Prokofievegyptian Nights
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CHAN 10056 Front.qxd 24/4/07 10:23 am Page 1 CHAN 10056 CHANDOS PROKOFIEVEgyptian Nights Hamlet Autumnal Zdravitsa (Hail to Stalin) original version Flourish, Mighty Land original version Russian State Symphonic Cappella Russian State Symphony Orchestra under Valeri Polyansky CHAN 10056 BOOK.qxd 24/4/07 10:24 am Page 2 Sergey Sergeyevich Prokofiev (1891–1953) 1 Zdravitsa (Hail to Stalin), Op. 85 (1939)* 12:51 Original version of the Cantata for chorus and orchestra 2 Autumnal, Op. 8 (1910; 1914; 1934) 7:43 Lebrecht Collection Lebrecht Symphonic sketch Hamlet, Op. 77 (1938) 21:50 Incidental music for the play by W. Shakespeare Tatiana Sharova soprano Andrei Baturkin baritone 3 1 The Ghost of Hamlet’s Father. Andante lugubre 3:18 4 2 Claudius’s March. Moderato con brio 1:59 5 3 Fanfares 0:33 6 4 Pantomime. Allegro moderato 2:54 7 5 Ophelia’s first song. Andante 2:14 8 6 Ophelia’s second song. Andante 2:28 9 7 Ophelia’s third song. Andante 1:19 10 8 Ophelia’s fourth song. Andante espressivo 1:45 11 9 The Gravedigger’s song. Sostenuto 2:01 12 10 Fortinbras’s Final March. Andante maestoso 3:14 13 Flourish, Mighty Land, Op. 114 (1947)* 8:22 Original version of the Cantata for the thirtieth Sergey Sergeyevich Prokofiev, line anniversary of the October Revolution drawing from 1933 3 CHAN 10056 BOOK.qxd 24/4/07 10:24 am Page 4 Prokofiev: Egyptian Nights etc. Egyptian Nights, Op. 61 (1938) 22:06 The five works included in this recording of the exuberant nineteen-year-old who had Symphonic Suite represent specific aspects of Prokofiev’s not yet found his own distinctive voice. The 14 1 Night in Egypt. Adagio 1:43 musical style as it developed during the evocative character of the music, with its dark, Russian and Soviet periods of his life. Whilst lugubrious colouring, was clearly influenced by 15 2 Caesar, the Sphinx and Cleopatra. Andantino 3:00 still a student at the St Petersburg Rachmaninov’s Isle of the Dead which had first 16 3 The Alarm. Allegro inquieto 1:05 Conservatory Prokofiev made his first serious been performed in the spring of 1909. 17 4 Dances. Allegretto 2:44 attempts to write for the symphony orchestra. After his return to Soviet Russia, Prokofiev 18 5 Anthony. Andante mosso 4:12 Three works followed in swift succession: the initially directed much of his energy into 19 6 The Fall of Cleopatra. Lento doloroso 5:23 Sinfonietta in A major in 1909, then Dreams writing film scores and incidental music. This 20 7 Roma militaris. Andante maestoso 3:55 and the symphonic sketch Autumnal the brought him into direct contact with leading TT 73:18 following year. An earlier unrelated piece of figures from the theatre, including Tairov, juvenilia with the same name had been written Meyerhold and Radlov. Tairov’s production of at the suggestion of Myaskovsky, but as Egyptian Nights, a conflation of Pushkin’s Russian State Symphonic Cappella* Prokofiev recalled in his autobiography: unfinished tale, Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Russian State Symphony Orchestra ‘obviously, the title appealed to me, but the Cleopatra and Shakespeare’s Anthony and under music written for the first version did not Cleopatra, was staged in 1934 with music by satisfy me. Therefore I returned to this subject Prokofiev. Soviet producers of the 1930s were Valeri Polyansky for a second time.’ The work is often known in expected to favour contemporary subjects English as ‘Autumn’, but in fact the Russian title where socialist heroes or their historical is an adjective ‘osennyeye’ (autumnal) – a prototypes could be lionised. Egyptian Nights slight, but subtle, difference. Written, perhaps, was probably judged to be too remote and too in response to the death of his father, Prokofiev ‘bourgeois’, and was consequently poorly was not concerned with the season, as a received. For Prokofiev too, this musical number of contemporary critics assumed, but journey back to the time of the Pharaohs was with a bleak autumnal mood of the soul. Whilst also rather untypical, and unlike the incidental the inherent lyricism of Autumnal was later to music that he wrote for other theatrical become an important attribute of Prokofiev’s productions, Egyptian Nights remains relatively mature style, it is in many ways quite untypical unfamiliar. This is unwarranted because the 4 5 CHAN 10056 BOOK.qxd 24/4/07 10:24 am Page 6 seven-movement suite that he produced from gavotte, was to represent the transition from that features in the Andante of the balcony from that found in the mass scenes of the the score in 1938 is a finely balanced piece. It ‘superficial gaiety’ to ‘pent-up tragedy’. The scene from Romeo and Juliet, whilst the main opera War and Peace, and the jaunty trumpet begins with a short musical dialogue (Adagio) texts for the four Ophelia songs and the theme, later taken up very successfully by the melody in the orchestral