PERFORMERS:
Behzod Abduraimov (piano)
Yekaterina Sergeyeva (mezzo-soprano)
Yuri Vlasov (bass)
Vladimir Moroz (baritone)
Edward Tsanga (bass)
The Mariinsky Chorus and Orchestra
Principal Chorus Master: Andrei Petrenko
Conductor: Valery Gergiev
PROGRAMME:
Alexander Lokshin
Symphony No 3 for baritone, man’s chorus and symphony orchestra to verses by Rudyard Kipling
Tarakanische, brief comic oratorium for soloists, chorus and symphony orchestra to verses by Korney Tchukovsky
Wait for Me, symphonic poem for voice and orchestra to verses by Konstantin Simonov
Pyotr Tchaikovsky
Piano Concerto No 1 in B Flat Minor, Op. 23
The name of Alexander Lokshin is sadly unknown to wider audiences. Apropos, Dmitry Shostakovich, Maria Yudina, Boris Tishchenko and Rudolf Barshai among other outstanding musicians all referred to Lokshin’s music as “brilliant!”
Alexander Lazarevich Lokshin was born in the small town of Biysk in Siberia in 1920. From the age of six he began taking piano lessons. In 1930 the Lokshin family moved to Novosibirsk where the talented youngster continued to study at a brilliant comprehensive school as well as at a music school under the renowned pianist Alexei Stein, a former professor of the St Petersburg Conservatoire who had been sent to Siberia following the revolution.
In 1936 the sixteen-year-old youth entered the second year of the school of the Moscow Conservatoire, while in the spring of 1937 he was transferred to the conservatoire itself – also as a second year student in the composition class of Professor Nikolai Myaskovky. In May 1941 (before defending his degree!) he was admitted to the Union of Composers of the USSR and, one month later when sitting his graduation exams, was stripped of his diploma and expelled from the conservatoire for his composition Flowers of Evil – three pieces for soprano and symphony orchestra using the “degenerate and decadent” verse of Charles Baudelaire (the performance of the symphony was conducted by Nikolai Anosov).
In June 1941 he joined the home guard of the Krasnopresnensk region of Moscow, though he was soon excused from military service due to ill health (a stomach ulcer and his short-sightedness). As a member of the fire brigade, at nights he served on the roof of the Moscow Conservatoire before returning to his parents in Novosibirsk where he conducted concerts in hospitals and workers’ clubs.
On 22 April 1943 Novosibirsk held the premiere of Lokshin’s symphonic poem Wait for Me (1942) to verse by Konstantin Simonov. The fabled orchestra of the Leningrad Philharmonic was conducted by Yevgeny Mravinsky (the solo performed by Yevgenia Verbitskaya). Before the concert, in his introductory words Ivan Sollertinsky highly praised the young composer’s work, saying that “this day will go down in the history of Russian music.” Upon his return to Moscow, Lokshin was accepted once more by the conservatoire (thanks to Myaskovsky’s petitioning), while the poem Wait for Me, performed under Anosov, was passed as his degree work. Having graduated from the conservatoire (with distinction!), Lokshin was permitted to remain and teach. From 1945 he taught instrumentation and reading scores and musical literature. In June 1948 the composer fell victim to a campaign “to fight cosmopolitanism” for promoting the “idealistically peculiar” music of Mahler, Berg, Stravinsky and Shostakovich among students and was fired from the conservatoire. From the early 50s Lokshin focussed exclusively on composing music. Forced to instrument the works of others and compose music for films and theatre performances to earn a living, the composer uncompromisingly fought for his own artistic world. In his autobiographical notes Lokshin pointed out that he had “felt the tremendous influence of Schubert, Brahms, Berg and Mahler and the Scene in the Countess’ Bedroom. All this, it would seem, has become woven together and only now can I see for myself from where what I call my own style emerged.”
