Secrets of the Ləgend
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Ə SECRETS OF THE L GEND MƏLIKOV, MAHLER, FIVE CHORDS AND THE DANCE OF TIME BY SIMON HEWITT ON 21 MARCH 2004 I took a train through the snow from Helsinki to Saint Petersburg, following in the railsteps of Lenin in April 1917 and those, a decade earlier, of Gustav Mahler. On 3 November 1907 Mahler was returning to St Petersburg after a week in Helsinki (then part of the Russian Empire) which he described as ‘beautiful, superb… I could happily live here! ’ During his stay he conducted a concert at the University Solennitetssal, devoted to Beethoven (Fifth Symphony/Coriolan Overture) and Wagner (preludes to Tristan & Isolde and Die Meistersinger ), and hobnobbed with the Finnish cultural élite. On October 31 Mahler heard two early works by Sibelius (his Valse Triste and Varsang symphonic poem) – dismissing them, a little harshly, as ‘kitsch.’ But he liked the conductor, Robert Kajanus (founder of the Helsinki Philharmonic), who had paid him a courtesy visit earlier that day. Kajanus was the foremost interpreter of Sibelius’s works (and, in the 1930s, the first to record his symphonies). He staged what were known as ‘popular’ concerts at Societetshuset Hotel (now City Hall) on the Helsinki waterfront, where Mahler was staying. Gustav Mahler was introduced to Sibelius after the concert and found him ‘extremely pleasant.’ Sibelius, in return, described Mahler as a ‘very modest and most interesting person.’ They talked at length, swapping views about The Symphony. ‘The main thing is severity of style, and an underlying logic that links all the motifs like a hidden thread’ threw in Sibelius. ‘No it’s not’ chuntered Mahler. ‘A symphony should be all-embracing, like the world!’ Mahler dined that evening with Finland ’s most famous painter, Axel Gallen – who (Mahler wrote incredulously to his wife) ‘downed a dozen glasses of schnapps ’ before the soup arrived. After sleeping them off Gallen took charge of Mahler ’s final day in Finland, arranging a three-hour boat-trip along the coast with architect Eliel Saarinen (1873-1950). The trio then repaired by horse-and-carriage to Hvitträsk, a newly-built country-house above Lake Vitträsk, 18 miles west of Helsinki. That evening, by a roaring fire, Gallen dashed off a small oil portrait of Mahler. Hvitträsk was built 1902-04, in a style influenced by Macintosh, as studio-cum-home for the avant-garde Architects ’ Bureau that Saarinen ran with Herman Gesellius (1874- 1916) and Armas Lindgren (1874-1929). The trio ’s last and most famous design was Helsinki ’s magnificent Jugendstil railway station. I left it at 15:42 on the Repin . It was my first trip to Russia. The slowish train – six hours to cover the 275 miles to St Petersburg – had a dining-car with lace curtains and flowers on the tables. I was musing peacefully, as the only person in it, until a noisy group of Russians plonked themselves down across the aisle and ordered a carafe of vodka. A portly gentleman with bald pate, few teeth and a disconcerting resemblance to Khruschov arrived in their wake and, instead of setting himself down in a quiet corner, shovelled himself onto the seat opposite me. He ordered dried fish, looked at me with an evil grin, took off his shoe, banged it on the table, and bellowed ‘I wi ll bury you! ’ Well no, he didn’t of course. He ordered me to have some of his fish: it was mighty tasty, and reminded him of his childhood in and alongside the rivers near Novosibirsk. More of Novosibirsk later. The tableful of Russians – heading home from a conference in Stockholm – proved equally friendly. Dima, their leader, plied me with vodka. Times change. Instead of arriving, like Lenin (and Mahler), at the historic Finland (exchange) Station, my Repin arrived at St Petersburg ’s glitzy new Ladozhsky (through) Station. And today the Repin does not even exist. It was ditched in 2010 in favour of a faster (3½-hour) but charmless train, the Allegro . Music Over Art. MYSTERIOUS MARIINSKY DEBUT I was staying just five minutes by foot from Finland Station but 25 minutes by car from Ladozhsky – in an enormous apartment block on Finlandsky Prospekt, erected in 1987 to house the city’ s musicians, and artists. My landlady Larisa had a grand piano that took up half the living-room. She was large and jolly, like her breakfasts. Bread, jam, ham, blini, eggs and a dictionary were piled on her kitchen table. She was keen to practise her English. I was keen to reply in a Russian that had lain untouched since A-Level. We spoke, slowly. My first Petersburg priority was a ticket to the Mariinsky. I was delighted to see Casse-Noisette on