recibe una medalla de honor, le ofrecen un contrato por la edición impresa de sus obras y por el estreno de Aleko en el Teatro Bolshoi y, como si esto fuera poco, le regalan un reloj de oro.

An article (in Turkish) about Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto and George Howard Clutsam's "Songs from the Turkish Hills"

Emre Aracı, kayıp seslerin izlerini sürdüğü köşesinde bu ay pek tanınmayan Avustralyalı besteci George Howard Clustam’ı mercek altına alıyor. Bestecinin Songs from the Turkish Hills (Türk Tepelerinden Şarkılar) adlı albümünde güfteler “Abd-ul-Mejid”e ait gözüküyor. Acaba notaların üzerinde yazan bu isim hangi Abdülmecid'dir?

Despite being the less neglected opera written by Rachmaninov, Aleko (1892) is nevertheless discarded by critics as one of the last examples of ‘ital’yanshchina’ (i.e. a Russian opera ‘italianate’ in style and structure, a late offspring of a declining, if not debased, genre), with an overtly tchaikovskian flavour [Taruskin, 1997]. If on the one hand the ‘closed form opera’ was a non-negotiable choice for a graduation work (and such was Aleko), and Tchaikovsky was the inescapable stylistic model for a muscovite budding composer, Rachmaninov tries his hand at integrating the solo numbers into an embryonic symphonic structure and shows a remarkable stylistic variety as well as a strong musical personality.
Even more distracting is the a-critical assumption that Rachmaninov’s one-act opera was the Russian equivalent of Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, which premiered in Moscow a year before Aleko was completed. Even if we can assume that the librettist, Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko (future co-founder of the Moscow Art Theatre), saluting Mascagni’s hit as a dramatically effective and musically refreshing opera, was likely to shape his «hodge-podge» (sic!) of Pushkin’s poem [Norris, 1973] into a fast-paced and full-blooded para-veristic play, we should not pass over the fact that in Cavalleria the act of violence is to be inscribed within the ‘rustic moral code’, whilst in Aleko it marks the violation of the gipsy peaceful way of life, perpetrated by a so-called civilized man.
If the moral-philosophical questions raised by Pushkin in his poem cannot find a proper place in the libretto (a text which is supposed to be sung, not to be read or declaimed), nonetheless the focus of the drama is not the ‘crime passionel’ per se, but the plastic representation of a fin de siècle outcast, whose original pseudo-byronic posture (egotism) is subtly transmuted in a despairing ‘superfluousness’ (egoism). The murder of the carefree gipsy woman is not a mere reparation for the injured pride, nor the direct consequence of a preposterous napoleonism, but an “impotent” gesture of violence committed by a man, whose ultimate destiny is to be alone.

Indiscusso virtuoso del pianoforte, stimato direttore d’orchestra, Sergej Rachmaninov fu anche poliedrico compositore. Rivalutato in questi ultimi decenni, quando ormai i rancori avanguardistici si sono da tempo sopiti, il compositore russo ci si presenta oggi in tutta la sua idiomaticità. Non più spettro nostalgico che si aggira fra le macerie dell’Europa modernista, bensì sapiente e raffinato artigiano che si muove all’interno di una secolare tradizione compositiva, rifratta attraverso l’ineffabile prisma dell’anima russa. Per quanto l’etichetta di ultimo grande pianista-compositore non renda di fatto giustizia alla sua notevole produzione sinfonica e liederistica, Rachmaninov trova nel pianoforte il medium espressivo privilegiato. Dalla trivialità del più piccolo moraceau de salon all’afflato epico dei concerti per pianoforte e orchestra, la voce del compositore – al di là dell’inevitabile evoluzione stilistica – è sempre riconoscibile nell’avvolgente fascino della sua nostalgica tragicità.