The concert programme of the celebrated Moscow Soloists Chamber Ensemble features masterpieces of chamber music, covering almost a two-century period. This journey through music history allows the listeners not only to trace the changes in the style of chamber genres, but also to appreciate the diversified spectrum of their output. Works by young and not so young geniuses are performed along with opuses by established masters, united by their outstanding artistic merits. The former includes compositions by Mozart, Pergolesi and Rossini. Divertimento (divertissement) in F major was composed by the fifteen-year-old Mozart, whose talent by that time had already enthralled all Europe. This popular genre, which is translated as “entertainment”, was a kind of light music, accompanying various entertainment events, both indoors and outdoors. Mozart’s divertissements are distinguished by inexhaustible ingenuity, wittiness and vivacity: in the hands of the talented composer even a trifle turns into a piece of art.
This is also brilliantly exemplified by Sonata No. 3 for Strings by the twelve-year-old Rossini, outer movements of which are marked with sparkling lightness, which Pushkin soon described as “champagne bubbles”. Having learnt that his days were numbered and he was dying from consumption, the young Pergolesi, the founder of opera buffa (comic opera), turned to a spiritual story about the mourning Mother of Christ. And though the composer was finishing Stabat Mater, while being on his deathbed, the sadness of his music was light: its sensuous, “gallant” style and touching sincerity of vocal lyricism soon brought the cantata wide recognition.
The soulful and murky timbre of the viola attracted special attention of romantic composers. Tchaikovsky’s Nocturne and Bruch’s Romanze are beautiful “songs without words”, where the solo viola is singing like a troubadour under the window of his sweetheart, while the string orchestra accompanies him.
Serenade by Tchaikovsky, concluding the evening, sums up the impressions from this journey through the time, as it combines the traditions of the two centuries of Russian and European music: characteristic features of Mozart’s instrumental handwriting (1st movement), the romantic genres of waltz and elegy (2nd and 3rd movements) and the “folk-style finale” on the theme of the Russian folk song Under the Apple Tree.
Nadezhda Kulygina
