The Nature of Dance – the Nature of Life: Glinka, Tchaikovsky and Shchedrin

Unlike the composer’s other works, there are incredibly few remaining accounts about Tchaikovsky’s Third Symphony. Tchaikovsky completed work on the symphony in the summer of 1875 in Ussovo. The sketches were, apparently, completed in the course of June, because on the 29^th of the month when the composer travelled to the estate of Nikolai Dmitriyevich Kondratiev at Nizy he immediately began to instrument the work.
The symphony was performed for the first time in the autumn of 1875 in Moscow under the baton of Nikolai Rubinstein. Somewhat later, in winter, the St Petersburg premiere took place under Eduard Nápravník. In both Moscow and St Petersburg the new opus enjoyed tremendous success, and in 1879 the symphony was performed in New York.
Nevertheless, today the Third Symphony is performed more rarely than Tchaikovsky’s other symphonies. Of all of Tchaikovsky’s symphonies it stands apart – it is the only one with five movements and the only one written in major key. The work is dominated by light and life-affirming images. Tchaikovsky himself said of his work that “As far as I can see this symphony offers no particularly successful inventive ideas, though in terms of the structure it is leagues ahead. Most of all I am pleased with the first movement and both scherzos.” By the term scherzo the composer meant, as well as the fourth movement which is thus named, the second movement too, which has no such genre definition.
The majestic apotheosis that concludes this five-movement composition was to be the crowning glory of the first triad of Tchaikovsky’s symphonies. Starting with the Fourth the composer turned his back on this path and was never to return there again.

In May 1845 Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka set out for Spain from Paris, drawn by the richness of Spanish folk music. Under the impressions of what he saw the composer wrote two overtures which were later called “Spanish” on the advice of Odoevsky. The first – Jota Aragonesa – was written in 1846 in Madrid. In 1848 when he returned from his travels Glinka composed his second overture – Summer Night in Madrid, which, in its first version, was entitled Recollections of Castile. Potpourri for Orchestra.
The overture is based on four Spanish folk melodies composed by Glinka during his travels – the motif of a jota, two seguidillas of La Mancha and a Mauritanian refrain. The entire composition is in the strict framework of the sonata form. The overture opens with a “water-colour” and clear introduction that is close to Impressionism in terms of its sound. Interesting, too, is the technique found by the composer that serves to underline yet further the national flavour of the music – throughout the work the role of the unique refrain is performed by the guitar.
The overture was composed in St Petersburg following Glinka’s return for the winter of 1848–1849 prior to his final departure abroad. This is why the images of Spain are reflected here retrospectively, as if the composer were recalling what he had seen and heard during his travels.

The image of Carmen first appeared in the mid 19^th century on the pages of Prosper Mérimée’s novella. A quarter of a century later Georges Bizet, inspired by the literary source, created his acclaimed opera Carmen. However, transferring the heroine from the pages of the book to the operatic stage has not been limited, and in the 20^th century there were many interpretations of this plot in poetry and in cinema.
It is entirely natural that the image of Carmen came to be embodied in ballet. Rodion Shchedrin composed his Carmen Suite on the basis of Bizet’s music, significantly reorganising, cutting and rearranging the music of the opera. The libretto of the ballet, based on Mérimée’s novella, was written by the choreographer Alberto Alonso. Conveying through the language of gesture and dance the full complexity and contradictory nature of the protagonists’ emotions was one of the most arduous tasks for the ballet’s creators. The ballet was created on the initiative of Maya Plisetskaya, who was the first brilliant performer of the title role. The world premiere of Carmen Suite took place on 20 April 1967 at the Bolshoi Theatre. Shchedrin fortified the dramatic core of the plot on several occasions, which is shown by the plot being enacted in just one location – the arena of the corrida.

Pavel Velikanov