NI 5831

Raphael Wallfi sch is one of the most celebrated cellists performing on the international stage. He was born in London into a family of distinguished musicians, his mother the cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfi sch and his father the pianist Peter Wallfi sch. At an early age, Raphael was greatly inspired by hearing Zara SHCHEDRIN Nelsova play. He was subsequently guided by a succession of fi ne teachers including Amaryllis Fleming, Amadeo Baldovino, Derek Simpson and the great RAPHAEL WALLFISCH, CELLO Russian cellist Gregor Piatigorsky. At the age of twenty-four he won the Gaspar , PIANO Cassadó International Cello Competition in Florence. Since then he has enjoyed a world-wide career playing. Teaching is one of Raphael Wallfi sch’s passions. He is in demand as a teacher all over the world holding the position of professor of cello in Switzerland at the Zürich Winterthur Konservatorium and in Germany at the Hochschule Mainz. Raphael has recorded nearly every major work for his instrument. His extensive discography on EMI, Chandos, Black Box, ASV, Naxos and Nimbus explores both the mainstream repertoire and countless lesser-known works by Dohnanyi, Respighi, Barber, Hindemith and Martinu, as well as Richard Strauss, Dvorak, Kabalevsky and Khachaturian. He has recorded a wide range of British cello , including works by MacMillan, Finzi, Delius, Bax, Bliss, Britten, Moeran, Walton and Kenneth Leighton. Britain’s leading have worked closely with Raphael Wallfi sch, many having written works especially for him. These include Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Kenneth Leighton, James MacMillan, John Metcalf, Robert Simpson, Robert Saxton, Roger Smalley, Giles Swayne, John Tavener and Adrian Williams. Raphael Wallfi sch plays on an instrument made by Adolphe Gand in Paris 1849 for Auguste Tolbecque, dedicatee of Saint-Saëns’ fi rst Cello Concerto.

Cello Sonata Ancient Melodies of Russian Folk-song 12 NI 5831

Rodion Shchedrin Rodion Shchedrin was born in 1932 in into a musical family: his father was a and teacher of music theory. He studied at the Moscow Choral Music for Cello & Piano School and graduated from the in 1955 where he studied Raphael Wallfi sch, cello - Rodion Shchedrin, piano composition and piano. His fi rst major works were written in his early twenties. Never a member of the Communist Party, after the collapse of the Soviet regime Shchedrin was able to participate more fully in musical life around the world and now divides his time between and Moscow. The ancient melodies of Russian folk-songs (2007) 17.53 A virtuoso pianist, Shchedrin has often performed his own works, which 1 I Lento in poco rubato [no.75] 3.14 include fi ve piano concertos, sonatas and a series of 24 preludes and fugues for 2 II Allegro, ma non troppo [no.61] 2.10 3 solo piano. For over a decade he spent lot of his time and energies as Head of III Maestoso [no.6] 3.57 the Russian Federation of the Union of Composers having succeeded its founder, 4 IV Adagietto [no.14] 4.27 , at the older composer’s request. 5 V Moderato [no.11] 4.05 In his (after Gogol) and the ballet (after Sonate (1996) 34.24 Tolstoy), he introduced classics of Russian literature to musical theatre. All were 6 I Allegretto 13.35 performed at the , making Shchedrin the fi rst composer to have 7 II Moderato 9.20 had seven works staged there in its 200-year history. Shchedrin`s choral works, set 8 III Sostenuto assai 11.29 to texts by Russian poets, are widely performed, as are his two symphonies and fi ve concertos for orchestra. 9 In the style of Albéniz (1959) 4.36 0 In 1992 President awarded Shchedrin the Russian State Prize for Quadrille – from the opera Nicht nur liebe () 6.57 his work The Sealed Angel. Shchedrin has succeeded in fusing traditional and new Arranged by Grigory Singer forms by using every contemporary compositional technique including aleatoric

and serial. His attraction to Russian folklore and folk music, Russian poetry and Total playing time 63.53 literature, is strongly evident in his oeuvre, making him a pre-eminently Russian

composer with a voice that nevertheless speaks to all humankind. Since 1989 Shchedrin has been a member of the Berlin Academy of Arts. Cover photograph © istock.com Recorded by Nimbus Records at Wyastone, 25 May, 2007 © 2008 Wyastone Estate Limited  2008 Wyastone Estate Limited

