Alexander Glazunov (1865 - 1936)
Stenka Razin, Op. 13
Une fete slave, Op. 26
Cortege solennel, Op. 50
Fantaisie, Op. 53
Mazurka, Op. 18
March on a Russian Theme, Op. 76
Noticed by Balakirev (founding father of
the Mighty Handful), taught by Rimsky-Korsakov, and encouraged by Liszt, Glazunov
was Director of the St Petersburg Conservatoire from 1905 to 1930. In 1932,
disenchanted with communism, he settled in Paris, joining other Russian emigres there, among them the younger Medtner.
His copious output - belonging principally to that period between the deaths of
Mussorgsky (1881) and Scriabin (1915) – included eight completed symphonies,
four concertos for violin and piano, three ballets, a number of choral works,
seven string quartets, and two piano sonatas. He published a centenary volume
on Schubert in 1928.
A living legend, the oracle of
Establishment St Petersburg, Glazunov's life was charmed, rewarded, honoured
(from Ox bridge doctorates in 1907 to People's Artist of the Republic in 1922),
but ultimately uneventful, and finally disillusioned. "Few
composers," wrote Rosa Newmarch many years ago, "made their debut
under more favourable auspices or won appreciation so rapidly [the schoolboy First
Symphony and first two quartets] ...His career seemed the realisation of a
fairy-tale set to music until the political troubles of his country threw his
life and his art into the shadows". In October 1883 Vladimir Stasov,
critic and champion of the Balakirev circle, predicted a golden future for him
(he was just eighteen): "The principal characteristics of his music thus
far are an incredibly vast sweep; power, inspiration, wondrous beauty, rich
fantasy, sometimes humour, sadness, passion, and always amazing clarity and
freedom of form". Life, history, the years took their toll. When
the young Nicolas Slonimsky auditioned for him in 1908, he remembered an
imposing man of "corporeal immensity (he weighed over 300 pounds)",
matching "the contrapuntal solidity of his music ...He liked good food and
he drank liquor to excess [he was also a heavy smoker]. When I saw him again in
1918, he looked like a skeleton covered with loosely hanging clothes; he must
have lost half of his weight". He ended his post-Revolution New Order days
pitifully deprived -sharing two rooms with his aged mother (he was still her
"baby boy"), fearing his stock of music manuscript paper would run
out, and dependent on Shostakovich's father risking his life to keep him
illegally supplied with raw government alcohol.
Widely travelled, the cosmopolitan Glazunov was a radical
second generation Russian nationalist-turned-conservative European Brahmsian,
"a stabilising influence in a time of transition and turmoil" (Boris
Schwarz, 1980). He was a lyricist in the Tchaikovsky manner. He revered
Mussorgsky and Borodin (editing the former, and completing the latter's Prince
Igor and Third Symphony). He caught the essence of Rimsky's
orchestration with a brilliance to match the colour and imagination of the
original. And he thought so totally "about music [that] when he spoke
about it, you remembered for life" (Shostakovich). Historically, though - being
how he was, living in the era and place he did - was it his misfortune to have
been born arguably too late for the nineteenth century and too early for the
twentieth? His music, more reviled than revived since his death, has certainly
had difficulty withstanding the legacy of his predecessors and successors.
Published in memory of Borodin, the symphonic
fantasy-poem Stenka Razin, Op. 13 (1885), was one of Glazunov's earliest
nationalist successes. First performed at Belayev's expense at a concert in St
Petersburg directed by GO Dutsch (23rd November 1885), he himself later
conducted it during the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle - as the final item
of Rimsky-Korsakov's first "Concert Russe" at the Trocadero (22nd
June). Around the same time also, according to Rimsky's Autobiography, Messager
and Raoul Pugno played it in a piano duet arrangement (Glazunov's own), a feat
repeated some years after (in 1905) by Ravel and Ricardo Vines. Stefan Razin
was a chief (ataman) of the Don Cossacks, who in 1670 rebelled against the
ruling-landowner / serving-peasant reforms of the Romanov Tsar Alexis. Executed
in Moscow, his daring exploits and raiding parties, and his struggle for the
rights of common people, were long the stuff of epic Russian minstrel song. One
traditional ballad tells of his capture of a Persian princess, whom he places
on one of his ships, surrounded by servants and plunder. His men say that his
love for her has dulled the fight in him. He denies the accusation. Offering
Mother Volga "neither gold nor silver, but the most precious of all my
possessions", he sacrifices "his princess fair" by throwing her
into the river, leaps ashore, and, warrior-captain to the finish, leads his
followers into renewed battle. Broadly mirroring this story, Glazunov's
romantically opulent score is largely founded on the Song of the Volga
Boatmen (printed by Balakirev in 1866). The unforgettable gravitas of this
tune provides the basis for the B minor Andante introduction and Allegro
outer sections; with a contrasting clarinet melody in the major a semitone
lower (said to be of Persian origin), symbolic of the gentler princess, Allegro
moderato. As inspired as Balakirev's Tamara, Borodin's In the
Steppes of Central Asia or Mussorgsky's Khovanshchina Prelude, the
introduction survives among the genuinly great romantic examples of Russian
landscape painting and mood evocation. In 1913-15, Chaliapin (famed for his
singing of the Volga Boatmen) wanted Gogol and Glazunov to collaborate
on an opera about Stenka Razin. Nothing came of the idea -but it was possibly
the closest Glazunov ever came to the genre.
The rhythmically vibrant symphonic sketch Une fete
slave (Slav Holiday), Op. 26a (1888), was an adaptation of the orchestrally
suggestive Ukrainian dance-finale from the popular G major String Quartet,
Op. 26. Written in the wake of Tchaikovsky's suicide the previous November,
the (first) Cortege solennel in D major, Op. 50, and the Fantaisie,
Op. 53, both date from 1894. Glazunov subtitled the latter From darkness
to light, musically representing such transfiguration by beginning in pathetique
B minor and closing in "white" C major - a familiar enough old
Neapolitan relationship (think of Haydn and Beethoven) but also a very Russian
one in its semitonal sidestepping.
According to his pupil Shostakovich, Glazunov
"insisted that composing ballets [and by extension dance music] was
beneficial because it developed your technique... he was right". The Mazurka
in G, Op. 18 (1888), was the first of several "concert" dances
for orchestra independent of a balletic / cyclic context. Together with the
earlier Wedding Procession (March), Op. 21 and Triumphal
March, Op. 40, the March on a Russian Theme, Op. 76 (1901) shares
the same militaristically heroic key of E flat perorated by Mussorgsky in the "Great
Gate of Kiev" and Tchaikovsky in his 1812 Overture.
@ 1996 Ates Orga