St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra St Petersburg Philharmonic St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra St Petersburg SIGNUMCLASSICS Philharmonic SIGNUMCLASSICS Orchestra St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra OrchestraSt Petersburg St Petersburg Philharmonic Philharmonic Orchestra KHACHATURIAN St Petersburg PROKOFIEV Orchestral Suites from excerpts from Orchestra Cinderella Spartacus and Philharmonic Romeo & Juliet Gayane Yuri Temirkanov St Petersburg Philharmonic OrchestraTCHAIKOVSKY OrchestraSt Petersburg RIMSKY-KORSAKOV SIGCD229 RAVEL Orchestral Suite from Swan Lake Philharmonic SIGCD214 Daphnis et Chloé PROKOFIEV SIGCD194 St Petersburg PhilharmonicRACHMANINOV Orchestra OrchestraSt Petersburg excerpts from Yuri Temirkanov excerpts2 CD froms SIGCD184 Symphonic Dances Philharmonic www.signumrecords.com Cinderella SHOSTAKOVICH Available through record stores and at www.signumrecords.com For more information call +44 (0) 20 8997 4000 Yuri Temirkanov Romeo & Juliet Orchestra The Invisible City Symphony No.7 SIGCD310 Yuri Temirkanov ‘Leningrad’ VERDI of Kitezh Requiem Yuri Temirkanov SIGCD229 Yuri Temirkanov Sheherazade Carmen Giannattasio Veronica Simeoni SIGCD214 Alexander Timchenko Carlo Colombara Mikhailovsky SIGCD194 Theatre Chorus Yuri Temirkanov SIGCD184 www.signumrecords.com Available through record stores and at www.signumrecords.com For more information call +44 (0) 20 8997 4000 RIMSKY-KORSAKOV RIMSKY-KORSAKOV The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh The Invisible City of Kitezh Sheherazade Sheherazade Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844 – 1908) Had I ever studied at all, had I possessed By the time he was offered the position, Excerpts from a fraction more knowledge than I the 27-year-old Rimsky-Korsakov was The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya actually did, it would have been obvious already celebrated as a most innovative 1 Paean to the Wilderness [4.38] to me that I could not and should not orchestrator, by virtue of the brilliance of his 2 Wedding Procession and Tartar Invasion [3.24] accept the proffered appointment, that early works in the genre, Sadko and Antar. 3 Battle of Kershenets [4.09] it was foolish and dishonest of me to However, his natural talent had received no become a professor... I was a dilettante real thorough-going compositional guidance Sheherazade, Symphonic Suite, Op.35 and knew nothing. in his early years, save the odd tutor and 4 The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship [10.10] the rather bizarre methods employed by 5 The Story of the Kalendar Prince [12.28] The older, wiser Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov his single mentor of note, the esteemed 6 The Young Prince and Princess [10.10] recalling his acceptance of the professorship composer Mily Balakirev. Despite musical 7 The Baghdad Festival, Sea, Shipwreck & Conclusion [13.08] of composition and orchestration at the St leanings as a child, Nikolai was sent to Petersburg Conservatory in 1871. Once Naval Cadet College in St Petersburg, where, Total timings: [58.10] installed, the position proved a steep learning his studies aside, he was able to attend curve as the young composer found himself opera and concerts in the big city. In 1862 having to learn of the most basic musical he was called to Naval duty and toured for St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra conventions and traditional musical training the next three years as midshipman on the Yuri Temirkanov conductor from his own pupils – ‘having undeservedly military clipper Almaz, visiting London and become a Conservatory professor, I soon Rio de Janeiro among other places, whilst www.signumrecords.com www.saintpetersburgphilharmonic.com became one of its best students’. studying Berlioz’s treatise on orchestration, 2 3 buying scores (and even a piano on which Slavic and Russian folksong and folklore and Borodin’s Prince Igor are just two of the time, and not least the all-pervasive Richard to play them) and devouring the classics characters as well as inflections from the unfinished operas that Rimsky-Korsakov Wagner. The year after Rimsky-Korsakov of literature. However, after a time the music of the Orthodox Church. Avowedly prepared as editions – and unusually completed Sheherazade, he was able to exoticism of his travels and extra-musical anti-conservatoire in their stance, it was for his time, he archived the original hear a work which had been absorbing activities led him to somewhat neglect his a blow to the group when Rimsky-Korsakov materials from which he worked, so that him for some time – Wagner’s Der Ring musical studies. accepted his professorship – a move which they might be inspected or re-interpreted des Nibelungen. The great Wagnerian Carl Balakirev, in particular, found difficult in the future. Other projects which fed the Muck conducted the cycle in St Petersburg Returning home in 1865, music again to stomach. composer’s musical imagination in the during the 1888-89 operatic season and loomed large in Rimsky-Korsakov’s