We think we know what Russian music is, but time and time again it will surprise us. And the secret element of Russianness, the magical ingredient that draws us back, seems, like the will-o'-the-wisp, to dance and flicker in the music but always to stay just beyond our grasp.
Several of the 19th century Russian composers had a strong sense of what it was they needed that would make their music Russian.
And one idea, popular in different ways with Glinka, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov, was to make their music tell a story. That meant operas and ballets and melodramatic fantasies and tone-poems and fairy-stories. What it did not mean was 'abstract' chamber-music, like 'boring' Westerners were writing. Once, when Borodin wrote a string quartet, his friend Mussorgsky, outraged at the betrayal, wrote a furious letter.
And when Tchaikovsky started his quartets, they caused a sensation, for they were something unexpected and quite new. But soon things changed. The next generations of Russian composers were a different kind of animal.
They were conservatory-trained stars from childhood, not romantic outsiders. They were professional performers, and nearly all great pianists of one kind or another. This was the time, from the late 19th century onwards, of the mighty Russian schools of piano, violin, cello and the voice… of giants like Rachmaninov, Oistrakh, Rostropovich and Chaliapin.
The three cello sonatas on this recording were written by great, albeit very different, composer-pianists. They wrote the piano parts out of their own experience of playing the piano and, in two cases, for themselves to play. They wrote the cello parts for great cellists who were their friends and colleagues. And they wrote this music not to be played in the drawing-room, not as after-dinner entertainment, not as a local demonstration of their Russianness, but as fully-fledged public music to be toured from one city to the next and published and performed in concert-halls both great and small, where people would pay to hear this music and the miracle of how great cellists and pianists played it.
He started reprinting scores musical editions of the old music, in new, modern, beautifully edited publications. He included helpful notes for church choirs. He has dedicated his life to a labor of love. So, enjoy the fruits of his labor. In such a harshly repressive society, humor has long been one of the few acceptable outlets for criticism and political commentary. The traditional role of the yurodivy, or "holy fool," has been afforded artists from around the 15th century on.
Read more about the "holy fool" in Shostakovich: Breaking Down Silence. Listen to discussion about how Shostakovich's sonata integrates each of the above qualities in a sonata along with 3 of the sonata's movements. And where Rachmaninov juxtaposes major and minor harmonies to mix and sharpen joy and sorrow, Shostakovich uses a minor key to completely transform the mood of his fourth movement Allegro. Read more about Shostakovich. Further reading Shostokovich:Breaking Down Silence.
Your support makes our online services possible. Contribute Now. Support Saint Paul Sunday with your Amazon. About the Sonatas by David Finckel and Wu Han David Finckel and Wu Han Musician Web site Biographies When listening to Russian music you get the feeling that the composer is telling you a story, not just to convey information but to unburden themselves, and to describe and chronicle the human condition as it existed at the time. This is music which grabs the heart of the listener at the deepest level.
RealAudio; How to Listen "There is an indispensable measure of suffering even in the happiness of the Russian people, for without it, its happiness is incomplete. Read more about Rachmaninov.
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