CHAN 10537 X Classics Sergey Sergeyevich Prokofiev (1891 –1953) Cantata for the Twentieth Anniversary of the October Revolution, Op. 74* 46:32 1 I Prelude. Moderato – Allegro 2:39 2 II The Philosophers. Andante assai 2:29 3 III Interlude. Allegro – Andante – Adagio 1:29 Photograph © Nigel Luckhurst / Lebrecht Music & Arts Photo Library 4 IV ‘A tight little band’. Allegretto 2:31 5 V Interlude. Tempestoso 1:18 6 VI Revolution. Andante non troppo – Più mosso – Allegro moderato – Precipitato – Adagio molto 10:33 7 VII Victory. Andante 6:08 8 VIII The Oath. Andante pesante 7:49 9 IX Symphony. Allegro energico – Meno mosso 5:59 10 X The Constitution. Andante assai – Andante molto 5:33 Neeme Järvi and Gennady Rozhdestvensky 3 Military Band French Horn Tenor Horn Tuba Excerpts from ‘The Tale of the Stone Flower’, John Rooke Gordon Higgenbottom Stephen Wick Op. 118 25:58 Anthony Copas Andrew Armstrong David Powell 11 Ural Rhapsody (Act III No. 29) 9:02 Trumpet Baritone Side Drum 12 Katerina sits by the fire (Act IV No. 39) 2:02 John Miller Stephen Cooper Christopher Nall 13 Scene and Dance of Katerina (Act IV No. 40) 2:21 Robert Farley Simon Gunton 14 Russian Dance (Act III No. 31) 4:11 William Kitchen David Stewart 15 Gypsy Dance (Act III No. 32) 2:56 Martin Hurrell Andrew Mitchell Euphonium 16 Severyan’s Dance (Act III No. 33) 1:31 Roy Bilham Stephen Saunders 17 Solo of the Gypsy Girl and Coda (Act III No. 34) 3:42 TT 72:43 Gennady Rozhdestvensky speaker* Accordion Band Philharmonia Chorus* Simon Halsey chorus master Edward Hession Philharmonia Orchestra Tracy Goldsmith Neeme Järvi Karen Street Henry Krein Michael Binelli Amanda Vasco 4 5 (1898 –1974) Third Symphony of 1932 –33, equal there are always a select few more Prokofiev dedicated to the Far Eastern Red Army, equal than others. Human nature is what it Cantata for the Twentieth Anniversary of the October Revolution, etc scored for symphony orchestra and military is; and people, after all, are people, even in band, vocal soloists, non-professional chorus Soviet Russia. And because Prokofiev is one Cantata for the Twentieth Anniversary of the materials. This was the recipe, and in the and accordions. These were almost the of the best Soviet composers – or rather, October Revolution halcyon days of Lenin’s and Stalin’s Russia forces used in the cantata by Prokofiev here one of the best Russian composers who The Soviet musical genre represented by there was no shortage of composer cooks recorded. subsequently prospered (at least artistically) this amazing piece – the Patriotic Cantata – ready to spoil what, frankly, must have been Such is the background to Prokofiev’s under the Soviet regime – it follows that has no real counterpart in Western music. an unappetisingly thin and watery broth one-and-only contribution to the genre – Prokofiev’s ‘Soviet’ compositions, including The demagogic power of music was early even to begin with. The first was probably or, rather, part of the background, for I could this Patriotic Cantata, ought to be worth recognised by the Soviet leaders and Alexander Kastalsky (1856 – 1926), composer, cite dozens more composers and dozens taking seriously. assiduously exploited by ‘their’ composers – folklorist and professor of choral singing at more compositions. What is it all like, this So, indeed, they are: not just the October of whom Prokofiev inevitably became one after the Moscow Conservatory, who produced music? At the time the West didn’t know Cantata and the oratorio On Guard for Peace, his decision to re-settle permanently in Russia choral works like Lenin, To the Proletariat and and didn’t care – it had too much unplayed but also the short cantatas Ode to Stalin and in the mid-1930s. The Year 1905, and (in 1923) an Agricultural music of its own to be even remotely Flourish Mighty Land, and the orchestral Year The Patriotic Cantata began to flourish Symphony for speaker and orchestra. His interested in collective farms and munitions 1941, Ode to the End of the War and Festive in the years immediately following the pupil Vassilev-Buglai (1888 –1956), one factories as inspiration for composers, Poem. Let no-one who has never heard or 1917 Revolution. Its characteristics were of the founders of the Soviet mass-song not to mention Lenin, Stalin, Kirov, the Red studied these works dismiss them, for none clear-cut: national historic event as subject, genre, has the 1936 oratorio Stenka Razin Army and who knows what else. And even if of them is dismissible, certainly not October. to be treated dramatically and stirringly; a to his credit; and Alexander Davidenko’s people had been interested, and the Soviets When the (mutilated) Russian recording first ‘monumental’ concept, so designed that the (1899 –1934) work in choral music and songs had exported their products on a regular arrived in this country in the early 1970s, ‘masses’ could not merely listen to the music aimed at the ‘broad masses’ was