The all-Shcherbachov edition. A couple paragraphs on Nikolai Shcherbachov (/ Shcherbachev / Shcherbachyov / Stcherbatcheff) (1853–1922) before we begin.

Apparently Shcherbachov was seen by the other composers in the Belaieff group as something of a dilettante, a talent with undeniable flair but not enough discipline to develop himself. Seems like maybe he was more interested in the musical salon scene than the art itself. He had been introduced to that scene by the critic Vladimir Stasov, who played a major role in shaping all the social/artistic relationships in St. Petersburg. Stasov championed him enthusiastically, apparently going so far as to claim that the top three Russian composers were Mussorgsky, Borodin, and Shcherbachov, and furthermore that nobody since Schumann had composed anything as good as Shcherbachov’s piano suite Zigzags — a claim which unfortunately can’t be evaluated because the piece isn’t yet available anywhere online.

Rimsky-Korsakov’s wife wrote that she couldn’t stand Shcherbachov and didn’t want him at her parties. One of his nicknames was “flagon of perfume” — hard to know whether that refers to literal or figurative perfume.

Belaieff published 28 opuses by Shcherbachov between 1886 and 1893. Then he abruptly disappears from music history. The Grove article on Shcherbachov ends: “Family legend has it that Shcherbachov died in Monte Carlo after gambling away all his money and working for a time as a croupier.”

All the present works were published in 1886 when Shcherbachov was 32 or 33, but since so many of them appear simultaneously, I assume they had been written earlier, over the previous decade, and had remained unpublished. I’m also guessing that the opus numbers only count his published works and tell us nothing about the date or order of composition. (I can’t find indication of a full 14 published opuses prior to the “Op. 15” that marked his Belaieff debut (covered last time), but they probably were put out by lower-profile St. Petersburg publishers and would be unlikely to show up in western libraries — if in fact they’ve survived at all.)

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16] Shcherbachov: Scherzo-Caprice, op. 17

Н. В. Щербачев : Скерцо-каприз : для фортепиано : соч. 17.
Scherzo-Caprice : pour Piano : par N. Stcherbatcheff. : Op. 17.
[Scherzo-Caprice : for piano : by N. Shcherbachov. : Op. 17.]

à Monsieur Alexandre Glazounow

• 36 Scherzo-Caprice, op. 17 (1886)

Scanned in color by Harvard (as linked above), and converted into a black-and-white PDF at IMSLP. (There’s also a second copy out there, I think originating from Pianophilia, without any title page.)

This earlier title page comes from a copy currently being offered for sale by Lubrano Music. It has the pre-1898 prices and, obviously, one more printed color than the other; I imagine this is the original form of the design. (It also seems to have been printed on less acidic, probably more expensive paper.)

This is my favorite of today’s pieces, full of genuine surprises and rhythmic wit, and generally bright-eyed and engaging. The affable stop-and-start of the first theme is particularly exciting to me, and I wish he’d gone further with it — but the overall journey of the piece, through various angles of comic sunniness, is still quite satisfying. I think this piece is entirely recital-worthy.

A few sparkling arpeggios definitely put this up in the higher intermediate range — I’m personally not very good at that kind of thing — but there’s nothing actually too difficult here.

To reiterate: nothing by Shcherbachov has ever been recorded. All of the audio in this post is from me and my Casio.

I’ve figured out how to avoid the sound of the keys thudding: I play it into the keyboard’s internal memory and then record its playback (the click at the very beginning is me pressing “play” on the keyboard). This has the added benefit of allowing me to do any tempo tweaking in advance. Most of these pieces were played somewhat slower than you hear them — sometimes MUCH slower — in the interest of playing fewer wrong notes without having to practice.

Note: There are still plenty of wrong notes. Second note: I am just reading my way through these pieces without analyzing or interpreting them or aspiring to any aesthetic value. The service being provided here is purely mechanical: this is the sound of notes that are printed in this score.

That in itself can have aesthetic value, as a spur to the imagination. But you need to bring the right kind of expectations.

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17] Shcherbachov: Five Mazurkas, op. 16

Н. В. Щербачев : 5 Мазурок : для фортепиано : соч. 16.
Cinq Mazurkas : pour Piano : par N. Stcherbatcheff. : Op. 16.
[Five Mazurkas : for piano : by N. Shcherbachov. : Op. 16.]

No.1. La bémol majeur
No.2. La bémol mineur
No.3. Si majeur
No.4. Re majeur
No.5. Mi majeur

à Monsieur Alexandre Glazounow

• 37 Cinq mazurkas, op. 16 (1886)
• 357–261 (= the individual pieces from within 37, made available separately around 1891)

Again: scanned in color by Harvard; converted into a smaller pdf version at IMSLP (and again there’s another copy going around out there without the title page). Based on the ads and the prices, it seems to be a printing from right around 1898.

Yes, Op.16 comes after Op.17, because I’m going by the plate numbers and for whatever reason, that’s how it is.

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Mazurka No.1. La bémol majeur

In this I can hear exactly the man sketched in the biographical details at the top of the page: flamboyant and a bit frivolous, and a natural talent at it. Some people are talents at flirting, promoting themselves, getting attention. There’s a kind of one-on-one flirtatious charm in these pieces. I can easily imagine a man at the piano who is playing this and winking and smells like a flagon of perfume.

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Mazurka No.2. La bémol mineur

As a dilettante composer myself, I find this piece very relatable. A few short phrases are rolled over and over, letting their expressive underlayer gradually sift to the fore. I know how pleasant it can be to meditate on a piece like this as you work it out, and then hope that the same meditation is available to the listener. In this case it is, at least to me. Quiet, gentle choices are the entire drama, but if one’s eyes adjust all the way to the dim light, there’s actually something worthwhile happening from beginning to end.

I like that the standard post-Chopin “melancholy” tone is here complicated — or decomplicated — into something milder and perhaps emotionally subtler.

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Mazurka No.3. Si majeur

Obviously these are all in the manner of Chopin, as was so much Russian piano music, but this one in particular just feels like imitation, and rather uncompelling. Actually, this just barely qualifies as an art/recital mazurka — it just seems like a tune for actual dancing. As such it’s not a bad tune. Melody was decidedly a strong suit for these guys.

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Mazurka No.4. Re majeur

A more poetic construction, alternating a slow pastoral figure with the demure main theme, which has an appealingly human quality. I especially like the way the theme gains strength as it opens out into the square-yet-graceful refrain, but then rather than reaching a cadence in triumph, floats gently back to where it had been.

I admire pieces that have traditional, symmetrical phrase structures but still manage to give the impression of an underlying flexibility.

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Mazurka No.5. Mi majeur

Here I feel like his ideas and intentions outstrip his compositional skill. That’s true of all the pieces to one degree or another, but in the more introspective ones it’s easier for me to find poetic interest in the half-inflated quality (like sleeping on an air mattress through which occasionally you can feel the hard floor). Whereas here in an extrovert piece with a “big introduction,” I can’t help wishing it were fully inflated. The seams feel like seams and I’m not convinced that this adds up to a piece. Nonetheless I do like some of the bits, like the bridge in minor, which knows it wants to flip back to major but isn’t quite sure when to do it.

Op. 16: all in all, this is a pleasant and personable set, if a bit thin and occasionally gawky. The lyrical ones, 2 and 4, seem to me more successful than the others.

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18] Shcherbachov: Echos du passé, op. 18

[Н. В. Щербачев : Отголоски : две пьесы : для фортепиано : соч. 18.]
[Echos du passé : deux morceaux : pour piano : par N. Stcherbatcheff. : Op. 18.]
[Echoes of the past : two pieces : for piano : by N. Shcherbachov. : Op. 18.]

No.1. Souvenance
No.2. Rondo joyeux

à Monsieur le Baron Edmond de Beurnonville

• 38 Echos du passé, op. 18 (1886)
• 362–363 (= the individual pieces from within 38, made available separately around 1891)

Harvard owns this one too, but they haven’t scanned it. All we have is a Pianophilia copy (probably scanned from the extensive collection of Pianophilia administrator Malcolm Henbury-Ballan) which lacks the title page.

Le Baron Edmond de Beurnonville, the dedicatee, seems to have been what he sounds like, a rich patron (or at least potential patron).

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1. Souvenance. Feuillet d’ Album
[Recollection (Album Leaf)]

I suspect that the title of this opus, “Echoes of the Past,” is meant to indicate that the two pieces share a neoclassical intention (“neoclassicism” wasn’t yet a school in itself, but it was certainly already a popular artistic mode). This is a very pale, candlelit, make-believe classicism, coughing itself to sleep in some 18th-century bedchamber. I don’t want to begrudge this sort of thing its make-believe; the effect may be obvious, but it works. Would be fine as theatrical underscore. I’m not sure I need to listen attentively to it for this whole duration, but maybe I’m not expected to.

If it weren’t for some very minor embellishments in the written-out repeats, this could very easily be laid out on a single sheet of paper, so I believe him when he says it was originally a feuillet d’album. Just the sort of thing to flatter the image of some self-romanticizing salon princesse.

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2. Rondo joyeux
[Joyful Rondo]

This is certainly “classical” in a Mendelssohnian sense, but the style seems much more direct, less affected, than the preceding piece. Maybe I’m wrong about “Echoes of the Past” referring to the style. Maybe it’s just a generic 19th-century title. After all, what piece of art couldn’t be called “Echoes of the Past,” in a pinch?

As I said above, the more energetic the music, the harder it is for me to embrace its imbalances and soft spots. The material here is very appealing, but it never gets off the ground the way one wants, and then at the end, after having not quite gone anywhere, an unmerited and disproportionate coda is tacked on. At the top of the coda, a single programmatic indication appears in the score: “Hallali.” This is an old term for a huntsman’s bugle call, suggesting that the whole piece is meant to be a galloping hunt with a glorious conclusion.

Maybe someone else can figure out how to make a case for this piece in performance. All I’ve got to go on is my mechanical sight-reading.

Op. 18: As an opus, this feels a little like two pieces of paper picked up off the composer’s floor at random and stapled together, but that’s fine — a lot of music publishing has always been opportunistic that way. These particular two pieces also both happen to be a tad undercooked. But they do have their charm.

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19] Shcherbachov: Grande Etude, op. 19

[Н. В. Щербачев : Отголоски : две пьесы : для фортепиано : соч. 19.]
[Grande Etude : en fa min. : pour piano : par N. Stcherbatcheff. : Op. 19.]
[Grand Etude : in F minor : for piano : by N. Shcherbachov. : Op. 19.]

à Madame Sophie Menter

• 39 Grande etude, op. 19 (1886)

Color scan from Harvard; PDF at IMSLP; an alternate Pianophilia copy is also out there.

This one is a post-1902 printing that’s still in very nice full color, though it’s possible that the earlier printings were even better done.

This seems to be Shcherbachov in a Lisztian mode, aspiring to something a tiny bit more substantial. It’s certainly requires more pianistic technique than anything above (and had to be played very slowly!).

His strengths and weaknesses are both evident. He absolutely has a gift for twists and turns of inspiration, for fantasy — again the word “flirtatious” occurs to me — and an ear for melody. But the implication of all that harmonic drama is that something is being accomplished, and yet in the end I don’t get the impression that anything has been.

