Two hours with Snegurochka

It wasn't long enough. In the end the Opera in Depth term just concluded was eaten up, by general consent, with Der Rosenkavalier, including visits by Richard Jones and Felicity Lott (Robert Carsen would have come along, too, if he hadn't had to leave for America prematurely). I would have loved to spend longer with Rimsky-Korsakov's enchanting Snow Maiden, but I hope we managed to make a very lovely whistlestop tour of its four acts (five including prologue) in half the time it takes to perform the entire opera (usually heavily cut, as it was by Opera North in a production which still managed the magic well despite its Russian sweatshop setting. I wonder what Tcherniakov will make of it in Paris. Shortly to find out).

I find I can reproduce some of the greatest hits here, so let's start with the atmospheric Prelude. It's a good tone-poem evocation, like the design by the great Roerich below (his are also the other designs featured), of the stage directions by Alexander Ostrovsky, whose 'spring fairy tale' was the basis for Korsakov's first operatic masterpiece, and for which Tchaikovsky wrote equally delightful incidental music in 1873.

Beginning of spring. Midnight. Krasnaya Hill is covered in snow. To the right, bushes and a leafless birch grove; to the left, a dense forest of large pine and spruce trees, their branches bent low and covered with snow; in the distance at the foot of the hill a river is flowing; round its ice-holes and melted patches of water a fir-grove has been planted. On the far bank of the river the Berendeyev town....: palaces, houses, peasant cottages, all made of wood decorated with elaborate painted carvings; lights in the windows. A full moon covers everything in its silver light. In the distance, the sound of cocks crowing.The Wood Demon is sitting on a dried out tree-stump. The whole sky is filled with returning migratory birds. Spring Beauty, borne by cranes, swans and geese, descends to earth, surrounded by her retinue of birds.

This performance, from the great Yevgeny Svetlanov and his 'orchestra with a voice' (Gergiev) the USSR State Symphony Orchestra, is of the whole orchestral suite, including the chorus of birds without the delightful vocal parts, the quaint March of Tsar Berendey's Court (a model for Prokofiev's March in The Love for Three Oranges) and the best-known number, the Dance of the Tumblers from Act 3's summer revels.

We have to catch something of Snegurochka's very own personal magic. She's summoned by ill-matched parents Frost and Spring, and in her first aria tells them how she's attracted to the songs of shepherd-boy Lel and his fellow villagers. The first theme associated with her, heard in the first vocalised text, appears originally on the flute and I have no doubt that Prokofiev deliberately quoted it in the exposition round-off of his "Classical" Symphony's finale. After all, the symphony was composed in enchanting spring circumstances outside revolution-torn Petrograd. There's been a timely Decca release of Russian and other operatic arias and songs by the gorgeous Aida Garifullina, whose amazing presence the Opera in Depth class saw in DVDs of Graham Vick's Mariinsky War and Peace (special loan). The version with orchestra isn't on YouTube, but we're lucky to have this film of Garifullina performing the aria with piano at one of the Rosenblatt recitals. She's certainly musicality incarnate.

I have one complete recording with which I'm very happy, conducted by Fedoseyev with Irina Arkhipova doubling the roles of Spring Beauty and Lel. Such a distinctive sound, even if Lel's three songs could be subtler. The whole recording is on YouTube, and I link to it near the bottom here, but for now let's just pick out Lel's Third Song from the midsummer ritual of Act 3.

Other highlights include character-tenor Tsar Berendey's first aria with cello obbligato - I have an old 50s recording with Ivan Kozlovsky, an acquired taste and sadly not on YouTube. That leaves us nothing here of Act 2 other than Roerich's splendid design for Berendey's palace.

There are also fascinating comparisons to be made between Korsakov's and Tchaikovsky's scores. Though the former's dance is better known, Tchaikovsky's skomorokhi are more joyous still and their music touches on the liveliest numbers in Swan Lake, composed around the same time (early 1870s).  There's a terrific performance from Neeme Järvi and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, but the winner is an outlandish arrangement for the Osipov Balalaika Orchestra in the legendary 'first recording made with western equipment on Soviet soil'.

One passage can't be extracted here which Prokofiev describes very movingly in the autobiography of his youth commemorating Rimsky-Korsakov's death in 1908. Amongst other observations, he records his St Petersburg Conservatory professor, Nikolay Tcherepnin, saying 'When a French orchestra was rehearsing Snow Maiden in Paris (or perhaps it was Monte Carlo), the musicians were so delighted with the festive scene in the sacred wood, when Lel takes Kupava to Berendey and kisses her to the strain of a marvellous melody, that when it came time to play the melody again they suddenly put down their instruments and sang it. That was a really exciting moment'.

