Vladimir Rebikov, the self-styled inventor of whole-tone music,
was born in Siberia in 1866 and studied composition with Nikolai
Klenovsky, a Tchaikovsky pupil. He was an experimenter and wrote
‘musico-psycholographic dramas’ having increasingly turned to
novel forms and moved in harmonically advanced directions. His
ideas were not always well received and he, apparently, became
embittered at the success of Scriabin – a name that springs to
mind when listening to Rebikov’s music – and even Debussy, both
of whom, he believed, had stolen his ideas. Some contemporary
writers did, to some degree, agree that he had anticipated their
seismic shifts in harmonic thinking, though it remains moot whether
they did. He certainly met Debussy as well as Grieg and Janácek.
And Stravinsky certainly did know about Rebikov and admitted as
much, and his early influence.
Given his still-ambiguous place in the history of whole-tone adventurism
it’s interesting to note that, as far as I’m aware, the first
pieces of his to be
recorded
were songs. Not that he lacked for modernist experimentation in
vocal music, either, but the songs sung by Zoia Rosovsky for Vocalion
were not especially alarming for contemporary taste in the early
1920s. They can be found in a box set of discs devoted to the
obbligato player, the great violist Lionel Tertis.
The piano music recorded in this Divine Art disc is part of the
company’s ‘Russian Piano Music’ marque, itself an adventuresome
jaunt amongst the highways and byways of the muse. It’s clear
that Rebikov managed often to fuse traditional and experimental
harmonies convincingly, as he does in
Feuilles d’automne
where Tchaikovsky-like moments - in the
Pregando – vie
with the far more advanced Scriabin-evoking
Con tristezza movement.
The ethos manages also to marry, seemingly paradoxically, remoteness
and warmth.
He was also an adherent of selective precision.
Une fête
for instance has seven movements and lasts in total three and
a half minutes. Nothing is wasted. There are Stravinskian anticipations
in the rhythmic charge of the music, and this little cycle shows
his vitality and striking sense of rhythm.
Chansons blanche
uses the white keys only and aspires to a reserved plangency
– which is achieved with some success. The longest piece is the
grandly named
Esclavage et liberté of 1901, subtitled
Tableau
musical-psychologique in accepted French terminology. This
is a striking piece, but mainly for its Lisztian melos, a psycho-drama
of pregnant anticipation that shares a similar sense of drama
and contrast as Liszt’s B minor Sonata. It gradually lightens
and brightens its tone into extravagant chordal dynamism. It’s
apparent by now that Rebikov looked back as well as forward. As
well as anticipating the rhythmic advances of Stravinsky and the
glowering expressionism of Scriabin he also stands revealed as
an inheritor of mid-nineteenth century tone poetry as well, a
synthesiser of ambition unvexed by the problems he thus faced.
These also included the use of clusters, where he certainly was
in the vanguard, and which he employs in the 1913
Trois idylls,
as well as the lightly burnished orientalism of the second of
the two
Episodes from Yolka.
He sought Arcadian-Greek
inspiration in the brief
Scènes bucoliques and looked back
to Schumann’s inspiration for the charmingly droll
Tableaux
pour enfants. His putative influence on French impressionism
can perhaps best be gauged by the c.1906 settings in
Parmi
eux – note
Elles dansent in particular. And it’s fascinating
to consider his influence on the Czech composer Novák, whom Rebikov
knew and to whom the third of these pieces is dedicated, and on
Novák’s subsequent compositional direction, not least as a composer
for the keyboard.
Anthony Goldstone is wholeheartedly to be commended on his playing.
He reaches into the heart of the Rebikovian dilemma and produces
performances of intensity and suggestive tonality. Maybe the
Valse
from
Yolka could be more capricious – Shura Cherkassky
once recorded this and his playing was lither and more treble
glinting [Ivory Classics 72003] – but elsewhere he produces performances
both sensitive and, in the opening track
, Les démons s’amusant,
puckish.
And with detailed notes and excellent recorded sound, this stakes
a permanent claim on the listener.
Jonathan Woolf
Anthony Goldstone (piano) 
