Let's talk about Russian classical music

I'm listening to Keith Jarrett's version of Shostakovich's 24 Preludes and Fugues - pretty surprised by his discipline on it, really, I love Keith Jarrett but I would have assumed his take would be more "emotive" than it is - it seems like Shostakovich gets the laurel from most people but there's such a breadth of expression in Russia/the Soviet Union over the course of the 20th century; one of the best German conductors and an early champion of Mahler, Oskar Fried, went to the Soviet Union fleeing the Nazis and did work for films there. Prokofiev isn't the Great Man that Shostakovich is but his piano music, too, really really works for me (as does the one aria from his War & Peace that I have Anna Netrebko doing, jeez it's great. Scriabin we've talked about here too, a total monster, there's Mussorgsky too, so many Russians, in to my ears a different harmonic place than the rest of Europe in the wake of The Great European Classical Tradition...talk about Russians ITT!!

I first fell for the dark classical vision that so many Russian composers seem to have when I heard Mussorgsky's "Night On Bald Mountain" in Disney's "Fantasia". And that's still one of my favorites. I go to Tanglewood in the Berkshires once a year and usually this stuff is too downbeat for a sunny summer day but I live in hope.

Can I post some Youtubes on this thread. Can I please? Yes?

Shostakovich is #1 best teenager music. I listened to symphony #10 first mvt. on repeat from the onset of puberty. His "puppet music" is balls. If Dmitri was the student of "Boris Gudenov",

Then Prokofiev was the spiritual son of Rimsky. Prokofiev-- a) is THE most underrated orchestrator, b) is fun to play-- you can attack his "classical" pieces as burlesques and vice versa, c) his 1st violin concerto is the gold standard in the medium as far as I'm concerned.

My favourite Russian composer for being "the most Russian" is forever and always Ustvolskaya, who's development from "insistant post-Romanticism" to "INSISTANT INSISTANCE" is gradual and beautiful; the most rewarding. Begin with her piano concerto. Sergei Salov is my favourite but here's the Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MwusLG9f2E

One lean month, prior to internet obedience, I spent more money on special ordering the Hat Art Ustvolskaya discs than I did on food

Great post Owen!! I have so much love for Prokofiev, I don't know if this is right at all but it seems to me like he doesn't get as much love because he didn't suffer like Shostakovich did under state pressure etc but his piano sonatas are A+ and yeah the violin concertos...not an accident that Anne Akiko Myers does them early on.

Also he cut a v. dashing figure

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/Sergei_Prokofiev_02.jpg

Prokofiev in no way takes a back seat to Shostakovich IMO. 3 things, 1) his life story is not as satisfying as Shosty's 2) his symphonies are still little understood and little rated and since any Great Composer must have a Great Symphony Cycle this hurts his rep 3) 'Peter And The Wolf, LOL how can this guy measure up to Shostakovich?'

But his 2nd through 6th symphonies are AMAZING and as a composer for solo piano he knocks Shosty's dick in the dirt no matter how great the Preludes and Fugues are. Prokofiev's solo piano work IMO ties with Messiaen's as the best 20th c piano body after the Debussy/Ravel/Scriabin/Satie generation.

Also Prokofiev is THEE primary blueprint for John Williams' style which means his influence is everywhere. (Well, for Danny Elfman's too).

Re: Jarrett I have not heard his DSCH Preludes and Fugues but his Well-Tempered Clavier was too measured for me; like you I was expecting his classical playing to be more unbuttoned.

Going a bit further back in time, I wish I liked Tchaikovsky's symphonies more, I've certainly tried. But his ballets are incredible. And Rimsky is always worth hearing, especially in vintage analog recordings where that colorful orchestration becomes totally intoxicating...

And Mussorgsky makes Debussy possible so I owe him 8 million bucks for that.

Jon have you heard Freddy Kempf doing Prokofiev? really crisp and forceful in my opinion. whether you have or not, who do rate as a pianist for Prokofiev?

I have not heard that Kempf album. I like his solo Schumann a hell of a lot, and his Liszt Etudes disc almost as much, so I should check that out.