Our last stretch in the class was the climactic duet between Snegurochka and Mizgir, the human to whom she's finally decided to give herself - two unforgettable tunes here - her melting in the rays of the sun and the glorious hymn to Yarilo led by Lel - a tune in 11/8 time. Another Prokofiev anecdote is essential here, since Korsakov wrote two 11/8 ensembles. He's remembering a discussion of his youth with his older friend, the vet (and fellow chess player) Vasily Morolev.

In the stallion's stall he asked me. 'You mean you really don't know Rimsky-Korsakov's opera Sadko? It's a fine piece of work....In the first act there is a chorus in 11/8 time so exciting that you simply can't sit still in your seat.'

I gave a start. 'In 11/8? I know that in Snow Maiden Rimsky-Korsakov has a chorus in 11/8. and I even heard that one conductor, who simply couldn't manage to conduct the chorus, kept muttering all during the singing of it; "Rimsky-Korsakov has gone completely mad" ["Rimsky-Korsakov sovsem s uma soshel']. But when I tried it, it turned out that the phrase doesn't fit the chorus from Snow Maiden, because it comes out "completely mad"[ie with the stresses displaced].

'Wait a minute!' Morolev exclaimed excitedly. 'Maybe that phrase fits Sadko!' And he began to sing in turn 'Hail, Sadko, handsome lad' ['Goy ti Sad-Sadko, prigorii molodets'] and 'Rimsky-Korsakov has gone completely mad'

'It fits! It fits!' we shouted at the same time. And we began to sing the theme of the chorus, first with one text, then with the other [Prokofiev writes out a musical example to prove it].

No YouTube snippet of the final ensemble exists, so you can have the benefit of the entire recording. I own a good CD edition on a rare label which sounds better than this, but it will do. Zoom forward to 3'05'28 if you want the last two minutes. Listen out for the shifting chords above a fixed bass which surely gave Stravinsky the cue for the very end of The Firebird.

The only DVD we had access to in the class, not on YouTube, was the very charming and ethnographically detailed Soviet film of Ostrovsky's original play I bought from the Russian Film Council, with splendid folk music using the right kinds of voices (obviously the numbers are not Korsakov's).

The other option, if you don't mind a condensed version and you want to entertain children - or indeed, just yourself - with something rather lovely in its old-fashioned way, is a sweet Russian cartoon (with subtitles) which includes many of the musical highlights.

I ought to add by way of footnote that our previous two Opera in Depth classes had been devoted to Act 3 of Der Rosenkavalier. Apart from the usual extracts ranging far and wide, the DVD I chose to show was of Richard Jones' production from Glyndebourne. No-one has ever managed, in my experience, to make the discomfiture of Ochs pass in a flash, not to mention be funny and dark at the same time (pictured below, Lars Woldt and Tara Erraught, singers with fabulous comic instincts both, by Bill Cooper for Glyndebourne).

It soon became even more apparent that this is Jones at his meticulous best, choreographing every move with rigour, throwing out much of Hofmannsthal's detailed scenario and finding his own equivalents to match the music at every point. Had been intending to switch over to a final scene with truly great voices (Jones, Fassbaender and Popp for Carlos Kleiber or Te Kanawa, Troyanos and Blegen for Levine), but neither seemed so perceptive on the human level, so we stayed with Jones to the charming end (yes, he actually makes something warm and amusing of Mohammed's entry to retrieve - not Sophie's handkerchief but the wrap of the mistress with whom he's besotted).

Next term we move on to two lacerating studies of jealousy, close in time but musically poles apart - Verdi's Otello (Francesco Tamagno pictured above) and Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande. Ten Mondays 2.30pm to 4.30pm starting 24 April at the Frontline Club. Leave me a message here if you're interested in joining with your email: I won't publish it but I promise to reply.

Concert afterchat: bells and Poe

At the end of his hard working week with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and just after Rachmaninov’s serene epilogue to all the doom of Poe’s funeral bells had sent us floating down from the Festival Hall, a beaming and relaxed Vladimir Jurowski joined me for a post-concert dialogue in the RFH’s ballroom zone. That’s another prime pick from Chris Christodoulou’s Proms shots above – we annually present a selection on The Arts Desk – which seemed like a better lead than the diplo-mate’s loyal phoneshot of the afterchat, though here it is anyway.

We talked about the weird disappointment of this brilliantly planned Bells ‘n Poe programme having been cancelled a month ago on what should have been its first airing: the lights failed at the Usher Hall during the Edinburgh Festival so – no concert (and they’d even flown in a baritone to replace indisposed Vladimir Chernov at 24 hours’ notice). VJ mused on The Bells’ ill-starred history - it has a reputation, it seems, somewhat akin to the Scottish Play - despite its highest place in the composer’s self-esteem, starting with the misplaced dedication to Mengelberg who’d only just dissed the work (hard to understand why). 

