St Petersburg, Concert Hall

In memory of Yoko Nagae Ceschina


PERFORMERS:
Soloists:
Daniil Trifonov (piano)
Leonidas Kavakos (violin)
Sofia Kiprskaya (harp)

The Mariinsky Orchestra
Conductor: Valery Gergiev


PROGRAMME:
Sergei Prokofiev
Symphony No 1 in D Major, Classical, Op. 25

Albert Zabel
Harp Concerto in C Minor, Op. 35

Claude Debussy
Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, L 86

Sergei Rachmaninoff
Piano Concerto No 3 in D Minor, Op. 30

Jean Sibelius
Violin Concerto in D Minor, Op. 47 (Part II)


Countess Ceschina died in January this year.
She was not just a friend and partner of the Mariinsky Theatre – she was a true admirer of Russian culture. Thanks to her inestimable support, countless numbers of music lovers throughout the world including in Japan and the USA were able to discover and fall in love with the works of Russian composers. As a professional harpist herself, she thought of the Mariinsky Orchestra as her “home” ensemble – as part of her family. Some of the merit for the acoustically perfect Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre belongs to Countess Yoko Nagae Ceschina. Numerous audio and video production projects of the Mariinsky recording label were also made possible thanks to her generous support.

 

Prokofiev’s interest in the orchestral compositions of the Viennese classics – first and foremost Haydn – emerged when he was a student at the St Petersburg Conservatoire in the conducting class of Nikolai Cherepnin. Prokofiev wrote that “It seemed to me that if Haydn had lived to the present day he would have retained his style of composition and accepted some of the new things that are going on. I wanted to compose just such a symphony – a symphony in the classical style.” This idea came to fruition several years later.
The orchestral format chosen by Prokofiev for the symphony matches that of the Viennese classics – a dual formation of winds (without aspectual instruments and trombones), kettle drums and string section. The sequence of the movements, their form and their drama also generally follow the model typical of a classical Viennese symphony. Only the traditional minuet or scherzo (the 3rd movement) is replaced with a gavotte – a genre which later came to be Prokofiev’s “calling card”. The musical language, however, without any doubt whatsoever makes this symphony belong to 20th century music. The unexpected and vivid modulations and shifts into remote tonalities, the use of instruments in extreme virtuoso form and the ironic interpretation of the musical material are all features of Prokofiev’s style which by that time had become fully developed. Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony is not a direct stylisation influenced by Haydn but rather an experience of rethinking, a look back from the 20th century at his legacy. This approach heralded the movement in music that came to be known as neo-classicism.


Albert Zabel was a German virtuoso harpist who lived much of his life in Russia. A soloist with the Orchestra of the Imperial Theatres and the first professor of harp studies at the St Petersburg Conservatoire, Zabel made a dazzling name for himself as a performer, composer and teacher, providing a tremendous impetus to the development of harp music in Russia. Zabel’s brilliance was celebrated by composers; it is known that Tchaikovsky entrusted him to edit the harp cadenzas in his works which Zabel performed brilliantly. In his more than forty-year career at the Conservatoire Zabel trained an entire plethora of students worthy of continuing his work, among them Ekaterina Walter-Kühne, whose own students included the renowned Xenia Erdely. Zabel’s legacy as a composer features some forty virtuoso pieces and arrangements for harp as well as his Concerto in C Minor – the first harp concerto to be composed in Russia. The tradition of the performer-composer has a long history – with their skills on the instrument and perfectly knowing its expressive abilities, many virtuosi composed music for their own performances. Zabel followed in the same tradition. In the musical material of the concerto, constructed in the classical three-movement format, at times one can hear intonations of the dazzling harp passages that embellish the ballets of Minkus and Tchaikovsky.
Vladimir Khavrov