life, 1870s included editing Glinka’s operas, Rimsky-Korsakov sat through the rehearsals as did a cluster of composers soon to be Nevertheless, the young professor immersed orchestrating Dargomyzhsky’s The Stone and saw his view of music-drama radically dubbed (not entirely seriously, it seems) as himself in academia, largely setting aside Guest, and transcribing and harmonizing altered. From the early 1890s until his death ‘The Mighty Handful’ or ‘The Five’. Under his own creative urges for a handful of two collections of folksong – this latter task in 1908 he produced a dozen operas which Balakirev’s often despotic leadership the years in the 1870s and 80s in order to being of particular use in the understanding range from the historical epic, through group, which included César Cui, Modest gain the tools that would see him emerge of Russian folk idioms. His knowledge of legend, fairytale and folk treatments to Mussorgsky and Alexander Borodin as well a composer secure enough in his technique the orchestral palette was further enhanced fascinating experiments in the genre. His as Rimsky-Korsakov, dedicated itself to to more effectively communicate his ideas. in 1873, when the navy created a post for masterful penultimate opera, The Legend the progress of a more purely Russian art These ‘dry’ years were also products of a him as their band inspector. The position of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the music, and was determined to challenge lack of self-confidence, no doubt due to afforded him the freedom to delve deeper Maiden Fevroniya fits into almost all of the Austro-German musical dominance of his late conversion to academia, and he into the sound-world of wind instruments, these categories at some point or other. the time. Their starting point was naturally was ever-after obsessed with revising his a good many of which he learned to play, The rather nonsensical plot centres on Mikhail Glinka whose opera, A Life for own works. He was also of immense value and an experience which can be heard to the myth of the miracle which rescued the the Tzar had effectively kick-started a in revising, completing and editing the wonderful effect in the composer’s output. city of Great Kitezh from invasion by the native Russian school of classical music. works of other composers, and was often Mongol hordes, whereby the city is rescued ‘The Mighty Handful’ took the music of of invaluable help to the reputations of his ‘The Mighty Handful’ were ever suspicious by being submerged in great fountains of Glinka and Alexander Dargomyzhsky as former colleagues in ‘The Mighty Handful’ of the conservatoire system, but also of the water, brought about through the fervent their starting point, employing aspects of in this fashion. Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov status quo of European musical life at the belief of its non-violent population, divine 4 5 intervention and the restorative power of instruments shine with an almost fiery he instituted the Glinka Prize, awarded only the Russian variety. The composer’s nature. The music recalls Wagner at points, glare; when there is water the waves annually to a Russian composer, following experience of travelling great distances by Rimsky-Korsakov summoning up memories ripple and splash audibly through this up in 1885 with the Russian Symphony sea in a navy of the 19th century undoubtedly of the ‘Forest Murmurs’ from Siegfried the orchestra, and this effect is not Concerts series and, more important still, informed the exotic nature of much of in the opera’s Prelude, the ‘Paean to the achieved by the comparatively cheap he was granted permission to establish his music. The model for Sheherazade is Wilderness’, a depiction of the woodland and means of a harp glissando; the sound his own publishing house in Leipzig, thus certainly far flung, emanating from orally its multifarious attractions and dangers. The is cool and glassy when he describes securing a form of international copyright transmitted stories from the folklore of the ‘Wedding Procession and Tartar Invasion’ is a calm winter’s night with a glittering for Russian composers. Registered as Middle East, Asia and North Africa over no less evocative of nuptial bliss, darkened starlit sky. He was a great master of M.P. Belaieff, the company would publish many centuries, and eventually notated by by the clouds of the incoming invasion, orchestral sound painting … who scores of the most important Russian Arabic scholars in numerous collections while the ‘Battle of Kershenets’ fizzes with handled the secrets of the orchestra compositions, from Glinka through ‘The of varying sizes. Known in English as ‘One the promise of battle, building up into a in so masterly a fashion, down to the Mighty Handful’ to Skriabin and beyond, in Thousand and One Nights’ or ‘Arabian finale of titanic proportions, presaging the smallest detail[.] luxurious editions. The house continued to Nights’, the stories all emerge from a single battle march in Shostakovich’s Seventh do so after Belyayev’s death until the Soviets over-riding construct whereupon a Persian Symphony.