Primorsky Stage Orchestra

Always extremely sincere in his music, Tchaikovsky composed his Fourth Symphony at one of the most critical periods of his life, after which he was left with “general recollections of passion, the terror of sensations I have felt.” Impressions of his disastrous marriage and hasty divorce came to form a feeling of general disappointment and lack of self-confidence in the composer’s mind. The acuteness of his personal sufferings made the composition of the symphony an incredibly difficult process which required almost a year of intense work (in comparison, Tchaikovsky wrote the opera The Queen of Spades in just forty-four days). As a result, a work emerged where the eternal problem of mankind – the uneven battle of the individual against external circumstances that are indifferent to his wishes and needs – was portrayed with hitherto unknown power. In the symphony’s introduction, during the threatening theme of Fate, Tchaikovsky presents the circumstances in such a way that it becomes clear that victory is impossible for friendless human volition, “there is no landing-stage… sail over this sea until grasps you and drags you to its depths.” The musical development of the first movement reflects the succession of natural psychological reactions at the recognition of the inevitability of Fate: anguish, confusion leading to despair and, lastly, the attempt to forget oneself, to leave one’s problems behind in a world of serene illusions. The increasing distance from conflict can be sensed in the development of the subsequent movements of the symphonic cycle which led Taneyev to make the association with “a symphonic poem to which three movements were joined by chance and thus created the symphony.” If traces of the composer’s subjective emotions can be felt in the second movement, then the genre images of the scherzo and the finale may in no sense be likened to attempts to struggle against Fate, as for Tchaikovsky the futility of such endeavours had been evident from the very start.

Modest Musorgsky completed the score for Night on Bald Mountain with incredible speed. The composer’s letters reveal that Night was composed in just some ten days (12 to 23 June 1867), “a clean and finished result, without drafts”. The idea of this programme symphony tableau had come to the composer ten years earlier, though it only came to fruition after hearing Berlioz’ Symphonie fantastique, performed in Paris in 1866.
The composer gave a brief description of the programme on the title page of the score: “1. Assembly of the witches, their talk and gossip; 2. Satan’s journey; 3. Obscene praises of Satan; and 4. Sabbath.” Musorgsky dedicated the piece to Balakirev, though the leader of the “Mighty Five” refused to perform Night on Bald Mountain at a concert, demanding that the composer “bring the music into order.” In response, Musorgsky replied firmly and unyieldingly: “Whether or not you agree, my friend, to perform my witches, whether I am to hear them or not, I will not change anything at all in general terms or the development, both of which are closely connected with the content of the tableau…” In the event, Musorgsky was not to hear “his witches”; on two occasions he used material from this work – in the Mighty Five’s collective opera-ballet Mlada and his own final opera The Fair at Sorochintsy. It was only after the composer’s death that Night on Bald Mountain was performed in a free (loose!) adaptation by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and went on to win international renown. For many years, Musorgsky’s original score lay neglected; it was only in 1968 that it was performed in Moscow.
At a concert on 18 March 1989 at the Kirov Theatre in Leningrad as part of an anniversary festival to mark one and a half centuries since Musorgsky’s birth (and, prior to that, in Amsterdam) Valery Gergiev conducted, in one programme, the first ever Russian performance of both editions of the work – Musorgsky’s original score together with its “sanitised” adaption. Audiences familiar with Rimsky-Korsakov’s frequently-performed version, praised for its perfection of form, paid due tribute to Musorgsky’s original symphonic tableau, with its natural power that bursts forth from the framework of generally accepted canons.

Nikolai Rimsky Korsakov’s Capriccio espagnol (1887) emerged from sketches for a fantasia concertante for violin and orchestra based on Spanish folk themes. The composer’s initial idea developed and expanded far beyond the realms of a fantasia or suite founded on folkloric motifs. Before us we have a dazzling orchestral concerto – one of the first such examples in Russian music. In the five movements of the Capriccio we can imagine Spain in song and dance (Rimsky-Korsakov borrowed genuine folk themes from José Inzenga’s Collection of Folk Songs and Dances).
Thanks to the varicoloured yet transparent orchestration, colourfulness and richness of flavour (in particular the castanets included in the percussion section), the score of Capriccio espagnol is a veritable encyclopaedia of orchestral mastery.
The first performance of Capriccio espagnol took place in St Petersburg on 5 December 1887 under the baton of the composer.