The voice of his musical personality is fundamentally extemporaneous; the effort to pass it off as deliberated, well-structured oratory does not flatter it. That just means that a lot of preparation is needed; a performer would need to internalize the piece and be able to act it out as though it were being improvised on the spot — not so different from Chopin. Not having done that kind of work, I don’t really know what’s possible with this piece. I guess I have to reserve judgment. Maybe Sophie Menter knew how to sell it. Certainly it has a surface sweep and glamour, and the structure seems sensible enough, at least on paper.

(That said — Chopin often makes immediate emotional sense to me straight off the page, and feels genuine, in a way that this doesn’t, so I can’t help but be a little skeptical.)

That title page is as attractive as any of the others, in the abstract, but in this case I don’t feel like it resembles the music at all. This is a dark-hued, windswept sort of etude; I can’t hear cherubs and robins no matter how hard I try.

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20] Shcherbachov: Two Preludes, op. 20

[Н. В. Щербачев : Две прелюдии : для фортепиано : соч. 20.]
[N. Stcherbatcheff : Zwei Praeludien : für Pianoforte : op. 20]
Deux Préludes : en Si bém. min. : pour Piano : par N. Stcherbatcheff. : Op. 20.
[Two Preludes : in B-flat minor : for piano : by N. Shcherbachov. : Op. 20.]

1. Chasse neige
2. Presto agitato

A Monsieur Félix Blumenfeld.

• 40 Deux préludes, op. 20 (1886)
• 364–365 (= the individual pieces from within 40, made available separately around 1891)

Harvard owns it and just hasn’t digitized it; all we have is a Pianophilia copy in black and white.

Here, apparently grabbing more scraps off his floor, Shcherbachov bizarrely has paired up two underdeveloped fragments that happen to be in the same key as a single opus. Again I’m torn between savoring the eccentricity of it… and calling it out as laziness. It’s as though these could have both been sketches toward the same piece, and then instead of following through on that piece, he just published them as-is, as a very strange set of two preludes.

I may be misinterpreting the title page design, but it looks to me like it’s supposed to depict a book in which flowers are being pressed — an inspired visual for this kind of musical scrapbooking. (The three-hole punches are not original, of course — those are actual holes in the photocopy that was scanned.)

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1. Chasse neige. Prélude
[Snow drift(?)]

The title is apparently borrowed from Liszt, but the image is quite different — I think! This is a strangely spiky idea of snow. I see that chasse-neige also means “snow plow,” which I suppose in that era would involve a horse with bells, but that doesn’t seem likely either. I think what we have here is just a very brief little idea, just barely worked out to a just-barely completion, and then given a whimsical and not entirely appropriate title.

A cute idea though. Too bad he couldn’t make a more inspired miniature of it. The first two phrases, which are neither identical nor sufficiently distinct, reveal the erratic craftsmanship at the very outset. This is a piece that clearly indicates the charming piece it intends to be, but fails to actually be it. Then again, maybe it’s just operating on a level of miniaturality below what even I’m accustomed to. Maybe there are bonbon pieces and then there are pieces like this that are only about two M&Ms. It would probably be good for me to be able to eat and enjoy only two M&Ms, without needing more.

(Later: I see that literally, chasse is “chase” or “hunt.” Is it possible that this is in fact a snowy hunt? I could believe it as a rabbit running across a white field.)

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2. Presto agitato. Prélude

This seems to me particularly skeletal and sketchy. Does it have a melody? Is the melody absent? Was this actually the accompaniment to a song? Maybe he just forgot.

Then again, why not this? Like the Moonlight Sonata: who needs melody? The more I listen, the more I like its bareness. Three more M&Ms.

Op. 20: Two tiny pressed wildflowers.

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In trying to write a few words about these pieces, I have found myself settling into critiquing them as though it’s a problem, for me, that they lack order and discipline. But that’s not how I feel it. I’m actually entirely susceptible to the dynamic of being musically flirted with to no end. There is something very forward and communicative about all these pieces, regardless of their “balance” or lack thereof. He always goes straight for the good stuff. When he runs out of good stuff, he tries to make up a little more, or repeats what he’s got with some twists, and then very soon he recognizes that it’s time to stop, so he does. I appreciate the intentions and inspirations behind all of that; it can all be meaningful to me.

The scope is very small and indoors, but the sounds are attractive, and generally the spirit is too. There’s worthwhile music in here.

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11] Blumenfeld: Four pieces, op. 2 (1883–5)

(Ф. Блуменфельд : Четыре пьесы : для фортепиано : соч. 2.)
Quatre morceaux : pour Piano : composés par : Félix Blumenfeld. : Op. 2.
[Four pieces: for piano : composed by : Felix Blumenfeld : Op. 2.]

  1. Etude (A dur)
  2. Souvenir douloureux
  3. Quasi Mazurka
  4. Mazurka de Concert

• 29 Quatre morceaux, op. 2 (1886)
• 612–615 (= the individual pieces from within 29, made available separately around 1892)

Sibley scanned their copy of this opus in 2005, and that’s what appears at IMSLP, but it’s not ideal for my obsessive purposes, because it consists of separate issues of nos. 1, 3, and 4 (which lack the original title page), and a Carl Fischer edition of no. 2, edited and fingered and completely reengraved.

But we’re in luck: a copy of the entire original Belaieff 29 was uploaded to Pianophilia in 2010 by “Alfor,” who also provided a color scan of the title page:

Felix Blumenfeld (1863–1931) was a pretty major pianist-conductor-composer-teacher, quite well known among the piano superbuff crowd that hangs out at Pianophilia, but not so much by anyone else. If I (or you!) continue this journey through the Belaieff catalogue, you’ll be hearing a lot more from him (and his brother). Here in 1886 he’s 23 years old, just emerged from Rimsky-Korsakov’s tutelage at the conservatory, and getting four of his more recent little piano pieces published, arbitrarily grouped (it would seem) as Opus 2. (Blumenfeld’s Opus 1 is 6 songs, of unknown date, which Belaieff didn’t publish until 1900. Presumably there was a earlier first edition from some other publisher.)

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1. Etude (1883)
A ma mère.

This is 2 minutes long, and has been recorded exactly once, by Daniel Blumenthal (a fellow Blumen) in 1993. It’s musically slight, but not vapid; it has confidence and taste and is sure-footedly pianistic. It has more brillante octave virtuosity than I’m personally comfortable with, but I can fake it. There’s a good early use of the Rachmaninoff hand-alternation melody-in-the-thumbs gimmick on the second page. I think it’s early, anyway; I don’t think Liszt ever quite did that one. And I like the coda (that takes up more than a third of the piece) where things unexpectedly get a little crepuscular. They didn’t have to! He just decided to! I appreciate that kind of choice, especially in a piece that is otherwise squarely about flash.

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2. Souvenir douloureux (1885)
[= Painful Memory]
A ma soeur Olga.

About 3.5 minutes long. It has been commercially recorded once, by Jouni Somero in 2003, but the recording doesn’t seem to be freely streamable at present. However on Youtube you can listen to a recital performance by one Luisa Splett.

This is very similar in texture and attitude to the Grieg Lyric Pieces: a simple idea put through some simple but pregnant harmonic changes, and then repeated. Unlike most of Grieg, there then follows a coda with a genuine culmination, which retrospectively makes the preceding repetition seem tedious.

(At least to me. I can either do a fundamentally static circular paradigm or a narrative developing one. This is also why I often have trouble with Schubert, who likes to repeat things a lot but still eventually end somewhere that “reflects” on the preceding journey. I feel weird about reflecting having gone in loops. Maybe that’s something to get over.)

(Sonata form might seem to be circular, especially when repeat signs are observed, but to my mind the essence of sonata form is that it is fundamentally linear, forward-moving, and incorporates the experience of recurrence within that forward motion. The use of repeat signs in sonatas bears this out: they never repeat the vital transition from beginning to ending; they repeat just the departure at the beginning (which is different the second time because it’s no longer really a departure) and then they repeat just the arrival at the ending (which is different the second time because only then is it really an ending.) Whereas Grieg’s little pieces really do happen twice in their entirety.)

The real problem with this piece is that it never quite convinces me that it has a melody; the harmonies are pleasant but the scale-walking is a little too unbroken to hold my attention. I wonder if it’s about an actual painful memory of his. Maybe his sister Olga knew what he was talking about.

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3. Quasi Mazurka (1885)
A ma soeur Jeanne.

This piece has never been recorded! The first of many.

Why not? No good reason. There’s nothing wrong with this piece. The first theme is appealingly sunny, and then elegantly lets minor show through, in the middle section, without the beat changing a bit. Having no ritards or rubato at all gives an impression of sincerity that holds my attention.

I guess Chopin and Polishness in general were in fashion in Russia; there are gonna be a ton of Mazurkas (and quasi-Mazurkas) to come.

Here’s me, whacking my way through it.

This is from a few years ago when I happened to record myself playing it at a real piano. On this recording I was playing so much slower than prescribed by the composer that I’ve decided to present it here digitally sped up 25% (pitch-corrected, of course) in the hopes of giving a slightly closer impression of “the piece itself.” This is just a practical measure; I’m not trying to trick anybody. Also, for the most part this is still quite a bit slower than marked in the score. At tempo it would come in at more like 3 minutes, I think.

After 3 pieces I’d say that Felix Blumenfeld likes expressive codas.

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4. Mazurka de Concert (1885)
A ma soeur Marie.

This piece has never been recorded either! Why not? Also no good reason. The main theme is hummable, if perhaps not quite catchy, and Blumenfeld’s pianistic writing continues to be of a very high quality. The warm B theme, in triads over a drone bass, is very attractive, and then returns to great effect in yet another expressive coda, this time the sort with a wistful diminuendo followed by a ringing, triumphant stringendo. Satisfying!

Again, until some record label steps up to the plate, all I can offer you is this sloppy readthrough from me.

Even more wrong notes this time, because it’s harder. This comes from that same day as the previous, and this too has been sped up 25%, which still isn’t nearly as fast as the composer asks. (But speeding it up any more will make it sound too unnatural, I think.) Imagine the whole thing breezing along tunefully and lasting around 4 minutes.

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12] Kopylov: Two Mazurkas, op. 3

(А. Копылов : Две мазурки : для фортепьяно : соч. 3.)
Deux Mazurkas : pour le Piano : composées par : A. Kopylow.
[Two Mazurkas : for piano : composed by : A. Kopylov.]

  No. 1. en Mi mineur, dédiée à Mr. A. Reichhardt.
  No. 2. en Sol mineur, dédiée à Mr. N. Rimsky-Korsakow.

• 30 Deux mazurkas, op. 2 (1886)
• 621–622 (= the individual pieces from within 30, made available separately around 1892)

30 was scanned by Sibley in 2007.

From the prices, the color, the lack of a date, and the reference to Büttner, this would seem to be an 1886 original.

Okay, now we’re getting into the real obscurities. That’s what I’m here for! Alexander Kopylov (1854–1911), on the teaching staff at the Imperial Chapel, and composer of secular works in his free time. A private student of Lyadov and Rimsky-Korsakov in the 1870s, and then a member of the Belaieff circle. Not completely unrecorded — three orchestral works and a couple of choruses are available in one recording each, plus his contributions to some collaborative works. But he wrote at least 60 opuses, so that’s not very much.

