Exiles from Revolution Rakhmaninov reclaimed Sergei Rakhmaninov left Russia in December 1917, soon after the Bolsheviks seized power. He never returned. In the early Soviet years his music was seen as archaic “not so much the music of yesterday, as sometime last week”. For a while it seemed that Rakhmaninov might simply fade from Soviet memory. But that didn’t happen. In the 1930s Soviet musical aesthetics changed. Modernism receded into the past. The new style converged with Rakhmaninov… but with a socialist message. Soviet acceptance of Rakhmaninov was speeded up by his patriotic response to the 1941 Nazi invasion. After his death, in 1943, a process of reclamation began. In 1944 an early symphony emerged from a Leningrad archive. Suppressed by Rakhmaninov since the 1890s, this gave a radical new perspective on the composer. © 2020 Terry Metheringham [email protected] +44 7528 835 422 Soviet Music: Exiles from Revolution Session 4: Rakhmaninov reclaimed 2 Rakhmaninov’s background Sergei Rakhmaninov (1873-1943) was born into an aristocratic family. It was a family with musical pedigree too: his grandfather had been a piano pupil of John Field. Sergei graduated from Moscow Conservatoire in 1892 only the third person to be awarded the Great Gold Medal. His teachers were Siloti piano. (Siloti was Sergei’s cousin, underlining the family musical pedigree.) Taneyev counter-point. Arensky composition. Rakhmaninov built an international reputation as a composer, conductor and pianist. He lived in Dresden 1906-09 (in part as an escape from the revolutionary turmoil in Russia, which had started in 1905). He undertook concert tours of USA in 1909, and Britain in 1914. His US tour was as both pianist and conductor. © 2020 Terry Metheringham [email protected] +44 7528 835 422 Soviet Music: Exiles from Revolution Session 4: Rakhmaninov reclaimed 3 Revolution The 1917 Revolution had a big impact on Rakhmaninov. In May 1917 he was confronted by an angry crowd of peasants led by a ‘Bolshevik agitator’ when he visited his estate at Ivanovka. [Mitchell p 143] The estate was taken into communal ownership. On 1 June 1917 he wrote to Siloti (his former piano teacher) that he desperately wanted to leave Russia with his family. We are “prepared to go to Norway, Denmark, Sweden… anywhere”. [Gehl p 37] During the October Revolution, the family apartment in Moscow was close to fierce fighting. Rakhmaninov was drafted onto the building committee, and required to join the rota for night guard duty. An unsolicited invitation for a recital tour of Scandinavia arrived. Rakhmaninov seized the opportunity; on 22 December he and his family left Russia via Finland, and set up temporary home in Copenhagen. In November 1918 they embarked for New York. © 2020 Terry Metheringham [email protected] +44 7528 835 422 Soviet Music: Exiles from Revolution Session 4: Rakhmaninov reclaimed 4 New life in the USA In the USA Rakhmaninov demonstrated astonishing commercial prowess. He knew what to expect – during his 1909 concert tour he had written to his cousin Zoya Pribitkova “All Americans think about is business”. [Gehl p 1] To fund his new life he re-branded himself as a pianist. He extended his repertoire, starting with Star Spangled Banner. His concert schedule was amazing. During his twenty four years in the USA he gave 992 concerts in 200 North American cities. In peak concert season he was giving four concerts a week. By 1920 he had signed recording contracts with Victor and RCA. He also signed up with Ampico (American Piano Company) to make a series of player piano rolls. His earnings were enormous, so he was able to indulge himself with fast cars and fast boats. In 1930 he decided to build a summer residence in Switzerland; Villa Senar at Hertenstein by Lake Lucerne – a substitute for his lost estate at Ivanovka. Rakhmaninov also became well known for his generosity towards other émigrés, and for sending money and food parcels to friends who remained in Russia. © 2020 Terry Metheringham [email protected] +44 7528 835 422 Soviet Music: Exiles from Revolution Session 4: Rakhmaninov reclaimed 5 Piano roll sample Here is one of Rakhmaninov’s Ampico piano rolls from 1928. Élégie op 3 no 1 written in 1892, and often included in his recitals. LINK 1 (4 mins) www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrOp4TeG100 Rakhmaninov Plays Élégie op 3 no 1 Ampico Roll 69253-H 4 Apr 1928 © 2020 Terry Metheringham [email protected] +44 7528 835 422 Soviet Music: Exiles from Revolution Session 4: Rakhmaninov reclaimed 6 Émigré persona Rakhmaninov adopted an apolitical public persona. When you take his lifestyle a continuation of wealthy pre-Revolutionary life: Russian clothing, in a Russian household, with a maid who had accompanied the family from Russia. … add in the sound-world of his music profoundly Russian, inherently nostalgic. (In 1912 when asking poet Marietta