The Russian Institute
for the History of the Arts and the
School of Music Publishing House here
launch what they call ‘a major cultural
project’. This is a series of publications
of ‘Treasures of St Petersburg’s Musical
Archives’ of which this is the first
volume. What we have is a sumptuous
and magnificently produced hardback
book, in a very large format (342mm
x 268mm), in Russian and English, and
with a CD of historical recordings in
a pocket on the back board. Except for
the irritating absence of an index,
in almost every way it is superbly done.
Here we are introduced to two unknown
scores by Stravinsky albeit two very
minor ones. To have such a sumptuous
volume devoted to what to most of us
is an insignificant aspect of Stravinsky’s
output is possibly a matter of regret.
It would have been wonderful if it had
added to our musical knowledge of something
more substantial and central to Stravinsky’s
life and stature. Yet as well as the
detailed account of the music the background,
and the flavour of the period immediately
before the revolution are superbly conveyed.
Just under 100 pages are facsimiles
of full scores, including Stravinsky’s
autographs, in colour, the proofs (of
the Mussorgsky) and the final printed
pages. Otherwise 164 pages are in Russian,
128 in English. The pictures are superbly
reproduced.
On 28 November (10
December to us in the West) 1909 at
a Siloti (Ziloti) concert in the Hall
of the Noble Assembly, St Petersburg
(wonderful atmospheric endpaper photographs)
a concert took place on a Faust theme,
including settings of ‘The Song of the
Flea’ by Beethoven and Mussorgsky orchestrated
by the young Igor Stravinsky. The singer
was the celebrated bass Feodor Chaliapin.
Beethoven’s ‘Mephistopheles
Lied vom Floh’, Mephistopheles’ song
in Auerbach’s cellar (‘Es war einmal
ein König’), is usually given the
opus number 75 no 3, and is all that
remains of Beethoven’s ambition to set
the first part of Goethe’s Faust,
first sketched in 1792-3 and actually
written in 1809.
Klimovitsky tells us
Beethoven’s intention to set the first
part of Faust was reported in a Stuttgart
newspaper in 1808, but the larger work
never matured. Despite the inclusion
of a CD with this book we are not offered
a recording of the Beethoven either
with its original piano accompaniment
or in Stravinsky’s orchestral version.
If we remember Diaghilev’s
total rejection of Beethoven it is not
surprising to find that Stravinsky was
at the least ambivalent about him. His
early youthful reaction, as for so many,
came from Beethoven being forced on
him by his teachers. Klimovitsky quotes
Stravinsky on his early piano sonata:
‘It was, I suppose, an inept imitation
of late Beethoven’, a startling assertion
and one that until now had not crossed
my mind. Indeed replaying my old LP
of the Stravinsky early Sonata by Paul
Crossley (Philips 6500 884) the model
of Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky’s contemporary
Rachmaninov seem to be far more in evidence.
Yet a few lines later in a 1907 letter
to Rimsky-Korsakov Stravinsky tells
how: ‘In the evenings I relish Beethoven’s
symphonies, which Katya [Yekaterina,
his first wife] and I play four-handed’.
Mussorgsky’s setting
of the same words is one of his last
compositions and was first heard in
public on 8 April 1880 when the composer
was the pianist. Klimovitsky finds it
‘among the masterpieces of his vocal
oeuvre, one of the supreme manifestations
of his brilliant theatrical gift’. .
. ‘an effective concert number
for an operatic singer’.
Klimovitsky quotes
Victor Zhirmunsky when he reminds us
that ‘for many years Mephistopheles’
song . . . was omitted from Russian
translations of Faust because of "its
overtly political meaning, directed
against the system of favouritism prevailing
in absolute monarchies"’ which
means different translations replaced
the king with an old woman (‘A king
lived once upon a time/ and with him
lived a flea’ – ‘There once was an old
woman/and she had a flea’). Mussorgsky,
who was a fluent German speaker, appears
to have made his own version from the
German (which in the printed score has
an English translation by Rosa Newmarch).
Again in the Beethoven setting Stravinsky
has a different version of the words
in the autograph from that in the printed
score. Here we are given a transliteration
of the words in Russian, but no English
translation of that in the autograph
which is something of a handicap comparing
them when reading the English version.
In a fascinating conclusion
Klimovitsky finds Stravinsky on the
threshold of future discoveries. Perhaps
the chief interest of these two orchestrations
is their signalling what is to come
– for Firebird, Petroushka
and The Rite were soon placing
Stravinsky on the international musical
stage. Here in the songs we find the
fingerprints that would soon find a
larger canvas, not least being his treatment
of the bassoon.
The well-dubbed accompanying
CD of historical recordings offers Chaliapin
in the Mussorgsky, accompanied by piano
in 1935, by orchestra (acoustic recording
conducted by Percy Pitt, 10 October
1921), and the electrical orchestral
recording by Goossens (20 May 1926),
but nothing of the Beethoven. I have
not been able to find a discussion of
the recordings in the book, and although
the Pitt is new to me, the Goossens
orchestral recording of the Mussorgsky
is more familiar having been reissued
before (Pearl GEMMCD 9314; Conifer cassette
MCHD 226). At least one of the various
modern CD recordings is of the Stravinsky
(Martti Talvela, Finnish RSO on Ondine
ODE 945-2). The modern orchestral recording
of the Beethoven by Nesterenko and Rozhdestvensky
(Melodiya 74321 59058-2) is of a later
orchestration by Shostakovich.
Reading the painstaking
descriptions of the music given here
is fascinating but of limited interest
to most music lovers. However this minute
treatment of Stravinsky’s two orchestrations
also gives us a vivid window on a lost
world. So this book is of much wider
interest than the ostensible subject
matter, despite its detailed musical
treatment, and certainly of at least
as much interest for the background
history presented than for the actual
music. All fascinated by Russian music
and culture in the decade before the
outbreak of the First World War will
find much to please them, while the
section on Siloti is particularly valuable.
Certainly all libraries acquiring this
will need to make a subject entry under
the great Russian conductor-pianist.
However, this wider constituency makes
the lack of an index a matter of very
real frustration. The glimpse it gives
of the riches of Russian archives is
tantalising and I look forward to future
publications from the School of Music
Publishing House in this authoritative
format, and to the exploration of the
riches in Russian Archives still denied
to non-Russian readers.
Lewis Foreman