Danny Kaye says his name at 2:49 so you know he’s for real.

He was 32 when these mazurkas were published; we don’t know when they were written. Both are unrecorded (as I mentioned a few entries ago).

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No. 1. en Mi mineur, dédiée à Mr. A. Reichhardt.

I have no idea who Mr. A. Reichhardt might have been; maybe someone at the Imperial Chapel. The mazurka dedicated to him is very lovely, though. Sweet and gently sentimental, with a poignant major-minor slide in the very first bar that remains effective even after it’s been heard 12 times, never changing. To my mind, this is a first-rate melody, somewhere between naive and knowing, and I don’t get tired of it. Something about the way the first phrase drifts briefly upward into a simple major resolution in parallel 6ths is very potent for me. I don’t know why.

And then the rustic dance in the middle is a stirring change of scene. Even the standard Borodin falling chromatic tenor line feels sincere and fresh under the circumstances. All tastefully contained within a modest salon style.

That’s why I love these title pages so much — they really do look exactly like the music!

Here I am playing it.

This is a strange performance, from the same day as the Blumenfeld above, and similarly very slow, but this one I couldn’t speed up because the middle section is already up to tempo and it would become absurdly fast. So understand what you’re hearing: this is a weird sentimental-daydream rendition; the marked tempo is Allegretto and almost twice as fast. And all those pauses at the end are me indulging a whim, I guess; they’re not part of the piece. I’m not sure what was going through my head, but something, apparently.

This recording clocks in at 4:22. It should probably be more like 3:30! But you can at least hear how the tunes go.

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No. 2. en Sol mineur, dédiée à Mr. N. Rimsky-Korsakow.

Mr. Rimsky-Korsakov we know. This is a natural sibling piece to the preceding; it has enough of its own character to stand apart, but the same basic outline: a melancholy major-falling-to-minor A section with brief tragic outbursts, and a heartier B section with a Borodin chorus. This one feels like the darker of the two — night has fallen pretty completely by the end. I like the way the main theme of this one sort of drips and sighs downhill, and then comes around to do it again, over and over. So far it seems like Kopylov had a good feeling for melodic contour. Far better than the Blumenfeld mazurkas above, which covered similar ground but with very different strengths.

These Kopylov pieces are intermediate or easier, whereas the Blumenfeld pieces all implied the need for advanced technique, even if it was mostly being held in reserve. I tend to admire easy pieces more than hard ones. Or perhaps I should say I admire pieces that feel like they were adapted to suit the inclinations of the hands rather than the other way around. (Of course, if I had better technique, in the Czerny sense, I might not be able to make any such distinction.)

Anyway, these two pieces by Kopylov are very gracious in the hands, by which I mean in my hands, which protest childishly when asked to play arpeggios. Do I mean “gracious” though? I think I do.

My iffy performance.

This has been sped up 19% (10% and then “10%” again… that’s 19%, right?) because it’s from that same day a few years ago, when apparently my heartbeat was nice and slooow. Once again I make some idiosyncratic sentimental choices as I near the end. I also make plenty of mistakes, including the very first harmony. Oops. Well, this is what there is.

I think at the proper speed this would come out to about 3 minutes.

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13] Sokolov: Twelve Songs, op. 1 (texts by Nikitin) (1881–??)

(Н. А. Соколов : Романсы : на слова Никитина : соч. 1.)
(12 Mélodies : avec accompagnement de piano : par Nicolas Sokolow : Op. 1. : Paroles russes de Nikitine.)
[12 Songs : with piano accompaniment : by Nikolai Sokolov : Op. 1. : Russian words by Nikitin.]

Vol. I, for medium voice. “Version française de F.V. Dwelshauvers et A. de Gourghenbekoff.” (13 p.)
  1. Певцу / Au poète
  2. Дитяти / À l’enfant
  3. Живая речь, живые звуки / Le bruit du monde (1881, 3 p.)
  4. В темной чаще замолк соловей / Le rossignol s’est tû (1881, 3 p.)

Vol. II, for high voice. “Version française de Jules Ruelle.” (25 p.)
  5. Когда закат прощальными лучами / Coucher de soleil (5 p.)
  6. Засохшая береза / Le bouleau desséché (4 p.)
  7. Молитва дитяти / Prière d’enfant (6 p.)
  8. Мельница / Le moulin (8 p.)

Vol. III, for low voice. “Version française de Jules Ruelle.” (19 p.)
  9. Дуб / Le chêne (4 p.)
  10. Нищий / Le mendiant (3 p.)
  11. Дедушка / Le grandpère (4 p.)
  12. Мать и дочь / Mère et fille (6 p.)

• 31 Тетр. 1. для сред. голоса с сопровожд. фп. / Cahier I. Pour Mezzosoprano ou Baryton. (1886)
• 32 Тетр. 2. для выс. голоса с сопровожд. фп. / Cahier II. Pour Soprano ou Ténor. (1886)
• 33 Тетр. 3. для низ. голоса в сопровожд. фп. / Cahier III. Pour Basse. (1886)
• 398–409 (= the individual songs from within 31–33, made available separately around 1891)

As you can see, I’ve got nothing. The images aren’t available, the scores aren’t available, the songs have never been recorded. All I can offer you is:

1) A 1994 reprint of volume 2 (by obscure-song specialty publisher “Recital Publications, Huntsville TX”) was scanned by Google for the University of Michigan and, though it can’t be browsed at all by the general public, a very tiny thumbnail of its cover can be viewed. But of course Recital Publications replaces a lot of the text on their reprint covers, usually only retaining the upper half of the original title pages. Here you can just make out the type design of the word “Mélodies,” and that’s about it.

2) You can read most of the Russian texts of the songs, and see the first lines of the French texts, here.

As to what this work is like, all we can do is speculate.

Nikolai Sokolov (1859–1922), the man who rhymes with “Kopylov” in Danny Kaye’s song, was 27 years old and one year out of Conservatory (having studied under Rimsky-Korsakov) in 1886, when these were published (though the two songs whose dates are available were written in 1881, when he was 22 and still a student). Like Kopylov, he was teaching at the Imperial Chapel, though later, unlike Kopylov, he’d be hired by the Conservatory. Solo songs proved to be a recurring interest; he’ll be back again later in the catalog with some music we can actually look at.

Ivan Nikitin (1824–1861) was, from what I’ve read, a moderately well known, moderately respected, basically unexceptional poet from earlier in the century. His poetry was nonetheless set to music many times, disproportionately by members the Belaieff circle. From what I read of the lyrics, in manner and matter these are your standard 19th-century Lied texts: sentimental musings on nature images or human archetypes.

Sokolov seems to have been the first of the bunch to set Nikitin. At 12 songs to be performed by three singers, it seems like this is a rather substantial and ambitious cycle. But without hearing (or seeing) the music, it’s very hard to say. It might just be a bundle of student works, organized this way for the publisher’s convenience.

[If you’re really curious, I think your best bet is to pay the Bavarian State Library to make you a pdf from their copy; they have a convenient scan-on-demand service. 57 pages comes to $28.]

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14] Sokolov: Three Songs, op. 2 (texts by Kozlov, after Musset) (1885)

(Н. А. Соколов : Романсы : на слова Козлова (из Альфреда де Мюссе) : для голоса в сопровожд. фп : соч. 2.)
(3 Mélodies : pour chant et piano : Op. 2 : par N. Sokolow. : Paroles russes de Kosloff d’après Alfred de Musset. : Traduction française de Jules Ruelle.)
[3 Songs : for voice and piano : Op. 2 : by N. Sokolov. : Russian words by Kozlov after Alfred de Musset. : French translation by Jules Ruelle.] (21 pp.)

  1. Вечерняя звезда / L’étoile du soir (7 p.)
  2. Надежда / Espérance (4 p.)
  3. Бедняк и поэт / Le pauvre et le poète (8 p.)

• 34 Trois mélodies, op. 2 (1886)
• 410–412 (= the individual songs from within 34, made available separately around 1891)

Same deal. No score, so recording, no pictures. Ivan Kozlov (1779–1840) was another middle-tier sentimentalist poet of a few generations past; Alfred de Musset (1810–1857) is somewhat better known, though perhaps Russians would disagree.

After no small amount of labor on my part (why? why?) I have determined that all three texts are selections from Kozlov’s version of Musset’s long poem Le Saule (1830). But Kozlov’s translation is so exceedingly free that I’m not sure the second selection here even has a directly corresponding passage in the original. (The French in the score of course is not original Musset but a singable back-translation by Mr. Jules Ruelle.) All quite melodramatic and unremarkable stuff, by the looks of it, which isn’t to say it might not also be beautiful and worthwhile, or at least make for pretty songs. Who knows?

[Bavaria can get you this one too, if you need it.]

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15] Shcherbachov: Mosaïque (Mosaic), op. 15 (1885)

(Н. В. Щербачев : Мозаика : соч. 15.)
Mosaïque. : Album pittoresque. : Morceaux détachés : pour Piano : par N. Stcherbatcheff. : Op. 15.)
[Mosaic. : Picturesque album. : Miscellaneous pieces : for piano : by N. Shcherbachov. : Op. 15.]

  No.1. Rêverie-Prélude
  No.2. Orientale
  No.3. Elégie
  No.4. Guitare
  No.5. Valse-Intermezzo
  No.6. Pervenche
  No.7. Marionnettes

• 35 Mosaïque, op. 15 (1886)
• 350–356 (= the individual pieces from within 35, made available separately around 1891)

35 is available in a scan from RSL as linked above, which can also be found slightly cleaned up at IMSLP. (There’s a second scan at Pianophilia from a slightly later copy.) The excellent color title page comes from the Beattie collection.

Here’s some fairly mauve prose on Mr. Nikolai Shcherbachov (2:57), and on this opus in particular, from the American critic Philip Hale (and, quoted, his colleague James Huneker), writing in 1900:

Prominent among the writers of piano music is Nicolas de Stcherbatcheff. who was born August 24, 1853, and distinguished among his works are collections entitled “Féeries et Pantomimes” (Op. 8); “Mosaïque” (Op. 15); “Zigzags” and “Les Solitudes.” “Mosaïque” is made up of “A Revery Prelude”; “An Orientale” of bewitching beauty; a pathetic elegy; “Guitar,” a strange number in which there is a serenade in a cemetery; a waltz that is brain-maddening; “Periwinkle”; and “Marionettes.” His music is baffling at first to the reader; there are unfamiliar harmonic progressions; there is shifting or unusual rhythm; there is unaccustomed melody; in a word, the music is exotic. But to the musician of temperament, soul, imagination, a new and beautiful world is opened, and he escapes for a time from commercial music and bargain counterpoint. He knows the full passion of a summer evening, and why moonlight is so feared by the prudent. He realizes that the waltz which is danced only in the bewildered mind is more intoxicating than that to which conventionally shod feet keep time.

Mr. James Huneker has finely characterized this strange composer: “Stcherbatcheff is a musical Gogol who would create another ‘Taras Bulba’ if he dared, yet contents himself writing small dangerous things for the piano. Who eats of his music is made mad, as are the devourers of mandrake. Bitter-sweet is it with rhythms that lull you and poison you. A valse of his that I tasted made my brain whirl. In my arms I held a bewitching creature, with a false red mouth, and our dance was vertiginous. Chromatic nightmares murdered our love, and then I knew that Stcherbatcheff is to be feared.”

