Three cantatas for soloists and mixed voices with orchestra were composed by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in 1897–1901, a period of his great creativity. At that time he was concentrated at vocal music and composed a lot of operas and romances. His work on such compositions often triggered one-movement cantatas. For example, From Homer, Op. 60, prelude-cantata was a beginning of the Nausicaa opera – it was never written – and for the Switezianka cantata, Op. 44, the composer borrowed the melody from his own romance of the same name.
All the cantatas were inspired by epic or legendary subjects including those of Odyssey by Homer and ballads by Pushkin or Mickiewicz but the color and cast were different. The severe Song of Oleg the Wise, Op. 58, was commissioned by the composer to men’s voices exclusively. Women’s voices were for dryads in From Homer. The love story of a mermaid and a hunter in the romantic Switezianka cantata is told by tenor and soprano soloists and mixed voices.
Two Songs for bass, Op. 49 (1897), stand apart in Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s vocal compositions. The both of them are based on the lyrics by Alexander Pushkin and, in terms of genre, are a mix of a monologue and a ballad. The first arioso The Upas Tree was devoted to Fyodor Stravinsky, an outstanding bass and a soloist of the Mariinsky Theatre. Some years later his son Igor Stravinsky would became a pupil of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and his fame as a composer would outshine that of his father. The draft of The Prophet, Rimsky-Korsakov’s second arioso of this Opus, dates back to 1882. It was devoted to the composer’s close friend, Vladimir Stasov, a music critic. Initially the Two Songs were composed for solo piano arrangement. However, in 1899, the year of celebration of the 100th birthday of Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov orchestrated The Prophet, and in 1906 he orchestrated The Upas Tree, too.
Alexander Glazunov (1865–1936) was a worthy successor of the Russian composing school. He found his element in instrumental music. He wrote a lot of orchestra and chamber compositions among which there are outstanding opuses in the genre of symphony, ballet or concerto.
The Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major, Op. 55, is a mature composition by A. Glazunov. Notwithstanding some influence of his teachers and eminent colleges such as Balakirev, Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, and Tchaikovsky, the composer had his own clear hand. Alexander Glazunov composed his symphony at his summer house in Russia from April 1895 to October 1895, after his long nice travel over Germany.
In terms of structure, the work is composed classically. It comprises four movements; each of the four ones corresponds to a certain common archetype. The conflictive first movement introduces a vital, optimistic mood for the whole composition. This mood dares shorts periods of darkening. The fantastic scherzo carries us into a fairytale land to revive the symphony. The songful Andante with plangent tunes makes us remember some beautiful pages of Tchaikovsky’s symphonies, and the sparkling monumental finale becomes a declaration of positive vision of the world.
The Symphony was premiered in Saint Petersburg in 1896 under the baton of the composer and was greatly acclaimed by spectators and critics, who noted the elegance of arrangement and the forethought of composition. The next year its score was published, and in 1916 Alexander Gorsky staged a ballet to the music of the Symphony No. 5.
Natalia Rogudeeva
