Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra Kirill Karabits Sputnik Images / AKG Images, London
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Kara Karayev SEVEN BEAUTIES SUITE • LEYLA AND MEJNUN DON QUIXOTE • LULLABY FROM ‘THE PATH OF Thunder’ Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra Kirill Karabits Kara Abdul’faz-oglï Karayev, 1971Kara Abdul’faz-oglï Karayev, AKG Images, London / Sputnik Images Kara Abdul’faz-oglï Karayev (1918 – 1982) premiere recordings The Seven Beauties (1949) 32:53 (Sem’ krasavits) Suite for Orchestra 1 I Waltz. Allegro molto – Tempo di valse – Più mosso – Allegro molto 4:19 2 II Adagio – Più mosso 5:09 3 III The Dance of the Clowns. Vivo scherzando – Moderato 1:55 IV The Seven Portraits 4 Introduction. Andante – 1:24 5 1. The Indian Beauty. Andante cantabile – 2:28 6 2. The Byzantine Beauty. Allegro – 0:53 7 3. The Khorezmian Beauty. Allegretto leggiero – 0:54 8 4. The Slavonic Beauty. Andantino – Più mosso – Poco più mosso – Allegro – Più mosso – 2:36 9 5. The Maghrebian Beauty. Andante con passione – 2:56 10 6. The Chinese Beauty. Allegretto – Più mosso – Tempo I – 1:22 11 7. The Most Beautiful of the Beauties. Andante 4:23 12 V The Procession. Marciale maestoso 4:20 3 Don Quixote (1960) 20:32 (Don Kikhot) Symphonic Engravings To Grigory Kozintsev 13 1 Travels. Molto sostenuto – Moderato 1:47 14 2 Sancho, the Governor. Marcia giocosa 1:56 15 3 Travels. Allegro moderato 1:21 16 4 Aldonse. Andante 3:32 17 5 Travels. Marciale – Moderato 3:06 18 6 Pavan. Andante maestoso 1:58 19 7 Cavalcade. Allegro e molto ritmico 2:33 20 8 Don Quixote’s Death. Andante 4:16 4 21 Leyla and Mejnun (1947) 15:17 (Leyli i Mejnun) Symphonic Poem Andante appassionato – Più mosso – Adagio – Allegro – Adagio – Allegro – Andante – Adagio – Molto adagio 22 Lullaby from ‘The Path of Thunder’ (1957) 4:02 (Tropoyu groma) No. 6 from the Suite from the Ballet Lento TT 73:10 Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra Amyn Merchant leader Kirill Karabits 5 Karayev: Orchestral Works Biographical introduction Born in Baku on 5 February 1918, Karayev The Azerbaijani composer, teacher, folklore studied at the Azerbaijan State Conservatory, authority, and artistic dynamo Kara Karayev then, from 1938, at the Moscow Conservatory; was at the forefront of his country’s musical from 1942 to 1946 he was a pupil of life for almost four decades after the end Shostakovich. During World War II, Karayev, of the Second World War, recognised as a together with the composer Akhmet Hajiyev, significant composer of the post-war Soviet wrote Fatherland (1945), a patriotic opera Union. He acknowledged the influence of the extolling heroism. It won an Azerbaijani state folk music of Azerbaijan on his compositions, prize and established his reputation. which are suffused with its melodic This recording features several of his inflections and rhythmic traits: best-known orchestral works – which The traditional music of Azerbaijan is my also include his Third Symphony (1965). In native language. As a composer, I grew addition, Karayev contributed fine works to up on Azerbaijani folk melodies and, the chamber music, vocal, and instrumental regardless of whatever artistic problem I repertoire. After his return to Azerbaijan, am working on, I cannot, and do not want alongside composing he took an active to, break away from their influence. part in the life of the country’s musical He combined this musical foundation with a institutions, for instance as Rector at the flair for lyricism, rhythmic verve, and, in his state conservatory where he broadened the orchestral works, deft, colourful instrumental syllabus, among other subjects introducing scoring. While indebted to the idioms of jazz studies. In the 1950s he became, first, folk music, his personal voice emanates President and, then, First Secretary of the from Shostakovich and Prokofiev, as well Azerbaijani Composers’ Union; later he would Tchaikovsky’s ballets and the fantasy be appointed President of the Composers’ operas of Rimsky-Korsakov. In his later Union of the USSR. Dogged by poor health in works Karayev embraced Schoenbergian his final years, he moved to Moscow where techniques. he died on 13 May 1982. 6 The Seven Beauties seven beauties, whom Bachram earlier in Literature provided Karayev with an important the ballet had seen come to life. As before, source of ideas for his music. Among his their beauty entrances him, and he imagines favourite authors was the twelfth-century dancing with them to a superb, obsessive Persian Sunni Muslim poet Nizami Ganjavi waltz worthy of both Tchaikovsky and (1141 – 1209) who was born and lived in Prokofiev. The Adagio accompanies the scene what is now Azerbaijan. Nizami’s Khamsa in which Aysha and Bachram first meet and (Quintet), or Panj Ganj (Five Treasures), is fall in love, although she is unaware of his a collection of five long narrative poems, status. Growing out of the horn’s romantic including The Seven Beauties, written