The depth and the great simplicity which is won not by a thirst for success but by the desire “in everything ... to get to the very essence, to the foundations, to the roots, to the very heart” (Boris Pasternak) – this is the principal feature of the music of Alexander Lokshin, here lies his “patent for nobleness”! In using the verse of his favourite poets, through means of symphonic dramaturgy the composer “extended” the words, he was proclaiming an integral musical and poetical concept. This was the case both with Konstantin Simonov’s lyrical message and with other poetic impulses that drew a response from the composer. Of Lokshin’s eleven symphonies only the Fourth is purely instrumental. The others were brought to life using the Latin of a funeral mass and Ancient Greek epigrams, poetry by Kipling and sonnets by Shakespeare, the verse of Blok, Zabolotsky, Leonid Martynov, Pushkin’s The Songs of the Western Slavs, Japanese lyricism and the works of the Renaissance-era Portuguese poet Luís de Camões. This list may be expanded to include other works by Lokshin such as the cantata A Grieving Mother to the text of Akhmatova’s Requiem and the Russian church’s funeral service, the mono-opera Three Scenes from “Faust” and The Art of Poetry for soprano and chamber orchestra to verse by Zabolotsky...
The few satirical works Alexander Lokshin produced include The Cockroach – a comic oratorio to verse by Kornei Chukovsky (1962). “Before the actual performance,” recalls the composer’s widow Tatiana Alisova-Lokshina, “the work was banned because in the character of the Sparrow that pecked at the Cockroach someone had the insight to see a hint at Nikita Khrushchev... After all, Chukovsky’s text reads that ‘Donkeys praise his glory in song’ while the composer also added – with a heroic-comic intonation – ‘Glory, glory!’” But it is believed that just as Khrushchev’s Thaw was coming to an end the great leader, depicted in the “image” of the oratorio’s protagonist, was also saved.
The Third Symphony to verse by Rudyard Kipling (1966) is something that today’s audiences involuntarily compare to the now rather frequently performed War Requiem by Britten. Both works are remarkable for their incredibly powerful anti-war tendencies and humanistic pathos (apropos, contrary to Kipling’s reputation as a “trumpeter of British imperialism” which hindered Lokshin’s symphony passing through the eye of the needle of Soviet ideological censorship). The first performance of the Third Symphony only came in 1979 in London (with the BBC Orchestra and soloist Stephen Roberts under conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky).
When Alexander Lokshin died (11 June 1987) the conductor Rudolf Barshai, who had frequently performed and recorded the composer’s music, wrote an article for the “Russia-abroad” magazine Continent entitled In Memory of a Friend. Barshai expressed hope that “Lokshin’s time will still come and that Russian audiences will honour the memory of one of their greatest composers with reverence.” We add our own voices to that hope.
Iosif Raiskin
Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto is one of the most frequently performed works in the genre. The vivid lyricism and melodious expressiveness draw the attention of the public, while the richness of the piano score itself fascinates pianists. The merits of the concerto were not, however, immediately recognised. In 1875, when Tchaikovsky showed the work to his friend and teacher Nikolai Rubinstein, the latter declined the offer to perform the concerto, believing the structure was insufficiently “pianistic.” The concerto later gained renown in a revised version by Alexander Zilotti in which the virtuoso structure of the work was significantly expanded. Today both versions are performed to equal acclaim – Zilotti’s “traditional” version and the composer’s original, in which the virtuoso qualities do not overshadow the unusual melodious richness and expressiveness of the score. Tchaikovsky dedicated his concerto to the renowned pianist Hans von Bülow, who performed the work for the first time in Boston on 25 October 1875. Von Bülow’s subsequent performances in New York and Philadelphia enjoyed even greater success. Two months after the world premiere, on 3 December 1875 the concerto was performed by Sergei Taneyev in Moscow. In one of his letters, he named it the first Russian piano concerto – which was, in fact, true. It was this work that became the first classical example of the piano concerto in Russian music. It is frequently performed in concert halls throughout Russia and abroad, and since 1958 it has formed part of the compulsory programme of the final round of the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.