Like everybody else I dig Richter in sonatas 6 through 8, with the usual caveats about sound quality (there is a Great Pianists Of The 20th Century Richter release which has a good collection of his Prokofiev on one disc and his famous Sofia Recital on the other disc, it's out of print but I'm sure it's affordable on the used market); for a modern guy I looove Frederic Chiu's Prokofiev cycle on Harmonia Mundi. Chiu subverts the expectation of steely aggressive Prokofiev and approaches him in more of an Ivan Moravec kind of cool but super-colorful way almost like he's playing Ravel; it works like crazy. Wish Chiu would record more stuff.

the russians i like more than is usual are probably...

nikolai r-k and that strain of orientalism also found in borodin and others of that generation, r-ks ANTAR is especially plangent and beautiful, will rep for sheherazade always

that whole generation of piano composers after scriabin which we discussed on sandbox -- the sadly short lived stanchinsky, the idiosyncratic serialist roslavets, and feinberg who was admired by stravinsky and schoenberg alike

and stravinsky, pretty much, cuz between the symphony of psalms, petrushka, apollo etc he wrote some of the small amount of music that never leaves me

there is something very loaded abt the whole russianness thing, contested arguments about westerners overdoing the 'enigmatic' or else failing to take account of the special path of russian history, ive never really thought of russian music in schismatic terms because the origins of russian secular classical music seem to be from st petersburg and the francophile mid 19th century, but ppl like ustvolskaya seem products of a parallel development

it's like I want to agree with you but they really do seem different? cf. Russian lit, that's "European literature" but it's off in its own world

nikolai r-k and that strain of orientalism also found in borodin and others of that generation, r-ks ANTAR is especially plangent and beautiful, will rep for sheherazade always

Yes. I am such a sucker for this vein. Which is funny because like you guys were just saying there is a kind of orientalism when The_West looks at russia...

Great posts, Jon! Also with regards to Prokofiev: the complete Romeo & Juliet ballet just destroys me. The suites soften the thematic development of the thing, turn it into bite-sized chunks, but as a whole, it's an incredible piece. Best wind writing! So worthwhile!

@nakh I could type all day in response to "Russianness" but I don't have time I'm gonna keep this quick and I apologize if I'm running the bases. On one hand [X] Yes, there is a voyeuristic thing that goes on with regards to (most notably) Dmitri and Sergei's relationship to The Party; other anecdotes, too, just this afternoon I was told about how Sibelius called The Five a crew of "vodka-swillers" and specifically singled out the afflicted Modest, this made me sad, <3 you Modest. Surely I have listened to a DSCH symphony and told the bf about which family member was in which gulag at the time. But also [X] No, the idea of Russianness was intrinsic to The Five's existence. I was gonna type about all the musical characteristics but the wiki has some depth! I checked it and it was like, "surprise!" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five#Musical_language I mean, I don't disagree with you, I agree with you, but my interest in Galina Ustvolskaya isn't 75% b/c she was a little old lady hiding out in Petrograd making proto-industrial music-- 20% at most :)-- I'm more interested in the building blocks of the language. Even before I learned Kabalevsky was a talentless whistle-blower, I was a kid obsessing over the parallel *everything* and general disregard for German cadences.

just this afternoon I was told about how Sibelius called The Five a crew of "vodka-swillers" and specifically singled out the afflicted Modest, this made me sad, <3 you Modest.

This is rich coming from Sibelius, a world-class alcoholic. Was it that they were swilling vodka and not brandy or w/e? And of course Sibelius' jumping off point as a young composer was the russian sound...

(nb Sibelius, with Debussy is probz my greatest hero)

Owen it is a shame you are so talented and busy otherwise we could jaw about classical music more :(

<3

Surely I have listened to a DSCH symphony and told the bf about which family member was in which gulag at the time.

^new personal goal. i listened to a few shostakovich string quartets for the first time recently and though i liked what i heard it was *in the car* so i was kind of not all there. that's all i have to say about russian classical composers other than i love this thread and look forward to exploring more.

Shostakovich is #1 best teenager music.

haha yes

when i was young i hated harpsichords and wanted huge and dark. some of shostakovich is so ott -- #7 and #11 come to mind -- but i love it.

the first time i noticed the bit in bartok's concerto for orchestra where he makes fun of the shostakovich 7th i was all like f u dude

O HAI A RUSSIAN THREAD

the russians themselves pore endlessly (or at least they did before the revolution) over how russian art/culture is/isn't european. i am pig-ignorant about classical music although i layman-love mussorgsky and prokofiev, but st. petersburg as capital of a vast asian empire with a basically german monarchy and administrative class who copy the manners (but not the politics) of france and belong to a schismatic constantinople-coveting church with Third Rome dreams is a big part of 19c russian intellectual/aesthetic schizophrenia: so much of russian culture, especially aristocratic culture, was built on european lines, but the parts that were different (different because russia was still feudal where europe was industrializing, or because russia had been run by mongols for so long, or because russia was much more willing to copy outfits and table manners from western europe than it was to copy a non-autocratic government) came to a lot of russian artists/thinkers to represent the ways in which russians/slavs were special and separate and uniquely suited to carry the legacy of rome. i'd say there's even a strain of this in the bolshevik willingness to jump marx's historical queue and push the country into socialism before it had industrialized or had a bourgeois revolution (although there's no strain of it in lenin or trotsky, who both never stop planning around the anticipated proletarian revolutions in the west) -- sure the rulebook says we're not ready, but the rulebook's european; it doesn't understand russians. stalin's "socialism in one country" is the warning bell for the great-russian nationalism he resurrects to fire the country up for ww2. putin draws from this well too.