Although the ‘choral symphony’ has plenty of light and shade, it fascinates me especially how Rachmaninov goes beyond the bleak finality of Poe’s death-ode and provides the most levitational – I have to repeat that word, especially in the context of Saturday’s performance – conclusion imaginable. Jurowski remembered, as so well do I, Svetlanov’s last concert with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and how, knowing he was very shortly to die, the great man stretched out the transcendence to seeming infinity. That searing event has been issued on CD, but isn’t on YouTube, but another classic Russian recording is, albeit somewhat oddly via a crackly LP rather than the CD transfer – Kondrashin’s Moscow Philharmonic stunner. The final Lento lugubre begins at 23’36; the levitation comes at 32’40 though needs to be prefaced with at least a bit of the preceding gloom to have its due effect.

Here's some more of Poe's text if you feel like accompanying your listening with a bit of authentic English-language flavour (though even enlarged, it's not always easy to decipher):

VJ seemed pleased with his own matured interpretation of a work he loves: I mentioned the exceptional balances in the glitter of the sleigh-bells movement, and he felt that tenor Sergei Skorokhodov and the amalgamated London Symphony and London Philharmonic Choirs had really, for once, come through the orchestral busy-ness. He wanted a feeling of exultation, not craven terror, in the ‘Alarm Bells’ movement: this, after all, was 1913, when the imaginative anticipation of sweeping away the old order was far from the horrifying reality it would become.

I was impressed how little Jurowski repeated of what he’d recorded for the LPO’s website, where he expounded so eloquently on the place of bells in Russian culture as the only instruments heard in Orthodox services and on the Russification of Edgar Allan Poe. Even so, he is clearly so involved with the poetry of Konstantin Balmont, Poe’s distinguished Russian (hyper) translator, that he had more to say about this silver-age master. We to- and fro-d a bit about the other bell pieces on the programme, post-war collages by Shchedrin and Denisov which I think I’ve written just enough about on the Arts Desk review. Curiously there is a performance of Denisov's impressionistic Bells in the Fog on YouTube, though alas the audience is not as receptive to its cusp-of-silence beginning as Saturday night's crowd was.The big picture, by the way, is of Sofia Gubaidulina, for me the greatest voice of contemporary Russian music.

Jurowski also passionately defended the other Poe-inspired piece on the programme, Myaskovsky’s Silentium. As he pointed out, the Poe fable of a man who can withstand anything the Devil throws at him except silence is a tale for our times, perhaps even more so than for the late 1830s when it was written. So far as the symphonic parable is concerned, there’s a loyal Jurowski family connection with the honourable, somewhat lugubrious Myaskovsky, and I couldn’t help but admire the dogged sombreness of this early piece, so often mentioned in the correspondence with Prokofiev. Jurowski sticks to the line that ‘Myaskusya’ develops his symphonic ideas better than Prokofiev, who was often openly dismissive of his musical substance – as was I when VJ conducted the Sixth Symphony, a work I’d been hoping to like as well as I had on a first recorded hearing.

So I suspect VJ was being a bit naughty in passing a passionate Myaskovsky admirer’s question about why we didn’t hear more of the 27 symphonies over to me, and what I thought might be the problem. But I voiced my mixed feelings about the unevenness and deferred back to him again, since he’s spent time studying the works as I have not.

Come question time, I was glad one lady took us back to the earlier concert in the week, and – observing how the players seemed to have a whale of a time in the ‘symphonic picture’ drawn from Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten - asked whose selection it was. Jurowski’s, of course, and I’m glad we agreed on the awfulness of Strauss’s own ‘fantasia’, which VJ pointed out contains much of the worst music in the opera. There was another great critical split along the lines of the Martinů divide on how effective this much more interesting selection was; having accepted that we weren’t going to get the voices, I tried to enjoy it for what it was, and found myself seduced by all those odd extra instruments on full display: the Chinese gongs, the glass harmonica (pictured below in hands-on by Thomas Bloch; no working one in either of the big Russian cities, Jurowski told me about a performance there), the four tenor tubas. It gave me a fresh perspective on Strauss’s extraordinary score, and you can’t ask for more than that. 

Coming up: three titanic programmes from the tireless Jurowski, linking British and Russian attitudes to ‘War and Peace’, marking the bicentenary of the Battle of Borodino and 70 years since the premiere of Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony. It should be amazing to hear the Russian National Orchestra tackle Vaughan Williams’s Sixth – VJ reports that Muscovite audiences were stunned by that unique, drifting finale – and combined Anglo-Russian forces in Shostakovich 7. Too much choice this week, alas: to be loyal to my BBC Symphony Orchestra class, I have to attend that band’s first concert of the season tomorrow and miss Jurowski’s Prokofiev War and Peace scenes: not too great a wrench when the alternative is to hear Jukka-Pekka Saraste conduct Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony and the peerless Alice Coote singing the most beautiful song in the world, Mahler’s ‘Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen’, among the Rückert Lieder. 

Image of a lighthouse bell in Primorsky Krai in Russia's far east above by V Kotelnikov, courtesy of Russian language Wikipedia