Exiles from Revolution Stravinsky; the modernist’s homecoming This is the last of five sessions about exiles from the October Revolution. Again, the primary focus is on Stravinsky – this time his brief return to the USSR in 1962. A decade earlier the idea of some sort of rapprochement between Stravinsky and Soviet Music would have been almost inconceivable – how would a composer pursuing modernism have fitted into the frozen conservatism of Stalinist Socialist Realism? Even with the Khrushchev Thaw, how would Stravinsky’s latest style be accepted by Soviet critics? Along the way this session encounters another exile, Volkonsky, whose family returned to the USSR, and who took up the challenge of bringing modernism to the USSR. We will end with one of Stravinsky’s final works, Requiem Canticles, a ritual which links back to Les Noces, which was covered in Session 3. © 2020 Terry Metheringham [email protected] +44 7528 835 422 Soviet Music: Exiles from Revolution Session 5: Stravinsky; the modernist’s homecoming 2 Stravinsky and the USSR before the homecoming From the late 1920s, Stravinsky, the émigré, was purged from the Soviet repertoire. He was attacked by musicologists. In 1933 Советская Музыка / Soviet Music carried an article by Arnold Alshvang, which started: ”Stravinsky is an important and almost complete artistic ideologist of the imperialist bourgeoisie”. [Schwarz p 354] In the mid 1930s, when he was writing An Autobiography, Stravinsky seems quite relaxed about the Bolsheviks. His book contains one explicit criticism: as a patriot, desperately humiliated … by the monstrous Peace of Brest-Litovsk… [Stravinsky p 73] And Stravinsky is almost whimsical about his lack of success in USSR: From this I conclude that a change of regime cannot change the truth of the old adage that no man is a prophet in his own country [Stravinsky p 141] Stravinsky’s attitude changed in the late 1930s as Socialist Realism was unveiled in the USSR, and as he emigrated to the USA. © 2020 Terry Metheringham [email protected] +44 7528 835 422 Soviet Music: Exiles from Revolution Session 5: Stravinsky; the modernist’s homecoming 3 Stravinsky on Socialist Realism In his Norton Lectures at Harvard, in autumn 1939, Stravinsky was dismissive of Socialist Realism, the new Soviet orthodoxy: According to present Russian mentality, there are basically two formulas that explain what music is: [a] … Kolkhosians [collective farm workers] surrounded by tractors and automachines (that is the term) dancing with a reasonable gaiety (in keeping with the requirements of communist dignity) to the accompaniment of a people’s chorus [b] … an elevated style… called upon “to contribute to the formation of the human personality imbued with the environment of its great epoch”. And Stravinsky gleefully quoted a recent description of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony by Alexis Tolstoy: Here we have the “Symphony of Socialism”. It begins with the Largo of the masses working underground… The Allegro in its turn symbolises gigantic factory machinery and its victory over nature. The Adagio represents the synthesis of Soviet culture, science and art… As for the Finale, it is the image of the gratitude and the enthusiasm of the masses. [Stravinsky Poetics p 114-5] © 2020 Terry Metheringham [email protected] +44 7528 835 422 Soviet Music: Exiles from Revolution Session 5: Stravinsky; the modernist’s homecoming 4 Late Stalinism 1948 was an important year in Soviet Music. The Union of Soviet Composers was given a new leadership, tasked with bringing everyone in line with a stricter late-Stalin era interpretation of Socialist Realism. Boris Asafiev was the new Chairman of the USC. In the 1920s he had been a great champion of Stravinsky, so, to toe the new line, he had to disavow any earlier convictions. He denounced Stravinsky (along with a legion of other Western artists and thinkers) as an obscurantist and fascist. [Hakobian p 179] Tikhon Khrennikov was the new General Secretary of the USC. In his first speech in the new post he specifically damned Stravinsky. Rite of Spring expresses Russian “Asianism” in boisterous chaotic intentionally coarse screaming sonorities. Khrennikov also attacked Stravinsky’s other “Russian” works: Petrushka, Les Noces, Rossignol, Mavra… [Schwarz p 225] © 2020 Terry Metheringham [email protected] +44 7528 835 422 Soviet Music: Exiles from Revolution Session 5: Stravinsky; the modernist’s homecoming 5 The Thaw The Khrushchev Thaw gradually brought Stravinsky back into polite society. In 1955 Rodion Shchedrin in Советская Музыка / Soviet Music argued for distinguishing youthful Stravinsky “the disciple of Rimsky Korsakov”, from the later Stravinsky “the enemy of his homeland”. [Schwarz