11 NI 5831 NI 5831 One of the most signifi cant and inspiring musical experiences of my life has been Rodion Konstantinovich Shchedrin was born in Moscow on 16 December 1932: working with Rodion Shchedrin on his works for cello. Our fi rst collaboration was his father was a violinist and composer who taught at the Moscow Conservatory, over Shchedrin’s orchestration of Prokoviev’s Cinq Mélodies in a version for solo where Shchedrin studied from 1950 to 1955 (after preliminary study at the Moscow cello, completed in the style of Prokoviev’s own orchestration of the second mélodie. Choral School) and where he himself taught from 1965 to 1969. His own teachers I subsequently suggested to Rodion that it would be wonderful if he would write a included and . He succeeded Shostakovich, at the older set of fi ve pieces for cello and piano based on Russian folk melodies: I was hoping composer’s request, as the chairman of the Russian Union of Composers and headed to add to the repertoire of such pieces by earlier composers, Manuel de Falla and it for ten years, although he was never offi cially a member of the Communist Party. Robert Schumann being particularly successful examples. I really didn’t expect Shchedrin has developed a reputation as a politically independent, cosmopolitan he would take my idea seriously, and when the pieces arrived in the post several creative artist. Since the break-up of the USSR he has divided his time between months later, I was both amazed and delighted! Moscow and Munich, being elected a member of the Berlin Academy of Arts in And so it was that Rodion agreed to play, and record, these new pieces with me, 1989. Since 1958 he has been married to , the famous prima ballerina adding to the CD his great Cello Sonata and two highly effective and amusing short superstar of the Bolshoi Ballet, and has written many works for her, including transcriptions. Rodion is a musician of absolute conviction, one who knows exactly the brilliant Suite, probably Shchedrin’s most famous work although it is what he wants to say through music of great intensity mixed with wit, sarcasm and founded on the music of Bizet. They are joint directors of the International Maya even irreverence! He is also a powerful pianist. I will always remember the day of Plisetskaya and Rodion Shchedrin Foundation, set up in Mainz in 2000. recording with Rodion: we managed to record all four pieces in about six hours. Shchedrin has worked in most media and his output includes (notably Playing with hardly a break, and with intense focus, he often demanded what after the novel by and Dead Souls after Gogol) and ballets seemed like more than my maximum, but it worked! During our performances I (such as Anna Karenina after Tolstoy): as these examples suggest he has turned understood that he was extending my range, and pushing me further than I might principally to the classics of Russian literature for theatrical inspiration. His have gone alone! choral work The Sealed Angel, after a story by , was awarded the In addition to the idiomatic and brilliant orchestration of Prokofi ev’s Cinq Russian State Prize by Boris Yeltsin in 2003. Shchedrin’s output also includes three Mélodies, I have also played and recorded Rodion’s highly dramatic and atmospheric symphonies, many concertos (including fi ve piano concertos and fi ve concertos for Parabola Concertante for cello, strings and timpani (NI5816, with the Southbank orchestra) and numerous piano and chamber works. Sinfonia under Simon Over). I love the concise and direct quality of his music, and Shchedrin’s attraction to Russian folklore and folk music, as well as its poetry his marvelously idiomatic writing for the cello. Having close and friendly contact and literature, is strongly evident in his oeuvre. He scored his fi rst notable success with Rodion has been of the greatest help in shaping my interpretations of his with a four-act ballet, The Little Hump-Backed Horse, (Konyek-Gorbunov) composed in music. 1955 and fi rst produced in 1960, but he confi rmed and consolidated an international Raphael Wallfi sch reputation for mild satire and high spirits, with his Concerto for Orchestra entitled

