Russian Festival

Description

Russian Festival Aram Il'yich Khachaturian (1903 - 1978) Sabre Dance from GayaneAlexander Porfir'yevich Borodin (1833 - 1887) Overture to Prince IgorReyngol'd Moritsevich Gliere (1875 - 1956) Russian Sailors' Dance Mikhail lvanovich Glinka (1804 - 1857) Overture to Ruslan & Ludmilla Overture to A Life for the Tsar Fantasie: KamarinskayaNikolay Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov (1844 -1908) Flight of the Bumblebee Russian Easter OvertureIt was during the course of the nineteenth century that Russiannational consciousness developed, a change in attitude evident in literature,with the great novelists and poets of the period, in the visual arts, whichhave travelled abroad less satisfactorily, and, above all, in music. UnderPeter the Great in the early eighteenth century, Russia had looked to the West,a fact that the geographical choice of capital, St. Petersburg, and thecultural and political life of the time illustrates well enough. In thenineteenth century there were again those who looked West to Germany for amusical model to follow, while others, in particular the so-called MightyHandful grouped around Balakirev, chose a very different course. Thecosmopolitan tendency is clearly seen in the case of Anton Rubinstein, founderof the St. Petersburg Conservatory, an institution that earned the initialhostility of the nationalists, with their inspired amateurism.The Mighty Handful, Balakirev, Cesar Cui, Borodin, Musorgsky andRimsky-Korsakov, the most Russian of the Russian composers, were inspired bythe example of Glinka to attempt the composition of music of nationalinspiration. Glinka had had some professional training in Germany and Balakirevtoo was a professional musician. The other later members of the group, however,had, at first, other careers. Cesar Cui remained a professor of militaryfortification, Borodin was a noted chemist, teaching at the Medico-SurgicalAcademy, Musorgsky was an army officer and later an alcoholically incompetentcivil servant, while Rimsky-Korsakov started his career as a naval officer.These preoccupations seem to justify Rubinstein's description of thenationalist composers as amateurs, while the enthusiasm of the Five for thingsRussian seemed to them to justify their criticism of Rubinstein and theConservatory as in some way un-Russian, a jibe not without anti-semiticimplications.During the course of the century the conservatories established in St.Petersburg and Moscow did provide Russian musicians with the kind of technicalproficiency that they needed, enabling later generations to combine soundtechnical competence with nationalist ideals. Tchaikovsky was among the firststudents in St. Petersburg, and was later to teach for some ten years at theparallel institution in Moscow. The amateur pioneers, much of whose work wasleft unfinished, had provided an example and an inspiration. It was left toRimsky-Korsakov and his young pupil Glazunov to edit and complete compositionsundertaken by Borodin and Musorgsky, while Cui, who lived