Dmitri Shostakovich perhaps offered the secret of Russian music: "When a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something."
Shostakovich was in despair his whole life while he was writing 15 gorgeous symphonies, chamber music, operas and the Festival Overture -- this last one to be performed here on Dec 15, one of the four Russian works selected by the Royal Bangkok Symphony Orchestra, under The Royal Patronage of Her Royal Highness Princess Sirivannavari Nariratana.
Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich, in Paris, in 1958. Photo: AP
Actually, Russian composers came into their own while Western Europe was coming to the end of the Romantic period. Until 1850, composers were imitating their Western models for aristocratic audiences, or writing music for the Russian Orthodox Church.
They only thing they had was Russian despair, torment and genius.
Around 1830, Mikhail Glinka, studying in Italy, concluded that Russia might possibly be able to say something to the world. "We Russians," he said, "have lives which either don't touch us at all, or lives which sink deep in our souls. We are either madly boisterous or we bitterly cry."
Bringing that message back to Moscow, he was, predictably shunned by the elite and died in German exile.
Glinka, though, was the inspiration for music to be heard in Bangkok. Around the 1850s, five amateur musicians created some of the greatest music of the 19th century. This group scorned the aristocrats. Their music respected but ignored Mozart, Beethoven and Bach. Their goal was to write the music of the peasant, the endless lands, the bells of the Russian churches.
Modest Mussorgsky, for instance, was an army officer -- and a drunkard whose drinking killed him. Even when inebriated, he would wobble on to a stage, sit down and play perfectly. Even when lying on the floor besotted with vodka, he could write half-a-dozen operas, Pictures At An Exhibition and symphonic poems like A Night On The Bare Mountain.
That last work, to be played here, was never performed during his lifetime. Typically his staid contemporaries refused to play a work picturing witches on a mountain waiting for Satan to announce the Witch's Sabbath. Later, Rimsky-Korsakov -- who actually did study music -- reorchestrated the "crude" original orchestration to be heard here. Though some of us still prefer the original.
Mussorgsky and his contemporaries were not well respected by Peter Tchaikovsky. Tchaikovsky, who was constantly on the verge of suicide, despised Mussorgsky. "He believes in the ridiculous theories of his own genius. He flaunts his illiteracy, takes pride in his coarseness, uncouthness, roughness." (Obviously that was true. Modest Mussorgsky was hardly modest when explaining: "My music must portray the soul of man in all its profundity.")
Still, the academically trained Tchaikovsky, a First Prize graduate of the St Petersburg Conservatory, was very Russian in two ways. First, he did include a few Russian tunes, as in the finale of his First Piano Concerto.
Second, unhappily, he also had that bipolar morbidity and elation that works into all his works. When he was happy, the music had a Cossack swing (albeit within the rules of "good music"). When he was sad, he was oh so very sad.
The First Piano Concerto is rightfully among the most popular works, and every great pianist has to play it. This means Poom Prommachart, the first Shigeru Kawai Artist in Thailand, will make his attempt at greatness once again.
A graduate of London's Royal College of Music, he won prizes for "exceptional high distinction" both in piano and chamber music. Other important awards at RCM included the John Chisell Schumann Award in 2009 and first prize in the RCM Concerto Concerto Competition where he performed Prokofiev's Second Piano Concerto No.2 In G Minor, Op. 16 with the RCM Orchestra.
With a repertoire of over 30 concertos, he has played in concert halls throughout Europe, Asia and Australia, winning the Fifth International Isidor Bajic Piano Competition in Serbia and second prize at Budapest's Chopin International Festival. Today, he is Artist-in-Residence at Concorno Kulturmanagement.
The evolution of Russian music went from Glinka to Mussorgsky to Tchaikovsky and then to Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov (another amateur, he was a Maritime Admiral). Rimsky-Korsakov's final student was none other than Igor Stravinsky, who, with Arnold Schoenberg, revolutionised 20th century music.
Stravinsky's earliest music, written for the French Ballets Russes, was exciting, electrifying, ecstatic. Stravinsky's Rite Of Spring, Pulcinella and Petrouchka were all based on Russian legends, fairy tales and histories. And Firebird -- selections of which were prepared by the composer in 1919 -- will be played here with all the mystery, darkness, fantastic orchestration and folklore. The story deals with a magician, a Fire-Bird, an imaginary castle, 16 beautiful maidens and a horde of terrifying monsters. But the music tells it all.
And finally we come back to the most famous 20th century Russian who refused to leave his native country. Dmitri Shostakovich had two people inside him: one was the tortured soul whose symphonies had secret meanings, whose victorious moments were actually protests against Stalin.
Yet at the same time, he never ever considered leaving the Soviet Union. And when necessary, he wrote music which was popular, elated, joyous. That, in fact, is the Festival Overture, to open this programme.
In 1954, the conductor of a festival to celebrate the October Revolution needed a new piece, contacted Shostakovich -- and the composer finished it in three days!
The work is that Russian extreme -- but in joy! A trumpet fanfare, a melody in the winds, the strings, a great climax -- and then more excitement. How did he write it? Shostakovich simply went back to Russia's musical Godfather. "I modelled it on an overture by Glinka."
The conductor for all four works is a name known both internationally and in Bangkok. Charles Olivieri-Munroe is perhaps Malta's most esteemed citizen, though he was actually raised in Canada. Currently he is conductor of the Krakow Philharmonic, principal conductor of the Warsaw Chamber Opera, honorary principal conductor of the North Czech Philharmonic and of course regular guest conductor of the Royal Bangkok Philharmonic Orchestra.
But his chores with the Moscow Philharmonic, and his performances of Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress and Le Rossignol with the Warsaw Chamber Opera make him a natural for this all-Russian concert. Added to which is The New York Times evaluation: "Mr Olivieri-Munroe's hold on the public imagination stems from a combination of talent and charisma."
THE RUSSIAN PIECES
Saturday, Dec 15, 8pm at the Thailand Cultural Centre, Main Hall. Ticket prices are 400, 800, 1,200, 1,600 and 2,000 baht, with 20% off Bangkok Bank credit cards and 50% for students with ID. Information: ThaiTicketmajor 02-262-3456 or thaiticketmajor.com, or BSO office 02-255-6617/18 or bangkoksymphony.org.
Pianist Poom Prommachart. Royal Bangkok Symphony Ochestra
Harry Rolnick is a New York correspondent for concertonet.com.