This is of course quite over the top; I include it mostly because it serves as a reminder that it is possible to have strong and colorful feelings about a composer like Nikolai Shcherbachov (1853–1922), despite his being no more than a footnote in any conceivable history. It’s easy to slip into the error of believing that footnotes were born to be obscure, are intrinsically gray. Hopefully the overwritten stuff above will help counterbalance that impression.

The source from which that quote was taken (“Famous Composers and Their Works, Vol. I”) also includes a sketched portrait of Shcherbachov, the only one of which I’m aware.

Of the several extremely forgotten composers in the Belaieff stable, Shcherbachov does seem to me one of the least deserving of the fate. His many piano pieces are generally quite spirited and colorful and surely merit a few recordings here and there, rather than the absolutely none that they have received. Beginning with this cute and appealing little album. Sure, it’s no Pictures at an Exhibition but neither is it just piano bench trash. I don’t know about “exotic” or “dangerous,” but it’s all certainly good-humored and attractive. The mosaic doesn’t really add up to a bigger picture, but it’s a reasonable bundling of seven disparate pieces (“morceaux détachés”). I guess I thought to compare it to Pictures because as with Mussorgsky there is a kind of rough enthusiasm just below the surface that occasionally rises up and overrides “correctness.” Some of the pieces may seem a bit imbalanced at first, but they’re actually following their own subtly idiosyncratic ideas of balance.

This composer’s name can be transliterated many many ways. The basic points of variance are the initial complex consonant Щ, for which you might see any of “Shch,” “Stch,” “Tsch” “Schtsch”; the related but simpler consonant ч (“ch,” “tch,” “tsch”); the last vowel, which even in Russian sometimes appears as е and sometimes ё (“e,” “ye,” “o,” “yo”); and the final consonant в (“v” or “ff”). These possibilities don’t recombine completely freely, of course, but that’s still a lot of options. It definitely slows up catalog searches!

I’m using the spelling “Shcherbachov” because that’s what Grove uses — though they also slip and use Shcherbachyov with a Y at one point so how serious can they be?

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1. Rêverie-Prélude

This first item is to me the oddest of the bunch: a meandering improvisation on a standard idyllic waterfall harp figure, clearly meant to be “perfumed” and “sensual.” But does it make “sense”? Maybe it doesn’t need to?

It is oddly hard to play — not only because it’s so freewheeling that it resists confident sightreading, but also because for some reason Shcherbachov has put counterintuitive details into nearly every bar, places where the arpeggiation becomes impure and sounds two notes at once. Despite being a bunch of standard swoons in a row, I think this piece might demand careful preparation.

Since none of these pieces have ever been professionally recorded, you’re definitely not going to get that. Instead you get this:

Since recording this very inaccurate and intentionless playthrough a few years ago, I have actually come to understand the piece better, but all I can record at present is on my clunky phony Casio keyboard, which is so much less pleasant to the ear (see below!) that for now we’re sticking with the above. (Yes, I sped it up 20%.)

Approximately 3 minutes.

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2. Orientale

An American non-Belaieff edition of the Orientale was published in 1895, edited by Edward MacDowell, and at least into the 1910s the piece made occasional appearances in “100 Piano Classics”-type compilation volumes. It was almost going to be a “famous” piece, for a little while there. But things didn’t pan out that way.

It’s a sweet and simple little tune, the pentatonic orientality of which is mostly (but not completely) subsumed into the standard St. Petersburg harmonization, which creates a special gleam of innocence. Even if it is a bit greeting-card and commercial, I like it.

It can be heard played in-a-pinch serviceably by Youtube stalwart Phillip Sear, staring hard at the score in an attitude that is very familiar to me, though I don’t recommend it as a way of making good music.

Unfortunately the only time I recorded this piece at a piano, I misread the key of the middle section, so even for present purposes it’s not acceptable. Oh well.

Approximately 3 minutes.

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3. Elégie

The B section is marked “come a due,” (=”like two”) which I take to mean “like a vocal duo.” This marking could just as well apply to the whole piece. It seems essentially to be an Italianate operatic love duet arranged for piano, with the slightly unpianistic effect that implies — the accompaniment is constantly getting mixed in awkwardly among the melody lines. As far as the tunes go, this is fairly generic stuff in a style that has never quite appealed to me; a little emotionally oversold. But there are a few nice turns. I’m not complaining.

Here I am banging it out clumsily on the klonky synthesizer without having gotten to know the piece very well. Listen to those plastic keys thud!

On further consideration, this probably wants to be a lot rhythmically steadier and more serene.

Approximately 3.5 minutes.

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4. Guitare

There’s certainly plenty of strumming and plucking and flair from the outset, but I’m not sure the effect is quite guitar-like; it’s a bit too high in the treble for that. More like a mouse guitar. It’s cute, whatever it is. Then the interlude in the middle, identified as “Sérénade sur une tombe,” does a bit better at evoking guitars and Spain and moonlight and whatnot, though Shcherbachov can’t help himself but harmonize in the Russian chorale style.

All in all this may be my favorite in the opus — it’s like a cheesy engraving, executed with panache, which is exactly what it wants to be. The break-of-day effect of having the serenade theme return in major at the end is so wonderfully unnecessary that I find myself taking it seriously, being touched by it.

Particularly sloppy performance on the Casio. Sorry.

Approximately 6 minutes.

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5. Valse-Intermezzo

Hale called this “brain-maddening,” which is a very hard adjective for me to hear in this gentle, sociable, feminine piece. Can the witty little misdirections in this harmless trifle possibly be what Huneker had in mind when he wrote all that gunk about “chromatic nightmares murdered our love”? Gosh, I hope not! Surely even a music critic in 1900 wasn’t that oversensitive. Perhaps the gothic, “vertiginous” waltz he had in mind will be identifiable in some Shcherbachov opus further down the road.

Once again, Shcherbachov gives a modest piece his full invention and consideration. No corner-cutting in this salon. In playing it one sees how much care has been lavished on this little confection. It’s more intricate than it sounds! But then again it’s also easier than it looks.

This one has a Phillip Sear Youtube rendition.

Approximately 2.5 minutes.

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6. Pervenche
[= Periwinkle]

An unusual little “album leaf”-style character piece that reflects temperamentally on a very tiny, shortwinded idea. Like the opening Prelude, this has an underlying spirit of improvisation, though its surface is entirely composed and orderly. Very much in the vein of the Schumann Davidsbündlertänze — you can hear both Florestan and Eusebius in this one. I enjoy the poetic flourish at the end of the piece: it works itself up emotionally to a bare high note, hangs in silence for a very long time, and then just floats to the ground, spent and perhaps a bit abashed: the end.

I don’t know what it has to do with periwinkle, but that’s a fine name for a boutonniere piece like this. Why not. Like Schumann’s Papillons. Schumann is a good point of reference for most of the pieces in this set, isn’t he.

This is our third and final Phillip Sear performance.

Approximately 2.5 minutes.

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7. Marionnettes

With its grandiose introduction, this one announces itself at the outset as the big finale of the opus… but that turns out to be sort of a joke. The piece is actually a tinkly puppet show. Or is the big buildup semi-serious after all? His intention seems to be the sincere glorification of tinkly puppet shows, which is to me a touching thing to attempt. It’s half-in-jest but there’s something very genuine about even the jest. Maybe I’m crazy but I detect a depth of feeling behind this piece. It’s implied by the combination of music-box childishness with Lisztian virtuosic sparkle; the feeling emerges faintly in the space between those two lines.

Me, playing the Casio Klonkenklavier:

That’s neither the notes nor the tempi, but it’s the closest thing you’re gonna get until you learn to play it yourself.

Approximately 5 minutes.

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All in all, I find this Mosaïque to be a place worth returning. It’s an important part of my piano-playing life for there to be whole collections of pieces I can dip into that pose no emotional challenges, where everything being conveyed is basically positive, life-affirming, simple. This is a nicely varied such collection, and, within those terms, even a potentially deep one. The way fans of a pop album can find hidden depths in the interrelation and sequence of its songs, I can find it profitable to muse on the way “Guitare” does or doesn’t relate to “Marionnettes,” or the way the whole sequence does or doesn’t emerge from within the waterfall of the initial “Rêverie-Prélude.” Whether or not Shcherbachov conceived this set as an cycle (I suspect not), he assembled it into a real one, with its own internal life.

And what a great cover!

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Next time, if a next time arrives, will be an all-Shcherbachov edition. So that we might continue to learn why moonlight is so feared by the prudent.

6] Vītols: Piano Sonata, op. 1 (1885)

и. витоль : соната : для фортепиано : соч. 1е.
Sonate : pour le : Piano : composée par : Joseph Wihtol. : Op. 1.
[Sonata : for the : Piano : composed by : Jāzeps Vītols. : Op. 1.]

A Monsieur Nicolas Rimsky-Korsakow.

• 16 Sonate pour le piano, op. 1 (1886)

16 was made available by Sibley in 2006, which is where the link above goes. But that scan is B&W only. The color/grayscale images below come from a copy digitized by the National Library of Latvia around 2007, which I downloaded back in 2009, along with a few other Vītols scores. Unfortunately, a few years ago the Library had second thoughts about copyright and now only allows these files to be accessed from their premises. But I’ve still got my copy:

Going on the catalog text, this copy seems to be from somewhere between 1898 and 1902; it’s conceivable that earlier impressions of the title page might have had more or different colors.

Actually there’s yet a third copy out there, as uploaded to the Pianophilia forums by star user “Alfor,” which is later than the copy seen above, as evidenced by the new price on the title page, with the later exchange rate (I’m pretty sure the original 1886 price, blotted out in the image above, is M 3 / R 1.50). I include its title page here to illustrate my point about how once-fancy designs were reissued in later years without all the bells and whistles:

Jāzeps Vītols (1863–1948) was a Latvian composer who had come to St. Petersburg to study at the Conservatory. This sonata was written right around the time of his graduation, and his teacher Rimsky-Korsakov seems to have sponsored it as suitable for Belaieff’s publishing program. Vītols was 22.

Google translates Jāzeps Vītols from the Latvian as “Joseph Willow.” A lovely name.

This sonata has been commercially recorded just once, on an obscure Soviet-era Latvian vinyl record that never made it to CD: Daina Vīlipa (60s?). However, there is an unreleased recording on Youtube, posted by the official account of Latvian pianist Vilma Cīrule (I, II, III), which someone later compiled into a single video synced to the score.

That 19-minute performance is pretty soggy and unfocused, but at least it allows the piece to be heard. I considered posting my own performance to show what I think could be made of the score, but I still don’t have a way of making good clear recordings from my keyboard, and in any case the piece has some difficulties — lots of full-arm leaps, and fancy fingerwork in the last movement — that I’m in no position to play accurately without a lot of practice that I don’t want to do.

It’s not too hard to see that the piece is a student work, with some imbalances and loose ends and needless infelicities for the pianist, but it is also quite charming and surely doesn’t deserve to be so completely forgotten. When I first encountered it, it immediately called to mind the early Medtner sonatas and the first Prokofiev sonata, and I see that Richard Taruskin identifies it as one of the pieces that Stravinsky referred to when composing his student sonata. So it seems like maybe this piece was somewhat prominent for a little while, at least in Russian circles. It’s noteworthy that it’s the only “Sonata” in the Belaieff catalog until Scriabin’s first sonata, published 9 years later. In that context, perhaps this was an assertively Germanic thing to be writing, for Vītols in 1885.

