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In 1844, having discovered masterpieces of Spanish painting in Paris, Glinka decided to fulfil a longstanding dream and visit Spain – a country that had attracted many European artists and musicians of that time.
What a contrast to Glinka, tired of St Petersburg society, were the conditions in the welcoming, life-affirming Spanish countryside! “I am making a diligent studying of Spanish music,” the composer wrote to his mother from Granada, “Here, more than in other Spanish towns and cities, they sing and dance. The predominant song and dance in Granada is the fandango. The guitars begin, then everyone present sings a couplet in turn, and at the same time one or two couples dance with castanets. This music and dance are so original that even now I have not been able to completely catch the melody as they all sing it in their own way. In order to understand the matter fully I am studying three times a week with the premier dance teacher here and am working with both my arms and my legs. This may, perhaps, seem strange to you, but there music and dance are inseparable. Studying Russian folk music in my youth led me to compose A Life for the Tsar and Ruslan. I hope that now, too, I am not bustling about in vain.”
The extent to which these lessons were “not in vain” is borne out by the quickly ensuing and brilliant symphonic overture Jota Aragonesa, in which the Spanish folk dance the jota was transformed thanks to the unusually elegant and festive play of orchestral colour.
Marina Iovleva
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In the spring of 1866 Tchaikovsky, having only recently graduated from the St Petersburg Conservatoire, began work on his First Symphony, which was to be one of his most lyrical compositions. Here the composer expressed pain and joy, confusion and strivings, the aspiration to the eternally beautiful and the sublime.
The work was composed in 1866 (between March and November) and it is dedicated to Nikolai Rubinstein. The first performance of the symphony and highlights from it in Moscow and St Petersburg brought Tchaikovsky well-earned success.
The imagistic structure and the means of lyric expression, the dramatic thoughts and the musical expressiveness (particularly in the orchestrations) that emerged in the First Symphony were to prove typical for all of the composer’s symphonic scores. That was when Tchaikovsky formed his vividly individual symphonic method. This was the composer’s first step on the path to his symphonic masterpieces, concluding with the composition of the brilliant Sixth Symphony.
Anna Kolenkova
The music of Russian Photographs for string ensemble (1994) is dedicated to the Moscow Virtuosi orchestra directed by Vladimir Spivakov. It is a tragic work in its nature and it was inspired by the fear and pain of Russia in the 20th century. The idea behind the piece unfolds in the names of its sections, each of which depicts a scene from Russian life at different periods. The first section, The Ancient Town of Aleksin, is linked to memories of this old town in the province of Tula where the composer’s grandfather had been a priest. The second section, the witty scherzo Cockroaches throughout Moscow, was written at a time when disasters were indeed taking place, although the music is not pictorial in character. The third section, Stalin-Cocktail, contains fragments from songs about Stalin and one can make out the echoes of shots and victims’ moans. And of the fourth section, entitled Evening Bells, the composer wrote “Sadness, distant bells of half-ruined churches ringing out, twisted crosses on cupolas, overgrown village cemeteries filled with tall weeds, the croaking of crows, people’s unbelief, desolation and discord in their hearts…” (Rodion Shchedrin. Foreword to the score of Russian Photographs).
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