10 3 NI 5831 NI 5831 Naughty Limericks, premiered in Warsaw in September 1963 under the baton of conductor Svetlanov, the singer Irina Arkhipova, with décor and costumes created Gennadi Rozhdestvensky and later introduced to the USA by the New York by Alexander Tyshler. Philharmonic under . This is based on Tschastuschki, a kind of Why were the Soviet offi cials so angry? The action of the opera takes place in the satiric folk-song on topical and humorous themes, found mainly in the villages of fi rst years after the end of the Second World War. The subject of those ‘vegetarian’ Belarus and the , which had become a very popular urban form of doggerel years was quite unusual for the opera stage. It is set in a tragic Russian village that circulated by word of mouth in the USSR. completely without any male population – just women, juveniles and invalid old Stylistically Shchedrin has striven to synthesize traditional and contemporary men. Young people saw such villages with their own eyes in post-war : musical techniques, including serialism and chance procedures. His attraction to according to offi cial statistics Russia lost 27 million human lives in that war. With Russian folklore and folk music, Russian poetry and literature, is strongly evident maternal feelings and craving male affection the women eagerly concentrated their throughout his oeuvre. His output nonetheless falls into roughly three periods: an whole attention on any fellow who happened to be passing. The heroine of the early stage up to the early 1960s clearly and understandably infl uenced by Prokofi ev, opera is a grown woman, Varvara Vasilyevna, who falls in love with an 18 year old Shostakovich and Stravinsky; a second period from the 1960s to 1980s in which he lad passing through his native village, to visit his mother and his fi ancée, Korola. It incorporated a wide range of styles such as Neoclasissicism, rock music and jazz is a rather Freudian story, and there was no room for the ideas of Sigmund Freud into an increasingly more personal idiom, marked by highly-charged virtuosic in the USSR in those years. writing, dramatic stylistic contrasts and an increased interest in polyphony; and The scene which the Moscow cellist Grigory Zinder transposed for cello and his current, third period, where the various infl uences are more integrated and, in piano portrays a village summer night outing where women danced with women, addition, drawing on childhood memories and Russian Orthodox church music. (“Sherochka c Masherochkoy” - as it was then called*). It is accompanied on stage The most recent work on this disc, The Ancient Melodies of Russian Folk-songs by a female wind orchestra, and the heroine of the opera, obsessed with a passion (2007) is a setting for cello and piano of fi ve melodies from Rimsky-Korsakov’s for the rights of a collective farm chairwoman, captures a young boy passing by for famous anthology of 100 Russian Folk Songs published in 1877. Over the intervening her very erotic dance routines. years this anthology has been a prime source of melodic material for several Russian composers, including Rimsky’s most famous pupil, Stravinsky, who used Rodion Shchedrin, Munich 2007 (unacknowledged) tunes from it in The Firebird and even The Rite of Spring. Several of the melodies are pretty well transformed in Shchedrin’s treatments: the huge [Translator’s Note. “Шерочка с Машерочкой” (Sherochka s Masherochkoy – from ‘vocal’ range of the cello gives him the opportunity to extend the melodies over a the French ‘chère’ and ‘ma chère’– terms used by girls at the Smolny Institute for tessitura of several octaves, rather than the more limited compass of their originals, Noble Maidens in the 18th century became the Russian colloquial expression for and this feature is much on display in the opening Lento in poco rubato, a plangent two women dancing together.] lament. The following Allegro, ma non troppo is played largely pizzicato on the cello,

4 9 NI 5831 NI 5831 the 100 songs in his own harmonisation and in his own style. Taking the melodic with imitative motivic work dialoguing with it in the piano. The Maestoso third semantics of the songs as a basis, I decided to treat them in my own very free movement is an eloquent song offset by stark, sometimes abrupt piano chords. way. Frequently this was only shadows and refl ections from the song cycle. All fi ve Beginning in the softest, most furtive tremolando writing the Adagietto fourth songs used have textual content. But the fi gurative character of the music was not movement ascends to an ardent, lamenting climax worthy of Shostakovich and related to its lexical content. descends to a quiet, exhausted close. Sonata for Violoncello and Piano (1996) was written at the request of Mstislav The fi nal Moderato begins with a wandering passacaglia-like line in the piano Rostropovich and fi rst performed in 1996 in Monaco with my participation. In over which the cello adds a tender, hymn-like counterpoint. This tune, No. 11 in the composition there are three graduated parts contrasted by form and mood. I Rimaky’s collection, can easily be recognized as a form of the Ukrainian folksong was able to play the composition with Rostropovich several times in Europe and that Tchaikovsky noted down on his brother’s estate in 1871 and subsequently Japan. Later I performed the Sonata with other cellists – and very good ones! – but used as the basis of the famous Andante cantabile movement of his First String each painstaking return to this opus constantly called to mind the innumerable Quartet. In Rodion Shchedrin’s treatment, the music then breaks into a lively but hours of teamwork with that great musician. still rather melancholic dance. The dance becomes a rumbling in the piano’s bass In Albeniz’ Style (1959) was originally composed for the piano as a as the Ukrainian melody returns and fades out. The Ancient Melodies of Russian choreographic miniature for my wife, Maya Plisetskaya, a prima donna at Folk-songs is dedicated to Raphael Wallfi sch, who premiered the cycle on 24 May the Bolshoy Theatre. The number was then staged by the legendary Russian 2007 in London with the composer at the piano. choreographer Kasian Goleizovsky. He was persona non grata for the theatrical Schedrin wrote his Sonata for cello and piano in 1996 for his great friend establishment in the 1950s and 60s and his presentation of the miniature to the , who had already been the dedicatee of his Cello Concerto Moscow public was only successful once. On that occasion I was at the piano. A ‘Sotto Voce’ of 1994 and would later have the Parabola Concertante for cello, few arrangements of the piece appeared later for violin, cello, horn, etc…even for strings and timpani (2001 – recorded on Nimbus NI 5816) written for him. The a balalaika orchestra. The transposition for cello presented here was created by Sonata was fi rst performed on 5 May 1997 in Monte Carlo by Rostropovich and Raphael Wallfi sch and it seems to me convincing and effective. Shchedrin. There are three movements which in their character and disposition Quadrille from the opera Not love alone (1961) is also an arrangement for are reminiscent of the late string works of Shostakovich. Part of the dramatic cello and piano of a scene from my fi rst opera. The opera was performed for the nature of the work springs from the way the cello and piano are more often in fi rst time at the Bolshoy Theatre in December 1961, but the subject and even the opposition or taking contrary positions rather than co-operating in a smoothly- music gave rise to unpleasantness in offi cial circles. The announcements for the unfolding discourse. fi rst four performances were changed and Verdi’s Traviata went on. The opera was The expansive Allegretto fi rst movement opens with a meditative cello line quietly removed from the repertoire. Not one word appeared in any newspaper against dry staccato piano chords, the line switching before long to the piano about the premiere, though fi rst class performers took part in the production; the against drumming pizzicati in the cell. The alternation of legato writing in one