p 286] In 1956 leading musicologist Pavel Apostolov argued for being open to early modernism: Debussy, Ravel, Mahler, Strauss and Stravinsky… but drawing a line at Western music written after the mid 1920s: “the gangrened appendix of decadence”. [Schwarz p 306] After years of isolation, the USSR had the self-confidence to resume cultural exchanges. Musical visitors included: 1957 Glenn Gould 1958 Stokowski 1959 Bernstein, and the New York Philharmonic Bernstein programmed Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and Piano Concerto the first time these works had been performed in the USSR since the 1920s. © 2020 Terry Metheringham [email protected] +44 7528 835 422 Soviet Music: Exiles from Revolution Session 5: Stravinsky; the modernist’s homecoming 6 An Invitation Stravinsky found himself involved in one of these cultural exchanges in Los Angeles. In June 1961, he conducted a couple of his own works: Violin Concerto and Symphony of Psalms. Soviet composers Tikhon Khrennikov and Kara Karayev also had works in the same concert. Stravinsky wrote to his old friend, Pierre Suvchinsky Hopeless music by Khrennikov and Karaev. This is incredible rubbish, which I couldn’t escape, particularly because they visited my place the day before for dinner and they invited me to celebrate my eightieth birthday with them in Moscow … what a horror … I do not believe that this invitation signals a sincere and final change towards me and my music because Khrennikov isn’t Yudina, and because the Shostakovich cult isn’t a myth. It is horrible to have to smile when I want to vomit. [letter 12 June 1961, quoted Ivashkin p 12] Just one week later Stravinsky wrote to Suvchinsky again. He’d received an official invitation. Furthermore, he’d accepted it! [VS & Craft p 469] Before setting off to Moscow Stravinsky said: Nostalgia has no part in my proposed visit to Russia. My wish to go is due primarily to the evidence I have received of a genuine desire or need for me by the younger generation of Russian musicians. No artist’s name has been more abused in the Soviet Union than mine, but one cannot achieve anything with the Russians by nursing a grudge. [Schwarz p 355] © 2020 Terry Metheringham [email protected] +44 7528 835 422 Soviet Music: Exiles from Revolution Session 5: Stravinsky; the modernist’s homecoming 7 1962 Visit: the concerts Stravinsky’s visit to the USSR was for three weeks in September and October 1962. That was just before the Cuban missile crisis. Highlights of the visit: Performances of Stravinsky’s music – four concerts in Moscow, and two in Leningrad Bolshoi visit to hear Prokofiev’s War and Peace Lectures to composers … we’ll come back to this later. Leningrad excursions: Lomonosov (Oranienbaum) the town where Stravinsky was born, And a visit to his niece Xenia who lived a few doors away from his former St Petersburg home by the Kryukov Canal. The concerts were performed by the Moscow Philharmonic and the Leningrad Philharmonic. Stravinsky conducted most of the music. His assistant, Robert Craft, helped rehearse the orchestras, and conducted the public performances of a couple of works. The works were selected by the orchestras. Stravinsky commented later that he would have preferred to have included some of his recent works but these were considered too far outside the players’ experience. © 2020 Terry Metheringham [email protected] +44 7528 835 422 Soviet Music: Exiles from Revolution Session 5: Stravinsky; the modernist’s homecoming 8 1962 Visit: the concerts The works I have found listed for these concerts in various sources are: Fireworks (1909) Firebird (1910) Petrushka (1911) Rite of Spring (1913) conducted Craft Volga Boatmen (1917) Le Baiser de la fée (1928) conducted Craft Capriccio (1929) soloist Tatyana Nikolayeva Ode (1943) Symphony in Three Movements (1946) Orpheus (1947) The inclusion of neo-classical works, from Le Baiser de la fée to Orpheus, shows that Soviet officialdom was now reconciled to this aspect of his creative style. While the Soviet orchestras felt uncomfortable performing Stravinsky’s latest works, the New York City Ballet presented Agon (1957) a few weeks later, during their eight week 1962 tour. © 2020 Terry Metheringham [email protected] +44 7528 835 422 Soviet Music: Exiles from Revolution Session 5: Stravinsky; the modernist’s homecoming 9 1962 Visit: the concerts The concerts were a huge success; the audience packed with celebrities, and recorded for television. There were so many curtain calls at the end of the first concert in Moscow that Stravinsky finally put on his overcoat to demonstrate he was expecting to leave very soon. His final words to the audience: “you can’t imagine how happy I am today”. [Walsh p 465] The New York Times