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Sym Pho Ny No . 5 Scythian Suite G010003446969M TUGAN BERLIN SYMPHONIE- DEUTSCHES SOKHIEV ORCHESTER SYMPHONY NO. 5 SCYTHIAN SUITE SERGEI PROKOFIEV (1891–1953) SYMPHONY NO. 5 IN B-FLAT MAJOR, OP. 100 (1944) SINFONIE NR. 5 IN B-DUR 1 I. Andante 13:56 2 II. Allegro marcato 8:46 3 III. Adagio 12:44 4 IV. Allegro giocoso 9:08 “ALA AND LOLLY” SCYTHIAN SUITE, OP. 20 (1916) „ALA UND LOLLY“ SKYTHISCHE SUITE 5 I. Adoration of Veless and Ala. Allegro feroce 7:02 Die Anrufung von Weless und Ala. Allegro feroce 6 II. The Enemy of God and the Dance of the Spirits. Allegro sostenuto 3:14 Der fremde Gott und der Tanz der bösen Geister. Allegro sostenuto 7 III. Night. Andantino 6:43 Nacht. Andantino 8 IV. Lolly’s Departure and the Sun’s Procession. Tempestoso 6:00 Lollys Abschied und Sonnenaufgang. Tempestoso DEUTSCHES SYMPHONIE-ORCHESTER BERLIN TUGAN SOKHIEV, conductor/Dirigent Total time: 67:47 Tugan Sokhiev www.dso-berlin.de/sokhiev THE WILD AND EMOTIONAL PROKOFIEV Prokofiev was keen to play a part in this development and to contribute to the renewal of Russian music by returning to the roots of human history. His own ballet is set in one of the outposts of the Russian The two works that make up the present release represent two different stages in Prokofiev’s creative Empire among the ancient Scythians in the area around the Crimea. Until recently little was known development. His Scythian Suite was written in Russia in 1915, while his Fifth Symphony was composed about a people among whom Iphigenia is said to have found refuge after fleeing the wrath of the Greek in 1944, following his return to his native country after an eighteen-year period of self-imposed exile. gods. The country was as beset by saga and legend as that of the Amazons, making it an ideal subject Both works were performed during the war: the Scythian Suite in St Petersburg on 29 January 1916 for the theatre in every shape and form. The libretto was the work of the poet Sergei Mitrofanovich (New Style), the Fifth Symphony in Moscow on 13 January 1945. But between these two pieces lay Gorodetsky, an expert on Slav myths. Prokofiev himself described as follows his collaboration with his almost three decades of personal and political upheaval for Prokofiev, much of it spent in exile. He left librettist: “Gorodetsky had dug up a few good Scythian characters but could not think of a plot, and it his native Russia in 1918 following the October Revolution and headed for the United States but in 1936 was only after many joint sessions that we finally pieced together some sort of story. […] I wrote the he was persuaded to return to the Soviet Union by a combination of homesickness and the promises music as soon as I received the text. I wanted to try my hand at something big.” Prokofiev’s aim was to held out to him by the Soviet authorities. compose a work that could stand comparison with Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Originally called Ala and Lolli, it contained a mixture of Scythian legend and Slav myth. Chuzhbog is the god of evil and lord of the underworld. He desires the wood nymph Ala, who is the daughter of the sun god Veles, and so THE EPITOME OF A STYLE: THE SCYTHIAN SUITE he abducts her. The hero, Lolli, hurries off in pursuit of them and rescues her with the sun god’s support. Prokofiev’s work on his Scythian Suite was preceded by an eventful period in his life: he completed his course at the St Petersburg Conservatory, enjoyed a number of succès de scandale both as a composer Prokofiev played sections of his score to various friends in St Petersburg. They soon recognized the and as a pianist and toured widely, including visits to the West. The only son of a well-to-do family of problem with the work: both its plot and its musical language were far too close to that of The Rite of Russian landowners, he spent time with his mother in London and Paris, and it was here that he was in- Spring, ruling out the sort of stage production that Diaghilev had had in mind, but the latter generously troduced to the leading members of the Ballets Russes, especially the company’s impresario Sergei Di- persuaded the composer to tackle another project. For his part, Prokofiev reworked the existing score aghilev, gaining an insight into its most recent productions and hearing Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, as a concert piece and called it his Scythian Suite. Each of its four movements takes its title from the cor- a piece that polarized audiences throughout Europe just as Prokofiev’s own works had divided opinion responding scene in the ballet. The first movement revolves