so of course the Mysterious Orient view of russia has plenty of dumb exoticism in it, but it 1) isn't totally made up and 2) affected the way russians thought about themselves even more than it did the way europeans thought about them. the standard big symbol of this is the part in war and peace where model daughter of the aristocracy natasha instinctively knows how to do a wild peasant dance, cuz of the dark asiatic blood that flows in the veins of every russian; tolstoy and others plugged this into their own sort of idealized semicommunist christian primitivism, which (coming from dudes with multiple dachas) is arguably condescending and goofy but which i've always liked.

ANYWAY y'all know much more than i do about music, but i would bet this whole thing is indeed present in the russian musical tradition, at least a little, as it is in russian literature/visual art.

gonna put on the piano-only pictures at an exhibition cuz of this thread

Is there a good disc of Medieval Russian music that anyone can recommend?

no idea what was going on in Russia during the middle ages really. you might look for stuff by the Rustavi Choir, they make v. cool albums of Georgian chant/songs/chorales

I hate Tchaikovsky, convince me otherwise

Listening again to Borodin's 2nd symphony. I think it's not just the "orientalism" that accounts for how good he was - it's also a real sweeping, Mendelssohnian romanticism.

Then again, I don't know if I'm the only Mendelssohn fan on here!

no idea what was going on in Russia during the middle ages really

Yeah, ws wodering what the Russian Orthodox church ws up to, myself.

Probably my favorite era/hotspot in all of classical music.

And I'm still just starting to explore it! For instance, had never heard of Ustvolskaya until now, so thanks for the introduction!

Prokofiev is my man, and tackling his piano music has been driving me mad over the last few years. (The only thing I've ever managed to work myself up to recital level was "Suggestion Diabolique," and even that was chancy.)

I hate Tchaikovsky, convince me otherwise

Nigel Kennedy likes him, does that make it worse?

I will say though that you will temper your hate somewhat if you hear the Tchaikovsky tunes in this recital:

http://www.classicalarchives.com/images/coverart/6/d/f/7/028947785897_300.jpg

Thank you aero I will give it a listen. It surprises me that Russian music 1880-1980 is my #1 most listened to thing, but I've never given Tchaikovsky the time of day-- you are right, something about his violin concerto makes me very troubled. Surprised further to learn this morning that Tchaikovsky was a *contemporary* of The Big Five instead of being like Glinka's protege which is what I guess I always assumed.

@ Eric H I am always sad when I heard that a pianist has had to learn Diabolical Suggestion for any reason; so much effort, such little pay-off, and I love a Prokofiev but that damn piece! Ensnaring young pianists with lol 9ths! and lol gliss! and lol clusters! Not implying this was the case with you (but it was the case with me)

sitting completely exhausted (trying to stay awake to right body-clock) in a hotel listening to a.a. meyers doing Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 2 - so fierce

I have a pretty generous wingspan, so the 9ths were no sweat. The payoff was that I had multiple people come up to me outside of the practice room and say "what the hell was that you were playing?!"

Oh, no, I didn't mean "these 9ths are difficult" but that at age 13 there is something delicious about playing such dissonant passages, it's the musical equivalent of a dead baby joke

the /russianness/ i was thinking of was the strong version of that argument, that russia is only superficially european and probably not assimilable as 'asiatic' either, for example iirc samuel huntingdon viewed russia as distinct in his schematic of ~civilizations~ in the same way as japan was distinct from china

so i dont think the tradition following glinka discussed here is separate it that way, it's like a more distinct version of other 19th century musical nationalisms such as the czechs or norwegians or whatever with their particular volkish songcrafts and numinous rivers and cherished medieval despots

i searched for glinka yesterday and the only ilx post naming him is an inventory by scott seward! i dont know him well either, right now i can only think of those jaunty tunes from sokurovs magnificent 'russian ark'

Re: "Russianness", I thought of this last night

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBO_ujPHYYM