Ravinia 2022, Issue 4

SERGE RACHMANINOFF (1873–1943) Études-tableaux , op. 33 Rachmaninoff completed two sets of Études-tableaux (Study Pictures), opp. 33 and 39, six years apart at the Ivanovka estate. The first group of Études-tableaux , op. 33, fol- lowed directly on the heels of his Thirteen Preludes, op. 32, whose composition in 1910 completely exhausted Rachmaninoff. “Really, I have never had so strenuous, unrestful, and fatiguing summer. Moreover, from tiredness (perhaps old age) I have become inexcusably forgetful … and every evening when I go to bed I am horrified when I remember how many things I have forgotten to do that day.” Nonetheless, Rachmaninoff tapped a reserve of energy to finish the Études-tableaux , op. 33, in a rapid burst of composition in 1911. He introduced that music on a concert tour of England later in the year. Each of these pia- no miniatures represents a different musical character, portrayed in a highly compact mu- sical setting. Though Rachmaninoff originally planned a collection of nine études-tableaux, A. Gutheil published only six as a set in 1914. The composer transferred another piece in A major to op. 39, where it became the sixth étude-tableau in that set. The remaining two pieces first appeared as nos. 4 and 5 in an edi- tion of op. 33 issued by Muzgiz in 1948. NIKOLAI MEDTNER (1880–1951) Piano Sonata No. 5 in G minor, op. 22 Nikolai Medtner has been called the “forgot- ten member” of the triumvirate of post-Ro- mantic Russian pianist-composers, the un- dervalued compatriot of Serge Rachmaninoff and Alexander Scriabin. He possessed un- questioned credentials as a pianist, having entered the Moscow Conservatory at age 10 and received the gold medal with distinction in 1900. Vasily Safonov, director of the con- servatory, stated that Medtner would have received a diamond medal, had one existed. Serge Rachmaninoff at Ivanovka (1910) Immediately following his graduation, Medt- ner focused on his performing career, com- peting and receiving first honorable mention in the Third International Anton Rubinstein Competition (1900), held in Vienna. Three years later, Medtner made his mark as a com- poser, publishing his official op. 1—the Acht Stimmungsbilder for solo piano. He returned to the conservatory in 1908 on a one-year ap- pointment as piano professor, and the follow- ing year became an advisory board member of Éditions Russes de Musique, the publish- ing company founded by Serge Koussevitzky. Medtner received the Glinka Prize for com- position in 1916 for two piano sonatas. He re- mained in Russia for four years after the Rev- olution of 1917, eventually moving to Berlin and later Paris. A series of concert tours (of- ten arranged through the generosity of Rach- maninoff) led the pianist-composer to the Baltic countries, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Poland, Russia, and the United States. Medtner never again lived in his native land, although confessions of homesickness were quite common—“I can- not find the words to say how much I miss my motherland,” he wrote in 1923—and he died in London just short of his 71st birthday. As a composer, Medtner occupies a middle ground between Rachmaninoff ’s opulent lyr- icism and Scriabin’s avant-garde harmonic explorations. His creative credo, as professed in the book Muza i moda ( The Muse and the Fashion ; Paris, 1935), emphasizes certain nat- ural and unchangeable principles, a position that alienated Medtner from his progressive contemporaries. This aesthetic stance, cou- pled with official restrictions in the Soviet Union, resulted in few performances of his music during Medtner’s lifetime. The Piano Sonata No. 5 in G minor, op. 22, dates from 1909–10 and was published in 1911 by Éditions Russes de Musique in 1911. It has remained his most performed sonata and, arguably, his most familiar composi- tion. Medtner collapsed the multi-movement Nikolai Medtner sonata, with its changes in tempo and charac- ter, into a single, continuous piece. The Ten- ebroso, sempre affrettando provides an asser- tive introduction to the Allegro assai , which is itself structured in sonata-allegro form. As surrogate slow movement, Medtner includes the magnificently expressive, developmental Interludium . ALEXANDER SCRIABIN (1872–1915) Five Preludes, op. 16 Two Impromptus, op. 12 The