around the invocation of the sun god and in Russia. The young hothead won Diaghilev’s trust and was finally rewarded with a commission for his daughter, the nymph Ala. Here harshly dissonant passages in the stile barbaro are contrasted with the Ballets Russes in Paris. Stravinsky had already pointed the way forward in the field of contempo- the lyrically tender world of sound of the flutes surrounded by the magical sonorities of celesta and rary dance, spearheading a revolution that relied for its effectiveness on the legends and fairytales of harps, as primeval light alternates with primitive force. Following the wild Scherzo that is devoted to ancient, pre-Christian Russia. the ruler of the underworld, the third movement (“Night”) transports us to otherworldly regions before the chthonic powers are invoked. For the final movement we return to the rumblings of the beginning, position – demonstratively signals its origins in a stylized dance. The expansive slow movement begins after which signal-like fanfares lead to the eruptive triumph of the sun and the light. We are reminded like a song with a simple accompaniment and a melody that is stated in alternation by the different here of a letter that the pianist Artur Rubinstein wrote to Prokofiev: “Le roi soleil a dit: L’état c’est moi. orchestral departments and repeated in strophic form. The final Allegro giocoso at least maintains the Vous, mon cher Prokofiev, pourriez dire: Le soleil, c’est moi.” For the composer’s friends, the Scythian élan of a lively envoi. Prokofiev’s Third and Fourth Symphonies had in part been recycled from existing Suite came to embody his early style, which they termed “Scythian” in consequence. stage works that had either proved unsuccessful or been rarely performed. With his Fifth the composer was returning to a genre that he had not touched for fourteen years, and it was his first to be based on original material. In spite of this, it contains many graphic gestures and dramatic passages that reveal THE FIFTH SYMPHONY the composer’s experience in the field of film scores and of incidental music for the theatre. Two of Prokofiev’s seven symphonies achieved widespread popularity in his own day and continue to be among his most frequently performed works: the Symphonie classique that he wrote before he left The opening Andante and the Adagio in third position are the symphony’s two longest movements, and Russia in 1918 and the first symphony that he composed following his return to the Soviet Union in for each of them Prokofiev demanded a calm underlying tempo. And in both the orchestra summons up 1936, his Fifth Symphony. To the latter he gave the special opus number 100. In many respects it tells us all of its reserves, building to a powerful climax that comes at the very end of the opening movement a good deal about its composer’s attitude to Classicism and Neoclassicism. Monumental classicism was and towards the end of the Adagio. Contributing to the climax are the powerful brass, a veritable array a reflection of Stalin’s taste in every branch of the arts from architecture to music, and since it reflected of drums and the awe-inspiring tam-tam. In the opening movement, the underlying sense of dramatic his taste and his wishes, it became the goal of all public art in Soviet Russia. structure is achieved by means of the main theme’s gradual transformation until it seems to acquire a hymn-like and, ultimately, a triumphalist note, and yet the march rhythms, with their heavy tread, and Prokofiev’s Fifth has often been seen as an example of this style and, hence, as a classic example of the a tempo to which the brakes have been applied, together with the penetrating blows on the tam-tam, symphonic style of the Stalinist era. At first glance, its qualities – its length, the elaborate forces for mean that the cumulative effect here is that of an overblown state funeral. Its sound world and the which it is scored and its formal conception – all seem to support this view. But is it really such a work? associations that it evokes remain etched in our memory, allowing us to recall it when it returns in the Is Shostakovich’s “Leningrad” Symphony such a piece? After all, Shostakovich’s symphony became one third movement and in the re-entry of the opening “song without words”. of the Soviet Union’s hottest musical exports – even more so than Prokofiev’s Fifth, although this work, too, rapidly did the rounds, chalking up performances in many of the world’s leading concert halls. As we have already observed, the opening Andante is an almost textbook example of first-movement sonata form.
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