I like how the first movement has a properly stern and declamatory opening theme, but almost immediately betrays its real personality, which is much more interested in being meandering and warm and conversational. These two attitudes never come anywhere near being integrated or reconciled to one another, but maybe that’s the idea. The pointedly brusque and unconvincing ending is like the end of an intractable argument: “Because I say so, dammit!” The second movement is a set of 4 variations arranged for maximum disjuncture: 1. soft, 2. hard, 3. even softer, 4. even harder. I don’t know what the point is, but it does seem to suggest a point, which in itself I like. And the third movement, which is the least well served by the Youtube performance, is genuinely sparkling and charming, in a salon style but raised somewhat above pure superficiality by the thoughtful excursion of the B section. Tricky to play, though.

Another work that has absolutely no reason to be so obscure. It certainly merits a modern recording.

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7] Rimsky-Korsakov: Skazka (“Fairy Tale” or “Legend”), op. 29 (1879–80; premiered January 1881)

(н. римский-корсаков : сказка : для большого оркестра : соч. 29)
Conte féerique : pour : Grand Orchestre : composé par : Nicolas Rimsky-Korsakow. : Op. 29.
[Fairy Tale : for : large orchestra : composed by : Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. : Op. 29.]

A Mr. Alexandre Glazounow.

• 17 Partition d’Orchestre (1886)
• 18 Parties d’Orchestre (1886)
• 19 Réduction pour Piano à 4 mains par l’Auteur (1886)

A scan of 19, the duet, has been in circulation on the internet since 2004 — very hard to track down who originally uploaded it, at this point — and is now conveniently available at IMSLP. 17 and 18 remain unvailable; IMSLP has a Soviet edition of the full score but it doesn’t use the original Belaieff engraving. The low-resolution image seen below of the title page from the full score was found on the website of the library of Kharkiv, Ukraine.

The prices seen here confirm that this bland monochrome title page is a later reprint. Presumably the original design was in full color, like every other score issued in 1886.

The available pdf of the duet doesn’t include the covers, nor does it include page 3, which apparently contained the following poem as epigraph:

У лукоморья дуб зеленый;
Златая цепь на дубе том:
И днем и ночью кот ученый
Всё ходит по цепи кругом;
Идет направо — песнь заводит,
Налево — сказку говорит.

Там чудеса: там леший бродит,
Русалка на ветвях сидит;
Там на неведомых дорожках
Следы невиданных зверей;
Избушка там на курьих ножках
Стоит без окон, без дверей;
Там лес и дол видений полны;

Там о заре прихлынут волны
На брег песчаный и пустой,
И тридцать витязей прекрасных
Чредой из вод выходят ясных,
И с ними дядька их морской;

Там королевич мимоходом
Пленяет грозного царя;
Там в облаках перед народом
Через леса, через моря
Колдун несёт богатыря;
В темнице там царевна тужит,
А бурый волк ей верно служит;

Там ступа с Бабою Ягой
Идет, бредет сама собой,
Там царь Кащей над златом чахнет;
Там русский дух… там Русью пахнет!

И там я был, и мед я пил;
У моря видел дуб зеленый;
Под ним сидел, и кот ученый
Свои мне сказки говорил.

Одну я помню: сказку эту
Поведаю теперь я свету.

А. Пушкин

This is the prologue to Pushkin’s Ruslan and Ludmila (1820). The original Belaieff included this poem in Russian and in a French translation, but the French has not been carried forward to other editions so I can’t include it here. To my great surprise there is no complete public-domain English translation, nor any “standard” English translation, so here’s just my cobbled-together literal nonrhyming line-for-liner:

On curving shore a green oak;
A golden chain on the oak:
Day and night a learned cat
Goes ever around on the chain,
He goes to the right — he begins a song,
To the left — he tells a tale.

There are marvels there: there Leshy roams,          [Leshy = wood goblin]
Rusalka sits among the branches;                          [Rusalka = water nymph/mermaid]
There on unexplored paths
The tracks of unseen creatures;
A hut there on chicken’s legs
Stands with no windows, no doors;
There wood and dale abound with apparitions;

There at dawn surge the waves
Upon the sandy and barren banks,
And thirty glorious knights
Stride from the clear waters,
And with them their sea-master;

There a passing prince
Captures a terrible tsar;
There in the clouds, for all the people to see,
Across forests, across seas,
A wizard bears a hero;
Imprisoned there a princess grieves,
Waited upon by a loyal brown wolf;

There the mortar of Baba Yaga              [= witch who travels in a flying mortar and wields a pestle]
Goes, moving of its own accord,
There Tsar Kashchei languishes with his gold;              [Kashchei = archetypal evil king antagonist]
There the Russian spirit… there the smell of Rus!

And there I was, and mead I drank;
By the sea saw the green oak;
Beneath it sat, and the learned cat
To me his tales told.

One I remember: this tale
I will now tell the world.

A. Pushkin

Now that we’ve read that, the following passage from Rimsky-Korsakov’s autobiography also seems important:

“Strange that to this day the hearers grasp with difficulty the true meaning of the Fairy-tale‘s program: they seek in it a chained-up tom-cat walking around an oak tree, and all the fairy-tale episodes which were jotted down by Pushkin in the prologue to his Ruslan and Lyudmila and which served as the starting point for my Fairy-tale. In his brief enumeration of the elements of the Russian fairy-tale epos that make up the stories of the miraculous tom-cat, Pushkin says

“One fairy tale I do recall, I’ll tell it now to one and all,”

and then narrates the fairy-tale of Ruslan and Lyudmila. But I narrate my own musical fairy-tale. By my very narrating the musical fairy-tale and quoting Pushkin’s prologue I show that my fairy-tale is, in the first place, Russian, and secondly, magical, as if it were one of the miraculous tom-cat’s fairy-tales that I had overheard and retained in my memory. Yet I had not at all set out to depict in it all that Pushkin had jotted down in the prologue, any more than he puts all of it into his fairy-tale of Ruslan. Let everyone seek in my fairy-tale only the episodes that may appear before his imagination, but let him not insist that I include everything enumerated in Pushkin’s prologue. The endeavor to discern in my fairy-tale the tom-cat that had related this same fairy-tale is groundless, to say the least. The two above-quoted lines of Pushkin are printed in italics in the program of my Fairy-tale, to distinguish them from the other verses and direct thereby the auditor’s attention to them. But this has been understood neither by the audiences nor the critics, who have interpreted my Skazka in all ways crooked and awry and who, in my time, as usual, of course, did not approve of it. On the whole, however, the Fairy-tale won sufficient success with the public.”

He needed to write this because the piece sounds so overtly illustrative that of course people wanted to guess at what he had in mind — and this long text printed in the score would naturally seem to be the key! Early on in the piece, he drops in some mimetic bird calls, unmistakable as such, which sure seem to invite the listener to parse the whole thing in terms of specific imagery. The work then proceeds through a series of surprise modulations and explosive outbursts and sudden stark shifts of tone and color, all of which creates the impression of film music without the film. The music seems to be having its strings pulled from offstage by some kind of narrative. It’s only natural to wonder what, exactly, is happening.

Even with all his protesting, I suspect Rimsky-Korsakov did have some specific correspondences in mind, though perhaps non-narrative ones, along the lines of “a theme for Rusalka and the river” and “a theme for Baba Yaga and the forest” and “a theme for brave knights.” Etcetera. I’m not sure what sort of whimsical sprite or grandmother or whatever is being represented by the soft comic interlude with the flute solo, but surely something rather than nothing. For what it’s worth, the whole piece was initially going to be called Baba Yaga. (And was going to be dedicated to Balakirev, but Balakirev didn’t approve of the piece, so the dedication was changed.) I’ve also seen “Overture-Fantasy” as another abandoned title.

The form is odd and disorienting, which contributes to the feeling that one needs a programmatic explanation for the goings-on, but ultimately it does have an internal logic. After some consideration I believe it to be in sonata form, but with a very long and elaborate high-Beethovenian introduction that previews the “second subject” in its entirety, and where the “first subject” — usually the calling card of a piece — is just a not-particularly-tuneful bit of rhythmic galloping material, the least memorable melody in the whole thing.

Speaking as someone who likes listening to film music without films, I’m very happy to listen to this piece a wandering pseudo-narrative score, and not strain to hear the obscure formal scheme. As an orderly overture, the piece isn’t very rewarding, but as a mazy forest, it is. It absolutely sounds like a fantastical folktale, illustrated in rich colors. Getting lost is part of the pleasure, as long as one can relax into that kind of pleasure. I enjoy that Alice in Wonderland feeling of coming round a bend in the path and realizing with surprise that I’ve been here before. Fairy tales ought to feel like being half-lost. That’s the feeling of being truly inside one’s imagination.

Here are 9 recordings. There may be others on vinyl. Average time is about 17 minutes.

Philharmonia/Ansermet, 1946
USSR Radio/Khaykin, 19??
Bochum/Maga, 1977
London/Butt, 1985
USSR/Svetlanov, 1985
Moscow Symphony/Skripka, 19??
Armenian/Tjeknavorian, 1991
Moscow Symphony/Golovchin, 1996
BBC/Sinaisky, 2006

I thought the London Symphony Orchestra/Yondani Butt recording on Youtube was pretty convincing and heartfelt, with vivid color. But they’re all basically okay — yes, even the slow limp ones from the Moscow Symphony Orchestra. A piece to get lost in doesn’t need to be handled with any great finesse. You can get pleasantly lost just staring at a carpet, after all.

Oh, as for the 4-hand reduction, it seems to me nearly impossible to make something convincing from it. It’s no fault of the arrangement; the piece just doesn’t work on a small scale. Everything I’m able to enjoy about it is dependent on being “inside” the swirl of its sounds and colors. Whereas the skeletal impression it makes on a piano is like an object that just sits there, in front of me. Without a way into that illustrated interior, there’s no reason to spend such a long time with these melodies.

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8] Glazunov: Serenade No. 1, op. 7 (1883; premiered 1885)

А. Глазунов : Серенада : для оркестра : соч. 7
Sérénade : pour l’Orchestre : composée par : Alexandre Glazounow. : Op. 7.
[Serenade : for orchestra : composed by : Alexander Glazunov. : Op. 7.]

À Monsieur Nicolas Stcherbatcheff.

• 20 Partition d’Orchestre (1886)
• 21 Parties d’Orchestre (1886)
• 22 Réduction pour Piano à quatre mains par l’Auteur (1886)

The full score and the duet are both from Sibley: 20 was uploaded in 2010, 22 in 2007. No parts currently available.

This full score copy has the corrected prices indicating that it’s from later than 1898, whereas the duet has the original prices (with the new price penciled in), and has a catalog from ~1896. Again note that the color printing is a little finer on the older score.

Glazunov is now 18 and is figuring out how to be easy. This piece is a 4 minute bonbon, a song without words. It has three melodic ideas in it, which roll around in rotation a couple times, and then we’re done. And yet even within this miniature the journey isn’t pat; the very slight hills of harmonic tension we go over in the second half are chosen with real art, not just by default.

