In all stardom – Kommersant

The Moscow Philharmonic has completed the first season of the monumental cycle “The Whole Stravinsky”: it is planned to perform every single piece of Igor Fedorovich Stravinsky’s works during this cycle. Stravinsky is one of the world’s most played composers of the 20th century, but the program of the final concert included two world premieres. About how novelties were combined with curiosities in the concert and how they tried to balance them with the well-known “Petrushka”, tells Anna Kolomoets.

The concert was opened by the infrequently performed cantata for the male choir Star-faced (1912) – a small choral fresco lasting five minutes, an experiment of a genius in which not everyone recognizes the hand of Stravinsky. A huge composition of the orchestra, including eight horns, two harps and a celesta, a premonition of the end of the world, the motives of the Apocalypse in a free poetic arrangement by Balmont. Hypnotic passes, references to Russian cosmism, an offering to Claude Debussy, whom Stravinsky met in Paris in 1910, and a secret sign to the now deceased teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov, with his Astrologer. Before the performance of the cantata, musicologist Yaroslav Timofeev, the presenter and inspirer of the concerts of the cycle, made a fascinating excursion into the history of Russian sectarianism, talking about the fanaticism of the eunuchs, who mutilated the flesh to please God, and threw a bridge from him to the feverish eschatology of the Star-Face. And he announced the first number of the program as “a prayer of Russian castrated singers in the modern style” – before the Yurlov State Academic Choir began to sing.

The music for two poems by Paul Verlaine (1910) is another tribute to Debussy and, perhaps, an experience of unspoken competition with the great master. However, the young Stravinsky did not yet feel confident on French cultural soil: he played it safe and composed music into a Russian translation made by his friend Stepan Mitusov. The baritone Dmitry Cheblykov sang about the poetry of the night, about voluptuousness and love, about death and peace. The voice of the soloist of the Bolshoi Theater was still sweet and gentle even in the second poem – a lullaby of death. And stiffness, pronunciation of syllables, preoccupation with the distribution of breath and monotony created the feeling that the material was decidedly alien to the singer.

A couple of rarities were “Petrushka” (1911). It would seem that an unfading masterpiece and a great opportunity for the Russian National Youth Symphony Orchestra to transform into a full-fledged soloist, occupy the entire stage and the acoustic space of the hall, but the young team was not at its best that evening. Under the guidance of maestro Philip Chizhevsky, who danced infernally on the podium, all possible sins appeared: falseness, fussiness, rhythmically complex places caused the need to slow down the tempo, and simple fragments sounded flat, the sound palette lacked brightness. The solo characteristics of the characters were no better. In a word, the theater failed: Petrushka’s piano solo came out beautiful, tender, but monotonous and indistinct in design, the “chased” trumpet solo, the image of the desired Ballerina, was loose, and the Moor lacked oriental flavor.

However, the failure with “Petrushka” was redeemed by the long-awaited premiere. The invited guests of the evening were Mussorgsky and – behind the scenes, the father’s shadow – Rimsky-Korsakov. In 1913, the enterprising Diaghilev decided to shame Korsakov’s edition of Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina, which was not only recognized as infallible at that time, but was even perceived as an author’s text. To revive the “genuine Mussorgsky” for the needs of the European public, the great impresario invited two rising stars, Stravinsky and Ravel. Their editorial works were considered lost for a long time, but not so long ago they were saved for the audience by Yaroslav Timofeev, which was triumphantly presented in the form of two issues.

Here the musicians were at their best. All the same Dmitry Cheblykov got used to the image of Shaklovity. In his aria “The Streltsy nest is sleeping…”, the singer was able to convey all the bitterness of feelings of an ambiguous character – an informer who passionately loves his country. The shock was the final chorus of the schismatic Old Believers – a frightening picture of collective self-immolation, culminating in funeral bells and ringing silence. It was written in fact by Stravinsky himself: using the original themes of his predecessor, the fearless editor created his own choral fresco. The orchestration and the whole style of music give him away.

Timofeev studied Diaghilev’s edition of Khovanshchina, among other things, on the materials of the Stravinsky archive stored in Basel. “In the course of the work, it turned out that Shaklovity’s aria, which was considered lost, actually survived almost entirely,” he says. the rest. And suddenly it dawned on me that this is just the missing piece of Shaklovity’s aria. This is how the orchestration of this aria came about.

The orchestration of the final chorus of “Khovanshchina”, which was written by Stravinsky and is known only in the clavier, is considered lost. Yaroslav Timofeev had to completely restore it. The world premiere of the reenactment, like the narrator himself, made a strong impression, and even with all the merits of Star-Face and Petrushka, at the end of the evening, the championship remained not with the famous Stravinsky, but with the unknown. However, it is too early to sum up the final results – the cycle “All Stravinsky” with all its hits and rarities is designed for seven years.