talented, eccentric Russian pianist and composer Alexander Scriabin first traveled beyond his homeland to Western Europe be- tween May and August 1895. All along, the publisher Mitrofan Belaiev urged him to re- main productive and to complete the prom- ised 48 preludes in the remarkable span of five months. The young man reassured his mentor on numerous occasions: “I am not wasting my time. But I will say once more in answer to your remark about burying my tal- ents, I promise you that I am striving to ex- tract everything there is in me.” Belaiev joined Scriabin in Witznau, and the two journeyed together through Switzerland, France, Bel- gium, and Germany before returning to Saint Petersburg. The Twenty-four Preludes, op. 11—a set whose key scheme mirrors Cho- pin’s two dozen op. 28 preludes—constituted a musical diary of the European trip. Scriabin proceeded simultaneously with composition of four more sets of preludes. Writing from Paris on February 9, 1896, he sent a confident report on his progress to Belaiev: “I am now in a place which is very quiet, nice, clean, and cheap—ten francs for everything. I work wonderfully well. I will finish the preludes here then rest with an easy conscience and enjoy the marvelous beauty. I know that if I budge even for an instant I’ll put off working until doomsday.” Unfortu- nately, Scriabin came up just short of his ob- ligation to Belaiev. Only 47 preludes—com- pleted by op. 13 (six), op. 15 (five), op. 16 (five), Alexander Scriabin (ca.1898) and op. 17 (seven)—reached the publisher in the allotted five-month period. Touring lit the fire of inspiration, as Scriabin composed prolifically for the solo piano. Less well-known than the dozens of preludes were two small collections of two impromp- tus apiece that Belaiev published as opp. 12 and 14. Of the op. 12 pieces, Scriabin com- pleted the Impromptu No. 1 first in May 1895 during a 13-day stay in the university town of Heidelberg. Its lyricism, Romantic har- monies, and sweeping keyboard textures il- lustrate the influence of Chopin on Scriabin’s early compositions, as does the mazurka-like theme in the central trio section. Even so, the young virtuoso introduced a complex rhyth- mic layering that is distinctively Scriabin. Settling into Witznau, a village near Lake Lu- cerne, for five weeks, Scriabin composed the minor-key Impromptu No. 2 in a more mel- ancholy, yet ultimately bravura, style. SERGEI PROKOFIEV (1891–1953) Piano Sonata No. 7 in B-flat major, op. 83 The June 22, 1941, Nazi bombing attack against the Soviet Union had a tremendous impact on the Soviet people. Prokofiev embraced the patriotic fervor sweeping his country and immediately discontinued all current compo- sitional projects to begin a symphonic suite entitled The Year 1941 and an opera based on Tolstoy’s epic War and Peace . The composer recounted in his essay “The Artist and the War”: “The whole Soviet people rose to the defense of their native land. Everyone wanted to do his bit without delay. We composers at once began writing songs and marches of the heroic type, that is, music that could be sung at the front. I wrote two songs and a march, and turned to the idea I had been nursing for some time of writing an opera on the subject of Leo Tolstoy’s great novel, War and Peace . The pages describing the struggle of the Rus- sian people against the Napoleonic hordes in 1812 and the expulsion of Napoleon’s army from Russian soil had somehow a particu- lar poignancy at this time.” The opera would serve to rally Prokofiev’s countrymen during the present siege. Despite valiant opposition, the Nazi threat on Moscow intensified, prompting the Arts Committee to order prominent artists and musicians (including Prokofiev) to leave the city for their own protection. Stopping temporarily at Nalchik in the Caucasus, the company continued on to Tbilisi, the capital of the Georgian republic. In 1942, Prokofiev completed his two patriotic works and the Piano Sonata No. 7, whose musical material he originally sketched in 1939. This piece be- came the second of his so-called “war trilogy” piano sonatas. Sviatoslav Richter introduced the work in Moscow on January 18, 1943; it was the first sonata that the composer did not premiere. Prokofiev later received a Second Class Stalin Prize for this composition. RAVINIA.ORG • RAVINIA MAGAZINE 27