Mussorgsky: Pictures At An Exhibition / Balakirev: Islamey

Description

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (1839 - 1881) Pictures at an Exhibition Mily Alexeyevich Balakirev (1837 - 1910) Islamey, oriental fantasy (second version)Hopak (from Sorochintsy Fair) On the Southern Shore of the Crimea The later nineteenth century was the great ageof nationalism in Russia, a period in which the Russian language became a fitvehicle for the work of great novelists and poets and in which music soughtdevelopment through recourse to Russian traditions, sacred and secular. Therewas a curious ambivalence, apparent in music as elsewhere in the cultural andpolitical life of the country. On the one hand Western Europe seemed to offer amodel to follow, the course embraced by Anton Rubinstein and composers of amore cosmopolitan turn of mind; on the other hand Russia was seen as thesaviour of Europe, with a messianic role opposed to the decadent West.The Five, the group of Russian nationalistcomposers under the leadership of Balakirev, nick-named by the polymathlibrarian Stasov "the Mighty Handful", involved themselves in thecreation of a truly Russian form of music. Balakirev himself deplored thefoundation of what he saw as German-style conservatories, established in StPetersburg and Moscow in the 1860s by the Rubinsteln brothers, but it wasdifficult to defend his followers against a charge of amateurism ordilettantism. Balaklrev himself had professional training and worked as amusician, apart from a brief interruption of his career, when religiousmelancholia induced him to work for the state railways. Rimsky-Korsakov, whowas to acquire considerable technical skill, particularly in orchestration, wasat first a naval officer; Cesar Cui was a professor of military fortification;Borodin was a research chemist and Mussorgsky, when he left the army, became amonstrously incompetent and unreliable civil servant.Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky was born in 1839,the son of a land-owner. As a young officer he had musical ambitions, andwithout any training in composition tried his hand at an opera, as well aslesser compositions for the entertainment of his friends. It was a meeting withCui and with the composer Dargomizhsky that led him to a more influentialassociation with Balakirev and StasovAfter leaving the army, Mussorgsky held variouspositions in the civil service. At his death in 1881, the result of epilepsyinduced by alcoholism, he left a great deal unfinished, including the operaKhovanshchina, later completed by Rimsky-Korsakov, who took it upon himself toserve as musical executor to both Mussorgsky and Borodin. His great Russianopera Boris Godunov was to be revised by Rimsky-Korsakov, who applied histechnical abilities to smoothing out apparent crudities In other works.Pictures at an Exhibition,a set of piano pieces written in 1874, is intensely original in its use oftexture, and has lent itself well enough to re-arrangement for all the colourof a full orchestra. The work commemorates an exhibition of the work of theartist Victor Hartmann, who had d