Issue No.72
FRIENDS’ NEWSLETTER
April 2017
ANGUS SMITH, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
CONTENTS
PAGE ONE Music of Russia PAGE TWO Our Pictures Project PAGE THREE More Russian Composers PAGE FOUR Children’s Commission PAGE FIVE Howard Skempton PAGE SIX Fundraising Update PAGE SEVEN Coming soon PAGE EIGHT Dates for your diary
ON “WHAT MAKES RUSSIAN MUSIC RUSSIAN?” First impressions are so important. When I was 13 or 14 I went to hear Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring played by the London Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Leonard Bernstein at the Royal Albert Hall. I couldn’t tell you what else was in the programme because I was so completely transfixed and overwhelmed by the raw, elemental power of this extraordinary piece. More Russian music followed, courtesy of my experiences as a member of the local Stoneleigh Youth Orchestra. Playing Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony – heart-on-sleeve passion, it seems to me – was exciting enough, but the searing intensity of Shostakovich’s 5th is even more powerfully etched into my memory. And not just because these pieces have such great trumpet parts! I was also swept away by the extraordinary technical and emotional power of great Russian pianists; I almost wore out my copy of Sviatoslav Richter’s LP of Brahms’ 2nd Piano Concerto and witnessing Andrei Gavrilov live was phenomenal. Add in the idiomatic sound of Russian operatic and church singers – not least for those extraordinary
Bass notes! – and we have another area where Russian music and musicians stand out from the rest. However, even if these experiences didn’t give me a false impression of Russian music, I can now see that they gave me an incomplete one. Only in recent times have I come to realise that in a host of 19th-century Russian composers’ chamber music – Glinka, Cui, Balakirev and Borodin, to name just a few – there is an easy elegance and lyricism that is a match for Tchaikovsky. And that Glazunov’s abundant lateromantic streak is every bit a match for Rachmaninov’s. I am also discovering that I need to look further than the wonderful music of Shostakovich and Prokofiev.
There is immense, heartfelt poignancy in the music of mid20th-century composers such as Weinberg and Myaskovsky and in a composer who seems to me to be their heir, the remarkable Sofia Gubaidulina. This is why I am looking forward so much to this festival. My pre-conceptions will be well and truly satisfied, but I also know there are going to be lots of wonderful surprises!
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