the bill for March 23. Alas: sold out. I met Dima instead. He introduced me to his friends Andrei and Vlada. They promised to try and wangle me a Mariinsky ticket for the following night. I was to call them late next morning to check. I couldn’t get through, much as I tried from the battered coin-boxes at Vitebsky Voxal, where I took an elektrichka to Pavlovsk, then a marshrutka to Tsarkoye Selo, for a day in post-imperial snow – making damn sure I was on the pavement outside the Mariinsky by 6:30pm, half an hour before curtain up. No sign of Andrei or Vlada. At 6:55 they arrived with three 250-ruble (£4.50) tickets for Box 4 in the First Circle (third tier). There was barely time to buy a programme and see what we were in for. The Legend of Love . Never heard of it. The title hardly excited. ‘Music by Arif Melikov .’ Never heard of him either. Our box contained six wooden chairs. We had one seat in the front row and two behind, from where Andrei and I could, with some contortion, take in about three-fifths of the stage, if we stood up. We did, though, have a goodish view of the orchestra. We were on the percussion side, and it looked to me like the largest array of percussion ever assembled in a pit, with a bass drum the size of a trampoline. Like a giant mace summoning silence, five fat, dissonant chords, each spaced two seconds apart, shuddered through the auditorium. They were as electrifying as the repeated notes on the death-march trumpet that start Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, or the Fate motif that opens Beethoven’s – although in each case four, not five, notes are involved. Melikov’s opening also made me think of the isolated chords that end Sibelius’s Fifth – although those are irregularly spaced, and there are six of them. It would be many years before I learned why Melikov opened his ballet with five chords. They were followed by a sinister skipping motif on the bassoon, swiftly developed by the flute then violins, as beturbanned courtiers crept out to pay exaggerated obeisance to a black-clad Vizier with a pointed beard, who swaggered around flapping his cloak like a cross between Mephistopheles and Freddy Mercury. A gong sounded and, to strains of plaintive brass, ladies-in- waiting poured on to the stage, swirling their headscarves in lamentation towards a bier in a recess at the back – where a Princess, covered in a white shroud, lay as still as a mummified Lenin. The Queen (her elder sister) stood before her in haughty profile. Just 90 seconds since the first of those chords. Sensational start. DATE AND PLACE ? I was still no wiser as to who Melikov was or when he had written his ballet. The massive sound, with its intermittent shrieks of dissonance, reminded me of an orchestral depiction of a Soviet factory by a composer whose name I couldn’t remember, though I had a feeling it began with M. It did – but it wasn’t Melikov. Alexander Mosolov wrote Zavod in 1926. The title is usually translated as Iron Foundry , but Steelworks would be more accurate: it was originally part of a ballet called Stal (as in Stalin). Back on stage a hirsute Stranger in sackcloth – part Druid, part Sorcerer to Mickey Mouse’s Apprentice – had appeared, claiming he could save the Princess if the Queen sacrificed her beauty in exchange. The Queen nobly consented and was instantly disfigured (to spend the rest of the ballet in a mask or veil). This ballet was not shaping out to be the soppy concoction its title threatened. The Stranger had bewitched the Queen with a quirky, tantric dance full of jerky elastic strides – the last sort of thing I had expected to see in such a haven of tradition as the Mariinsky. The Queen had vainly offered him gold – embodied by a dozen dancers in gold tops and tights, black mini-skirts and air- hostess hats, bouncing around sexily with their knees waist high, as if Pan’s People had hijacked an Aeroflot flight. I was more confused than ever as to when this ballet could date from. It had the searing lyricism of the late Romantics, the muscle of Mosolov, the mood-swings of Mahler, occasional jazzy bits, the ostinato of Ravel, and the stridency of Prokoviev or Shostakovich – all with an Oriental seasoning that nodded to Khachaturian. The Love interest had to wait till the second half of Act I: the Queen and Princess (now back to the pinkest of health) are walking in the palace gardens when they spot a handsome decorator painting an archway and simultaneously fall in love (or rather lust) with him. The young man not surprisingly prefers the Princess, who secretly returns to see him – launching into a courtship dance with fluttering, come-hither hand movements.