introduction could between two flutes, evoking all the mystery of Gravedigger’s song were set to Russian chorus, is both serene and noble and is in have sprung straight from the pages of Romeo ancient Egypt and it ends with ‘Roma militaris’ translations made by Radlov’s wife, Anna, and Prokofiev’s finest lyrical vein. The composer and Juliet. Whatever Prokofiev’s private (Andante maestoso), a brutal depiction of the Prokofiev even claimed to have used folk avoided the fawning obsequiousness into feelings about the Stalinist regime were, he implacable Roman war machine. In between melodies from the Shakespearean era. In the which he might so easily have fallen by certainly showed himself to be a true and these movements representing opposing forces, apotheosis to the drama the protagonists are concentrating on the folk elements of the devoted patriot. Prokofiev gives us a whole series of vividly all killed, but to the swelling sounds of texts. The sentiments of loyalty demanded of contrasting episodes, including miniature Fortinbras’s march the composer aimed to show him found their expression in lively choruses, © 2003 Philip Taylor portraits of Anthony and the dying Cleopatra, the triumph of life and the underlying optimism but the most banal effusions in praise of the the longest two numbers in the suite. implied by Shakespeare. great leader are set at a pace so brisk that it Tatiana Sharova graduated from the Rimsky- Sergey Radlov was renowned for his A third aspect of Prokofiev’s Russian style, is in fact quite difficult to follow them without Korsakov Conservatory of St Petersburg and productions of Shakespeare and was and one which has received scant attention the aid of the text. for many years she worked with the Russian Prokofiev’s chief collaborator on the ballet until recently, is manifest in the explicitly For the thirtieth anniversary of the October State Symphonic Cappella under the direction Romeo and Juliet. Less well remembered, political works commissioned by the Central Revolution in 1947 Prokofiev wrote the of Valeri Polyansky. She has a wide-ranging perhaps, are the ten numbers that the Committee and the Soviet government. Within orchestral Festive Poem and the cantata concert repertoire of songs, cantatas, composer wrote for Radlov’s production of two years of returning to the Soviet Union, Flourish, Mighty Land. In this latter piece oratorios and opera which she works tirelessly Hamlet in May 1938. The principles that Prokofiev’s political credentials were to be Prokofiev avoided the monumentalism of the to expand. In 1998 she gained the Diploma of governed the composition of the music for tested in the grandiose Cantata for the earlier twentieth anniversary cantata. With the the Bellini international singing competition in Shakespeare’s tragedy were essentially the same twentieth anniversary of the October Soviet victory over Nazism won, and Stalin’s Sicily, and has received the award of as for Egyptian Nights, and the composer found Revolution and the cycle Songs of Our Days. ideological battle for the hearts and minds of Honoured Artist of the Russian Federation for to his delight that Radlov’s ideas about the These two works were followed in 1939 by ordinary Russian citizens seemingly victorious, her achievements. production basically echoed his own. In Zdravitsa, a cantata written to celebrate the emergent Soviet culture basked in sunlit particular, they decided that the appearance of Stalin’s sixtieth birthday. It is difficult to find cornfields peopled by contented collective Andrei Baturkin, grandson of the great the ghost of Hamlet’s father should not contain much merit in the sycophantic texts drawn, farm workers. Flourish, Mighty Land, a setting Russian tenor Anatoly Orfenov, was born in elements of mysticism or horror, only a call to supposedly, from contemporary verses by of verses by the poet Yevgeny Dolmatovsky, Moscow in 1966. He studied with Professor vengeance by a wronged father. For Claudius’s Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Kumyk, Kurd, exalts the Union, the Party and its founders, Eizen at the Gnesin Academy of Music. In entry Radlov required a ‘showy, “brilliant” march Mari and Mordovian poets, but Prokofiev’s and Prokofiev once again showed that he 1993, after graduation, he joined the in keeping with the flashy pomp with which the musical setting lifts them high above the level could deliver what was expected of him Stanislavsky Theatre company and the Helikon usurper sought to surround himself’. The of the commonplace. In the orchestral without compromising his artistic integrity. The Opera company. His repertoire includes the ‘mousetrap’ scene, composed in the style of a introduction we hear the same lilting figure style of the choral writing is not so very far roles of Eugene Onegin, Yeletsky and Tomsky 6 7 CHAN 10056 BOOK.qxd 24/4/07 10:24 am Page 8 (The Queen of Spades), Escamillo (Carmen), Williams.