I am very fond of musical miniatures; I enjoy being able to return over and over to a tiny piece and gradually extract different things from it by letting my imagination grow more and more nuance into each detail. There’s something subtly dreamy about the graceful main theme of this piece that seems to invite me to invest, to look for further meanings on further listens.

Yes, there’s some kind of orientalism going on in the third tune, but my impression is that it’s just part of the Russian nationalist/fantasist default mode and doesn’t signify anything (or anyplace) in particular.

This seems to me a genuinely charming, catchy, eminently successful miniature.

There seem to be 6 recordings:

USSR Radio Orchestra / Nikolai Golovanov 1940s?
USSR Radio Orchestra / Odysseus Dimitriadi 1980
Romanian State Orchestra / Horia Andreescu 1986
London Symphony Orchestra / Yondani Butt 1987?
USSR Symphony Orchestra / Evgeny Svetlanov 1990
Moscow Symphony Orchestra / Vladimir Ziva 2000

I’m able to find something to like in all four of the the available recordings. When a piece is so short, very fine distinctions in the navigation and timbre of each moment feel genuinely significant. Attention expands to fill the space of its subject, so when the subject is small, every detail speaks. These four recordings of a very brief, easygoing, straightforward score end up seeming like remarkably different creatures from one another.

The duet is excellent too — all the charm and subtlety survives the transcription, and the added precision and clarity give it yet another kind of profile. There’s no recording of the duet version but it’s quite as recording-worthy as many pieces written directly for piano 4-hands.

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9] Glazunov: Elegy (“To the Memory of a Hero”), op. 8 (1885)

А. Глазунов : Памяти Героя : элегия : для большого оркестра : соч. 8
À la mémoire d’un héros : Elegie : pour grand Orchestre : composée par: Alexandre Glazounow. : Op. 8.
[To the Memory of a Hero : Elegy : for large orchestra : composed by : Alexander Glazunov. : Op. 8.]

• 23 Partition d’Orchestre (1886)
• 24 Parties d’Orchestre (1886)
• 25 Réduction pour Piano à quatre mains par l’auteur (1886)

The duet copy is post-1902; the full score copy is pre-1898, with better color.

No dedication, but we do get this prefatory explanation of the program:

Предисловие.

Автор имел в виду героя идеального, которого жизнь не была ознаменована никакими жестокостями, который сражался только за дело правое — за освобождение народа от притеснения — в мирное-же время наполнял свою жизнь делами правды и общего блага. Смерть этого героя горько оплакивается народом, и его ожидает двоякая слава: слава земная и слава небесная.

Préface.

L’auteur a eu en vue un héros idéal, dont la vie n’avait jamais été souillée par aucun acte de cruauté, qui n’avait combattu que pour la juste cause — cette du peuple opprimé — et en temps de paix avait rempli sa vie d’actes de justice et de bien général. La mort de ce héros est amèrement pleurée par le peuple, et une double gloire l’attend: la gloire terrestre et la gloire céleste.

Google and I translate:

Preface.

The author had in mind an ideal hero, whose life had not been tarnished by any acts of cruelty, who fought only for a just cause — to liberate the people from oppression — and in times of peace filled his life with acts of righteousness and the common good. The death of this hero is bitterly mourned by the people, and a twofold glory awaits him: earthly glory and heavenly glory.

Basically, this piece could be called To the Memory of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Mr. Spock. The horn solo opening is full-on Star Wars. I wonder if John Williams had actually been this way and borrowed a few tricks. (It’s possible, though I think he was more into Elgar.) A 20-year-old composer’s fantasy of an “ideal hero” circa 1885 turns out to be very much in line with our continued understanding of superheroism, much as Strauss’s 1898 Heldenleben still holds up as a comic book ego trip. Our fantasies haven’t actually moved too far in the past century and a half. The only thing that we might feel is missing from Glazunov’s elegy is a tad more testosterone, in the form of, say, a complete Biff Pow battle sequence, reenacting the hero’s feats of combat — which I think is to the piece’s credit, spiritually speaking. There’s no secret fantasy of violence lurking here, or at least it’s lurking very low to the ground. This really is a piece about doing absolute good and being loved and mourned mourned mourned.

Russians seem to love this sort of thing. That Leskov collection featured several “stories of righteous men,” meant to inspire a hot, chest-expanding emotion, the tearful poignancy of goodness.

The two tunes here are very good, solid B+ melodic material, and their initial presentations are, as I say, Hollywood-worthy in their effectiveness. Then there’s a development that starts with a fugato, which is all well and good on the page but I don’t know what I’m supposed to get out of it. This is followed by the obligatory evocation of past struggles (no Biffs or Pows; more like stormy skies and stormy seas) followed by what I guess are earthly glory and heavenly glory in short succession. To me there’s something underpowered about this last section and the way the piece wraps up: we’ve already heard more compelling statements of the same themes, earlier. I think he might have needed to pile on a few more special orchestrational effects to give it the necessary “going to heaven!” lift it wants, so as to be a suitable payoff for the first half. As it is, I think the exposition rather too obviously outshines the rest. But maybe a better performance could change my mind.

I find only three:

Moscow Radio Orchestra / Vladimir Fedoseyev 1980
USSR Symphony Orchestra / Evgeny Svetlanov 1990
Moscow Symphony Orchestra / Igor Golovschin 1996

The Moscow Radio Orchestra recording is, as I’ve learned to expect, quite a bit better than the Moscow Symphony Orchestra’s.

The duet version is reasonable but has, I think, limited potential for performance. It’s a good and playable arrangement of these nice themes, but the overall elegiac pace really requires instruments with expressive sustaining power. A piano is no substitute for a horn solo.

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10] Rimsky-Korsakov: Piano Concerto, op. 30 (1882–3; premiered 1884)

Н. Римский-Корсаков : Концерт : для фортепиано : соч. 30
Concerto : (Ut # mineur) : pour : le piano avec accompagnement d’orchestre : composé par : Nicolas Rimsky-Korsakow. : Op. 30.
[Concerto : (C# minor) : for : piano and orchestra : composed by : Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. : Op. 30.]

à la mémoire de François Liszt.

• 26 Partition d’orchestre (1886)
• 27 Parties d’orchestre (1886)
• 28 Réduction pour 2 pianos par l’auteur (1886)

26 and 28 courtesy of Sibley, 2012.

This full score is an earlier impression than this piano score, but neither is early enough to have the original prices — i.e. both are 1898 or later.

Here’s the title page from an earlier copy of the piano score (as offered for sale in 2008 by Schubertiade Music) — though still not a pre-1898 with the original prices. This has 5 colors compared to the 4 colors on the copy seen above it. Look how much detail gets lost in the later, presumably more cheaply printed version!

Rimsky-Korsakov composed this concerto at the age of 38. It was premiered by Nikolai Lavrov (1861-1927), a piano professor at the conservatory.

It is a hard piece to hear well, because it calls to mind the pieces it influenced, very much in particular Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, the principal motif of which it shares, more or less. Did Rimsky-Korsakov not think, “boy, this sounds like that famous Paganini Caprice?” I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t as famous as I think until Rachmaninoff seized on it. Well then, didn’t Rachmaninoff think, “boy, this sure sounds like the Rimsky-Korsakov Piano Concerto!” He probably did. In addition to having the same five-note figure at its heart, the overall emotional gesture of the “sweepingly Romantic” episode in both pieces is rather obviously the same one. In fact it’s hard not to hear the middle of this piece as a precursor to all of Rachmaninoff.

Rather than coming from Paganini, the tune in the concerto — and there’s really only one tune, without any actual contrasting material — is in fact #18 from Balakirev’s collection of Russian folk songs.

I’m led to understand that, as per the dedication, the whole thing is actually rather overtly derivative of the Liszt piano concertos, which I don’t actually really know — I’ve listened to a recording several times but never paid good attention. I recognize the rather indulgent approach to the material as essentially Lisztian: everything, even the form, seems motivated by a spirit of Romantic flamboyance above all. Now, I don’t have the strongest sense of Rimsky-Korsakov — I’m developing it as I go, here — but I think of him as more essentially reserved a personality than Liszt, a builder of fancy toys rather than a fancy toy himself. And to me there’s something a little thin about this piece, as though someone is going through the motions of extroversion without any actual burning need.

The piano part is difficult but only in the most traditional Romantic piano concerto ways — lots of scales, arpeggios, and an avalanche of octaves at the end. All of which feels a little arbitrary. The overall impact of the piece is that something a little arbitrary has just happened.

Ultimately, its themes and its sweep having been thoroughly stolen by Rachmaninoff and its flair being itself stolen from Liszt, this concerto is always going to feel like an also-ran. But it has several very nice moments — I like the spooky cascade of woodwinds first heard about a minute and a half in. The whole introduction seems to promise a very rich experience that never quite arrives, but it’s still a nice introduction. The sweeping high point is good, too.

The piece is about 15 minutes long — short for a concerto, long for a single monothematic movement.

Concertos generally seem to have a better chance of being recorded than other genres, I guess since soloists have some ego-incentive to root around for underplayed repertoire that they can claim as their own. Since this obscure concerto is by a name composer, there are a bunch of recordings. Here are the 11 I came across without trying very hard:

Sviatoslav Richter, Moscow Youth Orchestra / Kirill Kondrashin 1950
Lev Oborin, USSR State Symphony Orchestra / Nikolay Anosov 1952
Sergio Perticaroli, RAI National Symphony Orchestra / Massimo Pradella 1961
Michael Ponti, Hamburg Symphony Orchestra / Richard Kapp 1972?
Igor Zhukov, Moscow Radio Orchestra / Gennady Rozhdestvensky 1972?
Malcolm Binns, English Northern Philharmonia / David Lloyd-Jones 1992
Geoffrey Tozer, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra / Dmitri Kitajenko 1993
Jeffrey Campbell, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra / Gilbert Levine 1996
Noriko Ogawa, Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra / Kees Bakels 2003
Hsin-Ni Liu, Russian Philharmonic Orchestra / Dmitriy Yablonsky 2006
Oleg Marshev, South Jutland Symphony Orchestra / Vladimir Ziva 2007

I haven’t listened to them all. Richter is famous but the sound isn’t great. Ponti is good. Zhukov seems good too.

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So far you may be getting the impression that the Belaieff catalog is 1) mostly orchestral works, 2) mostly works by reasonably famous composers, 3) mostly recorded at least once, 4) mostly available scanned online. None of these four things is true! As will become clear if I continue this into the next 5 items. And there’s every indication that I will.

I continue to be keeping the antlike part of my mind arbitrarily busy with the Belaieff catalog while I relax, meditate, what-have-you, so here’s some more grist for the ol’ broomlet.

Obviously, going through them in order occurs to me. I guess I’ll do 10.

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Having done 5, I say: 5 turns out to be a lot! Let’s just do 5 for now.

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Hey readers: please click on the title of this entry above (“First 5 from Belaieff”) and go to the dedicated entry page. On the front page, the width is too narrow for the images etc., because of the sidebar. I’ll get that fixed one of these days.