Shaginian to select poems for him to set, he had suggested “the mood should be sad rather than gay; bright tones do not come easily to me”.) [Maes p 204] … there’s a handy canvas for people to project their own feelings about Russia’s fate. In 1928 a Paris émigré journal featured Rakhmaninov as the “quintessential symbol of Russian cultural unity”. The next year the same journal carried an article by Lolli Lvov “what does the undying praise and unrivalled success of Rakhmaninov mean for Russia in her current inhuman torments?... Like the music of Orpheus, his music has transformative power to affirm the essence of genuine Russia”. [Journal Russia and Slavism, quoted Mitchell p 140] © 2020 Terry Metheringham [email protected] +44 7528 835 422 Soviet Music: Exiles from Revolution Session 4: Rakhmaninov reclaimed 7 Depiction in the USSR In 1937, people in the USSR were given a brief glimpse of Rakhmaninov’s new life as an itinerant recitalist. Popular Soviet satirists, Ilf and Petrov, toured depression-hit USA, and recounted their experiences in a travel book: Single-storied America / Одноэтажная Америка. This book included a meeting with Rakhmaninov. First he’s shown telling jokes in the green room while waiting to go on stage. When called to perform he “rises from his seat, assuming the great sorrow of a Russian exile on his face” [Mitchell p 159] © 2020 Terry Metheringham [email protected] +44 7528 835 422 Soviet Music: Exiles from Revolution Session 4: Rakhmaninov reclaimed 8 Return to composing For about ten years Rakhmaninov stopped composing, and when he resumed in 1926 he was much less productive. During his entire career he gave opus numbers to 45 works. 39 of these were written between 1891 and 1916 Only six were written between 1926 and 1940. However, these final works are significant pieces: Fourth Piano Concerto Three Russian Songs Variations on a theme of Corelli Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini Third Symphony Symphonic Dances What caused this period of writer’s block? The stress of establishing a new life? An amazingly busy recital schedule? Rakhmaninov said his “sense of being in exile from his homeland had thwarted his inspiration”. [Interview published in 1934, Monthly Musical Record quoted Mitchell p 143] © 2020 Terry Metheringham [email protected] +44 7528 835 422 Soviet Music: Exiles from Revolution Session 4: Rakhmaninov reclaimed 9 First premiere in exile Rakhmaninov’s first western works were premiered together on 18 March 1927 in Philadelphia. These were Fourth Piano Concerto and Three Russian Songs. Fourth Piano Concerto received a lukewarm reception. Composition of a first draft was apparently well advanced before the revolution, but with the upheaval it laid dormant until 1926. Rakhmaninov attempted dramatic make-overs in 1928 and 1941, but in the West this concerto has never approached the popularity of its two immediate predecessors. Three Russian Songs, however, was well-received. © 2020 Terry Metheringham [email protected] +44 7528 835 422 Soviet Music: Exiles from Revolution Session 4: Rakhmaninov reclaimed 10 LISTENING NOTES: Rakhmaninov Three Russian Songs op 41 First performance: Philadelphia, 18 March 1927, Philadelphia Orchestra and Toronto Mendelssohn Choir conducted by Leopold Stokowski. The work is dedicated to Stokowski Here is a summary of each song. I Через речку, речку быстру…/ Across the stream, the fast stream… A drake and a duck are crossing a bridge over a swift stream. The duck takes fright and flies away. The drake is left weeping. II Ах ты, Ванька… / Hey Vanka Hey Vanka you hot-headed fool! You are leaving me because of your in-laws. Who am I going to spend the dark winter nights with? III Белилицы, румяницы, вы мой! / My white cheeks, my blushing cheeks I’m crying because my jealous husband is riding home to whip me. All because I visited a young single neighbour; I gave him a glass of mead. He pressed my hands against the glass and told me I moved like a beautiful swan. My husband wants to beat me and I don’t know why! LINK 2 (15 mins) www.youtube.com/watch?v=91Mm6esSUBk Three Russian Songs op 41 State Symphony Capella of Russia, cond Valery Polyansky © 2020 Terry Metheringham [email protected] +44 7528 835 422 Soviet Music: Exiles from Revolution Session 4: Rakhmaninov reclaimed 11 Three Russian Songs These are simple folk stories about relationship problems: desertion, loneliness, and at the end there is anticipation of a beating. Perhaps this represents Rakhmaninov’s feelings about the life of an exile? The musical setting is structurally sophisticated; this is no random sequence of folk tunes. The first song includes a heart-wrenching descending violin gesture (at 2’40 in the recording above) which Rakhmaninov uses again in Third Symphony and Symphonic Dances. The standard folk version of the first song has a happy ending; the duck returns to the drake.