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Shchedrin composed Round Dances (Concerto No 4 for Orchestra) in 1989. The work was commissioned from Japan for an International Music Programme at Suntory Hall (Tokyo). It was there on 2 November 1989 that the premiere of Round Dances was performed by the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Naohiro Totsuka.
The organisers of the concerts had invited Shchedrin to compose an orchestral work “in the Russian style”. The international programmes in Tokyo set highly unusual conditions for the composers. Each composer who took part in them had to select three works for their concerts: one by a composer younger than him and in whose future he believed; a classical work that had most influenced him; and, finally, his own latest opus. Shchedrin proposed Schnittke’s Ritual, Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition and his own Round Dances.
Shchedrin brought a work that was as Russian as it could have been in the late 20th century into a Japanese atmosphere. Round Dances is a capricious synthesis of both truly Russian motifs (against a background of village nature) and Stravinsky’s “pagan” line, emerging from Le Sacre du printemps (chants, the sharpness of the harmonies and the energy of the rhythm) as well as Shchedrin’s own inimitable style. The classical symphony orchestra was revived by the use of rare instruments such as the block flute, the piccolo clarinet and the piccolo trumpet (which has the important solos), while the percussion instruments include the Russian wooden spoons and a set of little bells from a Russian troika.
The Round Dances are in one-part, just like Shchedrin’s three previous orchestral concerti (Mischievous Folk Ditties, Chimes and Ancient Music of Russian Provincial Churches). In these works, Shchedrin essentially created a specific genre – the programme orchestral concerto.
Pavel Velikanov
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The Fifth Symphony in E Minor, Op. 64, was composed by Tchaikovsky in the summer of 1888 in the village of Frolovskoe. It has no literary programme, but the theme that flows throughout, from the introduction of the first movement to the last bars of the finale, transforming from the gloomy into the triumphant, make one suspect that Tchaikovsky nevertheless had some kind of secret “plot” in mind.
Tchaikovsky conducted the premiere of the Fifth Symphony in St Petersburg on 5 (17, Old Style) November 1888, and it soon won widespread acclaim abroad. This is linked to a curious episode, recorded by Tchaikovsky’s acquaintance Alina Ivanovna Bryullova: “They loved it particularly well in Hamburg, where the director of the music society was the kind and erudite old Theodor Avé-Lallemant, and he and Tchaikovsky somehow got on very well together. Apropos, in an instance of spiritual openness this Avé-Lallemant, an excellent musician, suddenly grasped Tchaikovsky’s hands and said ‘I have a tremendous favour to ask of you, if you will permit me to offer my advice: don’t use these wild Cossack melodies and different trepaks in amazing your works. Write in the spirit of our European music.’ Tchaikovsky, a very tactful man, merely smiled and in response dedicated his Fifth Symphony to him.”
It is not known if the elderly gentleman liked the finale. But he had to forgive the composer anything for the sake of the second movement with the inspired French horn solo and the third movement – a magnificent waltz.
Anna Bulycheva
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