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1] Glazunov: Overture No. 1 (on Three Greek Themes), op. 3 (1882)

1ая Увертюра : на три греческия темы : для большого оркестра : сочинение Александра Глазунова. Op. 3.
1re Ouverture : sur trois thèmes grecs : pour grand orchestre : composée par Alexandre Glazounow. Op. 3.
[1st Overture : on three Greek themes : for large orchestra : composed by Aleksandr Glazunov. Op. 3.]

A Monsieur L.A. Bourgault-Ducoudray.

• 1 Partition (Full score)
• 2 Parties séparées (Orchestral parts)
• 3 Piano à quatre mains (Arrangement for piano four hands)

Only the full score, with plate number 1, is currently available, having been digitized in 2009 by the Sibley Music Library at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester, superstars in this game and henceforth to be referred to as “Sibley.” Orchestral parts tend not to be held by university libraries and are far less likely to have been scanned or even included in searchable catalogs. The 4-hand arrangement, plate number 3, is out there in Worldcat, just not online.

Here we see the outer cover, title page, and first page of the full score. Click any image for the big version.

According to a Belaieff pamphlet, this, their very first publication, appeared on July 11 (old June 29), 1885. The next many scores that follow are all marked as having been published in 1886, so it seems that this one stands alone and was followed by a full year’s delay before things really got rolling. The title page doesn’t yet mention Leipzig, and instead seems to have been produced in collaboration with the existing Rahter/Büttner firm. Arrangements had yet to be made.

The Overture Op. 3 was composed in 1882 when Glazunov was 16 or 17, premiered in January 1883 by Anton Rubinstein, and then possibly revised for publication. It was upon hearing this and the two pieces that follow (opp. 5 and 6) that Mr. Belyayev decided to spend the rest of his life pouring his enormous fortune into the performance and publication and cultivation of new Russian music. He and his father before him had made their money in the lumber business; Scheherazade was funded by many acres of wood. Somehow that feels right to me. Whereas if it turned out he was in the rifle business that would be dismaying. (Or the laxative business.)

I count at least 5 recordings:
– Minneapolis/Mitropoulos 1942
– USSR/Gauk 1950s?
– Hong Kong/Schermerhorn 1984
– USSR/Svetlanov 1990
– Moscow Symphony/Ziva 2000

I haven’t heard the Svetlanov, but I didn’t find any of the others particularly satisfying.

On paper and in my imagination, the piece seems potentially perfectly effective, as long as one finds the proper spirit of fun in indulging the faint, generic exoticism of its “Greek” materials. The three themes are taken straight from 30 Mélodies Populaires de Grèce et d’Orient, a collection assembled by Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray, the dedicatee, wherein they’d already been fairly de-ethnicized and squared up. See nos. 1, 20, and 25, in that order.

The trick to performing this kind of music — and “this kind of music” encompasses nearly everything that’s going to follow, too — is to take it seriously without taking it seriously. The crucial nuance is attitudinal rather than strictly musical. It tends to be a dimension of performance that conductors can’t control through any amount of pep-talking or careful rehearsal. Only by force of personality, if at all. What I’m talking about emanates from the social culture surrounding the music, not from the technique; it’s in the players’ subconscious.

At nearly 15 minutes with nothing particular to accomplish, this piece threatens to feel overlong, so I don’t understand why all the recordings insist on taking the slow theme so emptily slow and pseudo-ominous. Seems to me the exposition of all three themes should strive above all to be songlike, hummable, at whatever tempo that entails, and then the development that follows should strive to very explicitly spin out a series of miniature compositional clevernesses (rather than try to actually sell “stirring” or “angsty” in a boring Hollywood/operetta way). And keep it all breezy!

If the 4-hand version were available I’d slap down my own take along those lines. I just hummed my way through it and came out at 11:30. That’s more like it!

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2] Glazunov: Symphony No. 1, op. 5 (1881)

Первая Симфония : (Е-дир) : для большого оркестра : Op. 5 : сочинение Александра Глазунова
Première Symphonie : (Mi majeur) : pour grand Orchestre : Op. 5 : composée par Alexandre Glazounow
[First Symphony : (E major) : for large orchestra : Op. 5 : composed by Aleksandr Glazunov]

посвящается николаю андреевичу римскому-корсакову.
[Dedicated to Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov.]

à Monsieur N. Rimsky-Korssakow : Hommage affectueux de son élève reconnaissant.
[to Mr. N. Rimsky-Korsakov: affectionate tribute of his grateful pupil.]

(A fuller dedication appears inside, reproduced from Glazunov’s handwriting. I think it says:)
Дорогому учителю моему Николаю Андреевичу Римскому-Корсакову в знак глубокого уважение и благодарности.
[To my dear teacher Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov as a token of my esteem and gratitude.]

• 4 Partition d’orchestre
• 5 Parties d’orchestre
• 6 Réduction pour Piano à quatre mains par Mme. Nadejda Rimsky-Korssakow

4, the full score, comes to us from the Harvard libraries, scanned by Google in 2007. 5, the orchestral parts, is currently unavailable. 6, the duet, is from Sibley, scanned in 2011.

These scores were first published in 1886, but the covers seen here indicate that these particular copies are from later: these type styles weren’t adopted for some years, and the Belaieff catalog listing on the inside and back covers (not seen above) makes clear that each of these was issued in 1902 or later. (Note also that the full score identifies itself as the Nouvelle edition revue et corrigée par l’Auteur. I’m not sure when that was added.)

The question then follows: are the title pages seen here in their fullest and most lavish forms? I ask because it seems that after about ten years — once it became clear that his publishing scheme was going to continue indefinitely — Belaieff started to scale back some of the opulence, and would do things like reprint old title pages with simpler color schemes, or previously multicolored title pages in monochrome.

But these are quite multicolored and come off as fairly luxurious, so I assume they’re the full-fledged originals. This is one of the very few of these illustrated title pages to be signed by the artist: “Рисов. Ольга Глазунова” = “Drawn by Olga Glazunov.” Is this the composer’s sister? Mother? Cousin? I can’t find a source to tell me anything about his family or their names. As far as I can tell, Glazunov has never received a book-length biography in English, nor have his memoirs been translated.

The two snippets of music included in the design are themes heard in the second and fourth movement, which reportedly are Polish folk tunes that Glazunov heard his family’s gardeners singing.

Added 6/1/15: I’ve just found that the Russian State Library has scanned a copy of the full score with the original 1886 cover, albeit only in black and white:

The work was composed in 1881–2 when Glazunov was 15 and 16, and premiered in March 1882 to considerable acclaim and prodigy-hype: “can you believe a kid wrote this?” It’s generally described as having made a splash that launched Glazunov’s long career. Basically, by so impressing Mr. Belaieff, it set Glazunov up for life.

It’s about 35 minutes long and I count at least 8 recordings:
– Moscow Radio/Fedoseyev 1981
– Bavarian Radio/Järvi 1983
– USSR Ministry/Rozhdestvensky 1983?
– USSR/Svetlanov 1989
– Moscow Symphony/Anissimov 1995
– BBC Wales/Otaka 1997
– Russian State/Polyansky 1999
– Royal Scottish/Serebrier 2009

(“By some estimates, Moscow has up to 40 orchestras,” each of which has had many different names over the years, and all of which have basically the same names as each other. Plus the conductors have bounced from one to another. Probably so have the players.)

None of what I heard was completely ideal, but to my ears the Fedoseyev recording was the standout for vigor and commitment. People online seem to really like the Serebrier but I thought it was trying much too hard, distorting things to try to “make a case for them,” which of course implicitly makes the opposite case. Who says this music needs help?

The piece is pretty good, earnest and straightforward and fully colored. The sturdy sonata-allegro movements, the first and last, seem to me the most successful. The Scherzo has rather lame material that would require extremely spicy treatment to work, but apart from a wah-wah-wah sad doggy joke toward the end, Glazunov just does standard peasant dance stuff, and the fun feels feigned. The Adagio doesn’t really ever sink its teeth into the emotion it’s going for. I have enough composerly experience to know that this sort of sustained, fluid elegiac expression is actually the hardest thing to craft. A convincing slow movement requires the greatest possible control and boldness, and that’s the movement where it’s easiest for me to imagine the composer as being only 16. But a very, very ambitious 16! The guts it takes to write a thing like this! The fact that the slow movement doesn’t completely land just accentuates how daring he was to risk it at all.

Of course, daring and ambition is different from having anything to say. My impression during the middle movements is just the kind of thing that has tarred Glazunov (and this whole generation of Russians) generally, which is that he seems more proud of his skill than interested in his feelings. That isn’t always necessarily a problem: after all, pride is a feeling too, and a good one. In the first and last movements here, I feel like that pride becomes contagious, to the music’s great credit. But it does become a problem when the ostensible subject of a piece is another feeling not compatible with pride: such as e.g. the urge to carouse (I don’t believe he’s feeling it) or a hovering melancholy (I don’t believe he’s feeling it).

Or rather, I do believe he’s feeling it, but I don’t believe this music has any direct line to the feeling.

Within the next 15 years Glazunov would get enormously fat and become a terrible alcoholic, both of which states would persist for the rest of his life. I have to assume his alcoholism was related to some kind of emotional repression, and I imagine I can hear the seeds of it in this very early work. Building fake emotions to speak on behalf of real ones is a dangerous practice.

Mrs. Rimsky-Korsakov’s duet arrangement is very smartly done. It’s a genuinely performable score, not an unpianistic mess as these things sometimes are. It even sounds pretty good. It could probably be pulled off for an audience — i.e. not just for the amusement of the players. That’s a lot to do with the nature of the piece, which is mostly rhythmic and strongly outlined and suited to being banged out on a piano; subtleties and slow movements never really come off very well in this form. Though I think you could even make something reasonably inoffensive of this slow movement on the keyboard if you sped it up a bit. In fact, lowering the stakes, so to speak, by transferring the music to the quieter, more intimate headspace of the piano, might actually help the movement.

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3] Glazunov: Overture No. 2 (on Three Greek Themes), op. 6 (1883)

2я увертюра : на три греческия темы : для оркестра : сочинение александра глазунова. Op. 6.
2me ouverture : sur des thèmes grecs : pour grand orchestre : A. Glazounow : Op. 6
[2nd Overture : on (three) Greek themes : for (large) orchestra : by Aleksandr Glazunov. Op. 6.]

посвящается милию алексеевичу балакиреву.
[dedicated to Mily Alekseyevich Balakirev.]

• 7 Партитура / Partition d’orchestre
• 8 Оркестровые голоса / Parties d’orchestre
• 9 Переложение для форт. в 4 руки автора / Réduction pour Piano à quatre mains par l’auteur

7, the full score, was scanned by Sibley in 2009; the parts, 8, are unavailable. 9, the duet, is also unavailable but its title page, as seen below, is included as a sample on the website for The Beauty of Belaieff, a coffee-table book representing the collection of Richard Beattie Davis. As you can see, it’s a crop and slight lateral stretching of the same illustration.

Actually, I get the impression that the illustrations were squished horizontally to fit the tall narrow layout of the orchestral scores, and that the wider piano editions are the ones that show them in their original proportions. But that’s just a hunch.

It’s not clear whether the front cover seen here (as a black-and-white scan) is original to 1886 or not. It has what I believe is the earliest type style.