praised by basis (which they did not) the vast forces Edward Greenfield wrote ‘…after hearing but also participate in performing it, thereby Shostakovich, who participated with eight demanded would have ruled out all but the it with mounting excitement half-a-dozen enhancing the sense of togetherness and other composers in a collective oratorio, occasional performance. We shall probably times, I am prepared to think it the most vivid uplift (bands, massed voices of both amateur The October Path. Then there was Alexander never hear any of these works now; nor, just choral work ever to have come out of Soviet and professional singers including children, Krein (1883 –1951) – a relative of Henry Krein, as probably, would we find many of them Russia’. and folk instruments ad libitum); a musical who leads the accordion orchestra on this worth hearing if we did. Yes, it probably is – ‘probably’ only insofar idiom guaranteed to pose no problems even recording – whose Shock Brigade of the World But Prokofiev? Prokofiev was different, as if there are rivals, they have yet to find to the most unsophisticated listeners, which Proletariat (1931 – 32) incorporated parts of as the Soviets must have known and were their way to the West in any shape or form. meant, inevitably, a predominating admixture a Stalin speech promisingly entitled ‘On the forced with the greatest reluctance to And even Prokofiev’s October only just made of Russian-romantic, folksong, and traditional Tasks of Managerial Workers’; and Lev Knipper’s acknowledge. In a land where all men are it. He had started to think about the piece in 6 7 the early 1930s when, after studying Lenin’s him. After the intense work that went into Neeme Järvi’s performance at London’s Royal timpani, percussion, harps, keyboards works, he became interested in the idea of this vast undertaking, the physical labour Festival Hall on 6 June 1992, the complete and large strings. But in addition there are a full-dress cantata based on Revolutionary involved in putting the many thousands work remained unknown, not only in Britain three extra instrumental groups which the texts by Lenin and Stalin and others, in their of notes on paper, a performance would but everywhere outside Eastern Europe. composer mobilises at strategic moments: authentic, non-verse form. A commission have made it all worthwhile, would have Prokofiev always liked large forces, but an accordion orchestra (actually a bayan – a from the All-Union Radio Committee clinched communicated his vision to his public. And he outdid himself on this occasion. Never kind of concertina – orchestra) whose parts matters; Prokofiev began the work in 1936 he had a vision, kept the faith, believed again would he preside over so mammoth an are anything but simple and whose first entry and completed it the following summer, in his Communist-propagandist works in assembly of performers. Harlow Robinson (in the ‘Revolution’ movement) is a brilliant expecting it to be performed as part of the a way that Shostakovich never could in relates this, at least in part, to Stalin’s known coup de theâtre; a kind of ad hoc brass festivities in celebration of the twentieth his: because Prokofiev was at heart a naïf, megalomaniac fondness for the grandiose group consisting of members of the saxhorn anniversary of the Revolution. In the event an idealist. Shostakovich was a realist, a and monumental, and there is an interesting family supplemented by extra trumpets and it was neither performed nor published in man-of-his-time. He knew what happened to affinity with the wedding-cake-like horns (Prokofiev writes these in condensed Prokofiev’s lifetime. Why, exactly, is not ideals when the wrong sort of politicians got architectural style of certain Moscow form in the score without specifying all known, at least at present. Oleg Prokofiev, hold of them. metro-stations and apartment blocks built the instruments or voicings: probably the the composer’s son, surmises that by 1938 Whatever the reasons, the Cantata in the Stalin era. They, like the Moscow State bandmaster at the first performance realised the political climate had become so hostile had to wait till May 1966 – thirteen years University and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, his intentions); and finally a percussion to artists – the notorious Pravda attack on after Prokofiev’s death – to be performed. and like this Cantata – were instruments ensemble which needs to have alarm-bells, Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth had taken Ironically, by this time Stalin also was dead, of party propaganda, visions of the heroic cannon-shot, sirens and other impedimenta place in 1936 – that no-one could know and not only dead but disgraced, so the two peasant-worker state that was constantly of warlike aspect and sonority at its for sure what might or might not prove movements drawn from his speeches were alluded to but never realised.