Sergey Rakhmaninoff's 3rd Piano Concerto
was written at a time when his talent had finally been freed of doubts, self-restrictions and external obstacles, had fully matured and strengthened. Starting with the 2nd Piano Concerto in 1901, brilliant new compositions, frequently more than one, appeared every year. This phenomenal burst of creativity was not impeded even by Rakhmaninoff's intensive performing and conducting commitments. The 3rd Piano Concerto was written in the summer of 1909, when the composer was 36 years old. In the music of Concerto one can distinctly hear not only the maturity of a Master, but also a new scope, breadth, freedom...
The concerto was first performed in New York on 28 and 30 November 1909 during Rakhmaninov's American tour. The Russian premiere, performed by the composer, took place in Moscow on 4 April 1910. The concerto is dedicated to the outstanding Polish pianist Jozef Hofmann, whom Rakhmaninoff met during a tour of Russia (their acquaintance subsequently continued in the USA). Hofmann expressed his feelings for the composer most vividly in this heartfelt epitaph:
Rachmaninov was made of steel and gold:
Steel in his hands, gold in his heart.
I cannot think about him without tears.
I not only admired him as a great artist,
But loved him as a man.
The 3rd Piano Concerto is one of the composer's most "Russian" works. It is often called a "concerto-song" or a "poem about the Motherland". The musical narrative – dramatic, with tragic episodes – is always lyrically painted, and can be likened to a "struggle between light and shade". The "conquest of the world" in the Finale is a genuine hymn of joy that found a particular resonance in the atmosphere of Russia at the end of the first decade of the 20th century. The middle movement, the Intermezzo, is an enigma and, to a large extent, a portent of the future (not only the "denouement" of the Concerto, but also the composer's later works) – a very personal expression, music which is, in a fantastic way, an interweaving of the present and memories of the past.
Vladimir Goryachikh


Music was made for the inexpressible...
Claude Debussy

L’Après-midi d’un faune (1894) by Claude Debussy (1862–1918) bears the secondary title of Prélude à l’églogue de Mallarmé.
In Ancient Greek and Roman and, later, European poetry an eclogue was a poem on a theme about country life, close to an idyll or a pastorale. Stéphane Mallarmé’s eclogue was initially intended for declamation, to be depicted by dance. It was an attempt to revive the Ancient tradition where the aulos-player (the aulos being an Ancient two-pipe flute), as well as playing the instrument, would also dance or move to the rhythm of the music.
In Mallarmé’s poetry Debussy was looking for the harmony and the syncretism (meaning the union of art forms) that had been lost since Ancient times.
Try then, instrument of flights, O malign
Syrinx by the lake where you await me, to flower again!
I, proud of my murmur, intend to speak at length
Of goddesses: and with idolatrous paintings
Remove again from shadow their waists’ bindings:
So that when I’ve sucked the grapes’ brightness
To banish a regret done away with by my pretence,
Laughing, I raise the emptied stem to the summer’s sky...
There survives this explanatory text, probably compiled by Debussy himself or at least with his involvement. “The music of this prelude is a very free illustration of Mallarmé’s beautiful poetry. It makes absolutely no pretence at synthesis with the poetry. It is more of a series of scenes, one after another, among which one can see the faun’s desires and daydreams in the sultry heat of the afternoon. Fatigued by his pursuit of the nymphs who flee in fright, he then surrenders to an enticing sleep which is filled with dreams of the :fullness of conquering nature that have finally come to be.”
Mallarmé himself admitted that Debussy’s music conveyed his poem with great precision. When the composer played his prelude to the poet on the piano (specifically the piano, without any of the wonderful orchestral timbres!), this is what the latter said: “I never expected anything of the kind! This music is a continuation of the emotion of my poem and draws it with greater passion than any colours could ever convey.” In 1912 Vaslav Nijinsky staged L’Après-midi d’un faune for Diaghilev’s Ballets russes, he himself performing the lead role. Debussy had the good fortune to see the ballet performed.
Iosif Raiskin

Age category 6+

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