8 5 NI 5831 NI 5831 instrument against staccato in the other is a feature that the movement continually a dramatic introduction reminscent of Andalusian cante hondo the piece unfolds as explores with great inventiveness. Flurries of more rapid, rhythmically signifi cant a capricious tango, full of false starts and parodic reminiscences of Spanish gypsy writing evolve. The piano takes up a folk-like tune with prominent, nagging stylization and rasgueado guitar strumming. dotted rhythms that clambers about and around the expressive sostenuto cello Schedrin’s fi rst opera, Not Love Alone (Nye tolko Lyubov) after Sergei Antonov line. At the end of the movement the cello ascends to its highest register, ethereal, was fi rst performed in December 1961 at the Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow, conducted by against a return of the opening staccato piano jabs. . Like several works of this period it makes use of Tschastuschki, Capricious and sometimes grotesque, the central Moderato unfolds as a kind topical satirical songs. The Quadrille, one of its best-known numbers, was of scherzo propelled by an obstreperous, repetitive piano fi gure in Tschastuschka arranged for cello (or double-bass) and piano by Grigory Singer. Opening with style while the cello emotes, cajoles, laments or retreats into sul ponticello fantasy. an ardent, romantic cello solo, the piece opens up into a virtuosically-presented It is a remarkable test of the cellist’s virtuosity and ability to sustain a rhetorical parade of folk-like tunes over repeated ostinato rhythms which both seem to monologue against constant rude interruptions. The fi nale (Sostenuto assai) begins satirize Russian sentimentality and display how much Shchedrin owed to the with an intense cello threnody against dissonant, bell-like piano harmonies. music of Stravinsky in his early period. A passage of increasingly percussive and rhythmically accelerating sforzato piano chords, with the cello playing spooky tremolandi, introduces a passage of Note © copyright 2008 Calum MacDonald extended and intense funeral elegy which is the sonata’s expressive high point. The percussive passage recurs towards the end of the movement, the cello and Every composition has its prehistory. The stimulus to composing Ancient Melodies piano fi nally rising to an angry climax that is brutally cut short, the Sonata ending of Russian Folk-song (2007) came from Raphael Wallfi sch. Intending to record literally in mid-phrase. some of my cello works on CD he proposed adding to the disc with something There is a long tradition of Russian composers being attracted by and new. “For fi fteen minutes. The times, I understand, are like that – he wrote to me imitating Spanish music: it goes all the way back to Glinka and his Jota Aragonesa. in an email – but maybe you can do something in the spirit of Schumann’s Fünf Schedrin, whose Carmen-Suite revivifi es Bizet’s vision of Spanish music, is part Stücke im Volkston (Five Pieces in Folk Style), but in the Russian style…?” of this tradition. He has long admired the music of the Spanish composer Isaac In those days I was busy with other tasks and Raphael’s proposal left me Albéniz: in 1996 he produced a version of two of Albeniz’s piano Tangos for full indifferent. But later the idea began to grow on me. What if I were to turn to symphony orchestra. In the Style of Albeniz is a short early piece written in 1952 Rimsky-Korsakov’s well-known collection 100 Russian Songs, taking thematic when he was twenty. One of Shchedrin’s best-known short pieces, it was originally material from there for a cello composition? Rimsky Korsakov’s collection is composed for piano solo and incorporated in his set of 10 Piano Pieces which are highly important in musical history! Russia has its own kind of musical Bible. widely used as teaching material. There is also a version for trumpet and piano as Rimsky Korsakov himself, and Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Stravinsky also well as the arrangement for cello and piano which Shchedrin made in 1995. After drew from that spring for their collections. Rimsky-Korsakov set down each of

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