in melody, tinged with folk inflections, it rises to 1197; this poem provided the inspiration for an impassioned climax. In the jocular, playful a symphonic suite of the same name (1949), music of their Dance the comic antics of the which Karayev subsequently recast as Clowns are vividly realised. the first full-length Azerbaijani ballet. With Early in the ballet, Bachram Shah seeks choreography by Pyotr Gusev, it was given shelter from a storm in an old castle; there a its first performance in the autumn of 1952 hermit shows him portraits of seven beautiful at the Azerbaijan State Academic Opera and women from different countries, who during Ballet Theatre, in Baku. It was an instant the night come to life and dance for him. The success, taken up by other ballet companies experience leaves him bewitched. Karayev across the USSR. creates a sequence of colourful vignettes, The scenario, which draws on incidents redolent of sparkling instrumental colours. from several of Nizami’s poems, focuses on Horn and flute solos over eerie string the love between Aysha, an artisan member arpeggios set the scene in the mysterious of a downtrodden people, and Bachram Introduction, after which ‘The Indian Beauty’ Shah, their feckless ruler, whom his evil Vizier is evoked by a tender flute solo accompanied manipulates in his lust for power. The first by a gently rocking rhythm. In the energetic movement comes from the ballet’s final act, ‘The Byzantine Beauty’, strings are to fore, in which Bachram despairs because Aysha the melody having a distinctly Eastern tinge. has spurned his love owing to his oppressive Woodwind suggest the cheeky, possibly even rule. However, to advance his own designs, flirtatious nature of ‘The Khorezmian Beauty’. the Vizier shows him a cloth with images of ‘The Slavonic Beauty’ is evoked by a suave, 7 flowing melody heard first on the violins, childhood. Karayev suggested that in his accompanied by a syncopated horn rhythm, own compositions he identified with Don then in three varied orchestral colours. Quixote’s relentless pursuit of the ideal. In The music of ‘The Maghrebian Beauty’ is 1957 he wrote the music for a film version darkly enticing, the accompanying bolero of Don Quixote, made by the renowned rhythm heard on wind, brass, and castanets; Soviet director Grigor Kozintsev; in 1960 he it surges to a sensual climax, implying, reshaped the music as a concert work which perhaps, that she is the most dangerous of he described as ‘symphonic engravings’. the beauties! Her dance is contrasted with Karayev shuns any depiction of notable the light-hearted, appropriately pentatonic events in the story, such as the Don’s attack theme of ‘The Chinese Beauty’, introduced on the windmills; he seeks instead to reveal by flute and bass clarinet. Lastly, the the psychological heart of the hero, as well delicate loveliness of ‘The Most Beautiful of as to evoke his muse, and to bring to life his the Beauties’ is enshrined by a solo oboe, faithful servant and companion, Sancho accompanied by wind and harp arpeggios, Panza. recalled from the Introduction, as is the Karayev’s ear for vivid orchestral colour decorative idea in the flute. is again exemplified in the movement titled ‘The Procession’ accompanies the scene ‘Sancho, the Governor’ and in the Rimskyan in which the soldiers of Bachram Shah, under ‘Cavalcade’, both vibrant with exuberant the command of the duplicitous Vizier, make a brassy fanfares. Three short sections dubbed display of brute force as they cow the people ‘Travels’ are interspersed between longer into submission. Over quiet pizzicato cello movements; they are bound together by a and bass and sinister tam-tam strokes, flute distinctive rhythmic idea which, combined and piccolo begin a march tune which gains with a march-like bass line, creates a sense relentless momentum as, by way of bi-tonal of motion as Don Quixote progresses from dissonance, it approaches a terrifying climax. one adventure to another in the quest for his ideal. The use of folk elements surfaces Don Quixote again in Karayev’s incorporation of Spanish Miguel de Cervantes (1547 – 1616) was traditional music: it is apparent in the solemn, another of the literary heroes of Karayev, stately ‘Pavan’ as well as in ‘Aldonse’, in who had discovered Don Quixote during his which the Don’s ideal personification of 8 woman is portrayed by a flute melody of It is built around three principal musical pristine beauty. The most poignant music is ideas, the first, representing Fate, a left for the final movement, ‘Don Quixote’s portentous theme heard initially on the Death’, in which fragments from ‘Aldonse’ strings. Fast, strife-fuelled music follows, and other movements are recalled, the Don depicting the conflict between the opposing perhaps dwelling on comforting memories as families and the struggle of the hapless his life ebbs. lovers. Its place is taken by a fragile love theme played by the strings, full of aching Leyla and Mejnun longing.