The piece seems to have been composed in 1883 immediately after the previous Overture on Greek Themes, on exactly the same model, and premiered only a couple months later, in March 1883 (conducted by Balakirev, the dedicatee). Three themes have again been selected from that same collection, this time nos. 5, 7, and 24. Again he uses them in the order they appear in the book!

However, this is a markedly more nuanced and mature work than the first overture. In part it’s because the themes he chose are themselves subtler and more oblique, with rhythmical evasions that lend themselves to rhapsodic treatment — but he also handles the materials with a much greater license and willingness to create moods and events that are completely his own.

Contrary to the “everything Greek I can think of” title page illustration, the piece isn’t nearly as starkly exoticist as its predecessor; apart from a string of standard “rustic” effects in the second theme, its fantasy-nostalgia is mellower and more general. I think the handling of the opening idea in particular is excellent and affecting, and when it recurs toward the end, there’s the feeling of a real operatic drama coming to fruition. I said that the first overture had nothing much to get done during its 15 minutes; this one feels like 19 minutes worth of drama, though I couldn’t tell you quite what the drama is.

The unpredictable handling of form here is quite impressive, to me much moreso than anything in the rather square-headed Symphony. I wish the duet version were around so that I could play through it and discover its ins and outs for myself.

Well, I just followed it through with the full score, which will have to do. Turns out that despite seeming “unpredictable” to my ear, the piece actually has basically the same underlying form as the first overture. It’s just that the proportional emphasis on the development, and especially on the elaborate coda, has been so much increased as to make it feel like a whole different beast. That, to me, is how form should work — as a tool for the composer, not a prescription for the audience experience. Yes, the journey of this piece is in its broadest outlines a “sonata form” journey — i.e. exposition, conflict, denouement, conclusion — but such a heavily inflected version that, from my point of view as a listener, it may as well not be built on an actual sonata form. After all novels and dramas follow the same general structure and certainly aren’t “sonata forms.”

But it turns out on inspection that it is in fact a sonata form. Because that’s just how someone like Glazunov thinks and works.

A few years ago I stole a choice measure-and-a-half from the introductory section of this piece and put it in a piece I was writing. Nobody knows this piece. Of course, nobody knows my piece either. The perfect crime!

About 17 minutes long. I’m aware only of three recordings:
– USSR/Gauk 1950s?
– Hong Kong/Almeida 1986
– Moscow Symphony/Ziva 2000

I actually quite enjoy the slow lushness of the Ziva recording, though there are places where I find myself leaning to try to make it different.

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4] Cui: Suite concertante, op. 25 (1884)

ц. кюи : концертная сюита : для скрипки : с сопровождением оркестра или фортепиано : соч. 25
Suite concertante : pour le Violon : avec accompagnement d’orchestre ou de piano : par César Cui. : Op. 25.
[Suite concertante : for violin : accompanied by orchestra or piano : by César Cui : op. 25.]

A Monsieur Martinn Marsick.

• 10 Partition d’Orchestre
• 11 Parties d’Orchestre
• 12 Pour Violon avec accompagnement de Piano (copy 1, copy 2, copy 3)
• 471–474 (= the individual movements from within 12, made available separately around 1892)
• 556 No. 3. Cavatina, arrangée pour Violoncelle et Piano (also issued around 1892)
• 4054 (= 10 as reissued in 1983)

10, the full score, is available courtesy of the Russian State Library (RSL); the 1983 reissue is available at IMSLP. The parts, 11, are unavailable.

12, the violin and piano version, is available in three copies: two from Sibley and one from RSL.

556, the cello arrangement of the “Cavatina,” is known only from the Belaieff 1902 catalog and does not appear in Worldcat, so it must be pretty rare. The arrangement does seem to have turned up in a few cello albums from other publishers over the years.

Title page x2 and first page of the full score. The first title page is a hi-res B&W scan from RSL; the second is a lo-res color scan from the Beauty of Belaieff site. (Note that the color copy is a later version; the reference to Büttner has been dropped and the plate number has been added.)

Title page and first page of the violin and piano score. This title page comes from the first Sibley copy, which has catalog text placing it between 1895 and 1902. (Note that the piano version cuts straight to the tune and doesn’t include the orchestral introduction seen in the full score above.)

Cover (B&W scan) and title page from even later copies of the violin and piano score. This title page comes from the second Sibley copy, which has catalog text placing it after 1902. Note the slightly different color contrast; the chromolithography technique seems to have gotten just a tad harsher, less luxe. Hasn’t it? I suppose that may be an artifact of the scanning but I don’t think it is; I think some money is being saved somewhere. I can’t blame them. It still looks pretty damn fancy.

The changes in the prices between the second title page and the third may be beyond my ability to interpret but here’s my attempt. I’m assuming the M above the line is Marks, and the R below is Rubles. This seems confirmed by the “Pf.” over “Cop.” for the cheapest items: “pfennig” and “copeck,” I take it. What we see here is that from 1886–1895, everything cost exactly twice as many marks as rubles, but after 1902 or thereabouts, a mark has dropped to be 7/20 of a ruble (from 10/20). Since the printing is all done in Leipzig, the German price of the full score stays fixed and the Russian price drops.

But at the same time, the prices of all the piano versions drop in both currencies, and not by a consistent percentage or amount. It seems they’ve just been repriced, I guess to accord with some new sense of the market. The price of a complete set of parts has also dropped. And yet the price of individual parts has not; it has stayed the same in terms of kopecks, and so has actually risen in terms of marks. I can’t come up with a theory to explain that. Try your hand at it.

Cui was of the older “mighty handful” generation and was 49 when he wrote this. I can’t confirm that it was premiered by Marsick, the dedicatee, but it seems likely. I found a reference to Marsick performing it in Moscow in December 1885; it seems possible he had been there to premiere it the previous year.

The piece is complete 100% crowd-pleasing “pops” material. Sounds good to me. In fact this piece lays out the terms of what I think ought to be the standard middlebrow contract with the audience: utter directness without pandering. I never get the sense of Cui writing “down” just as I never get the sense of him writing “up.” The piece achieves not just tunefulness but a being at home within tunefulness that is actually more valuable than the tunes themselves. The tunes themselves are perfectly fine (if not overly remarkable) exemplars of a high craft of melody-spinning that hardly even exists anymore. What puts me at my ease listening to a piece like this is the mere fact of dedication to that craft, far more than any particulars of what the craft has generated. It feels like the same thing as dedication to friendly conversation, or to ease, or to good cheer. A good party isn’t one where people necessarily say memorable things, it’s one where people all tacitly and mutually agree that it’s a good party, and share a sense of what that entails. That there is so much that is tacit and mutual about the culture of salon art — which is what the Belaieff catalogue ultimately is — to me can only ever be a positive thing. I just don’t see any value in marking it up with socio-political annotations. I may not be a rich 19th century St. Petersburger, but the music is treating me like I am, so what’s to complain about?

I’m aware of only one recording, of 21 minutes: Nishizaki, Hong Kong/Schermerhorn 1984. This is perfectly passable and listenable, especially in the middle two movements, which seem to be easier. The ensemble gets a little ragged in the first movement, and the last movement could stand a good deal more atmosphere and drama, not to mention flair. Nonetheless, I appreciate that in their unimaginative approach, these players have hit on basically the right attitude: “this music works, so we’re just going to play it.” They play it like a pit orchestra, which is to say like players who are relaxed because they know the attention is elsewhere. All musicians should be so relaxed!

I see no reason why this suite shouldn’t be programmed at minor pops concerts the world over, all the time. As far as I know, it’s not.

The piano version is playable enough and I’m sure one could sell it at a violin recital but I’m not sure I buy it as a fully equal alternative, as suggested on the title page (“accompanied by orchestra or piano”). In its slick suavity, this feels like a fundamentally orchestral piece.

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5] Rimsky-Korsakov: Overture (on Three Russian Themes), op. 28 (1866, rev. 1879–80)

н. римский-корсаков : увертюра : на темы трех русских песен : для оркестра : соч. 28
Ouverture : sur des thèmes russes : (Re majeur) : pour Grand Orchestre : composée par : Nicolas Rimsky-Korsakow. : Op. 28.
[Overture : on (three) Russian themes : (D major) : for (large) orchestra : composed by : Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. : op. 28.]

A Mr. Anatole Liadow.

• 10 Partition d’Orchestre
• 11 Parties d’Orchestre
• 12 Réduction pour Piano à 4 mains par l’auteur

10 was digitized at Harvard by Google in 2007. The complete parts, 11, are in fact available in this case, at least in the form of a Kalmus offset, which someone scanned for IMSLP in 2013. The duet arrangement, 12, is not currently available online in its original Belaieff edition, but I was also able to find a scan of a Soviet edition posted to the Pianophilia forums.

Often, as here, Google book scans have been subjected to a harsh auto-white-balancing that may have drained some of the legitimate color, and possibly even some detail. For now, this is all we’ve got. Once again, the catalog copy indicates that this particular printing is from after 1902.

Grove describes this overture as “a faithful copy of Balakirev’s work of the same name,” which dates from 1858. I appreciate the tip. They’re right!

The first version of Rimsky-Korsakov’s overture was composed in 1866 when he was 22 (and Balakirev was 29), but unpublished until the Soviet era. The present, second version was revised in 1879–80, when Rimsky-Korsakov was 34–5 and had worked his way to opus number 28. I don’t have access to the score or recording of the first version so I don’t know how different it is, but I’m curious. Interestingly, Balakirev seems to have then gone back and revised his Overture on Three Russian Themes the next year, in 1881.

Richard Taruskin calls the Rimsky-Korsakov overture “practically a plagiarism” of the Balakirev, but apart from a few strikingly similar passages (including the very opening) that’s not really fair — the two pieces are distinguishable not just in materials but in character. And I’m not sure the comparison flatters Rimsky-Korsakov, despite his being generally considered the far superior composer. Balakirev’s piece at least gives an engaging impression of wildness, where Rimsky-Korsakov tends to iron out even his most striking inventions by dutifully repeating them. Balakirev’s piece is about 8 minutes long and Rimsky-Korsakov’s is 12 or 13. My sense of it as a listener (and player of the 4-hand version) is that every compositional moment has been needlessly extended into a full musical sentence, purely for form’s sake, without consideration for the wants and needs of the material itself. The introductory section, for example, seems to me fully twice as long as it has any internal reason to be.

Of course, in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, this same kind of dutiful four-squaring of the musical sentences creates an impression of fantastical expansiveness, a timeless tapestry, not to be followed beat for beat but to be experienced as a landscape extending luxuriously in all directions. I suppose that goes for this piece too: when I let myself go and stop paying attention, I find a certain feeling of security in the unshakeably slow, tree-like quality of its thought processes. Ent music. Hmmmmm! Hmmmmm!

I tried several times to play the duet in a way that gave a genuine and unbroken excitement to the proceedings, especially to the development, but ultimately I don’t think that’s an option. The excitement is always necessarily grounded by being bound to an elaborate sense of propriety, and to enjoy the piece you need to meet it where it lives. Certainly all the tunes and sounds are quite appealing taken in 10-second chunks; it’s up to you to have a mindset that has appetite enough for a full 75 chunks, arranged rosette-style like a standard catering cheese plate.

Rimsky-Korsakov is generally better represented on recording than Glazunov, and certainly than Cui, so this piece has a slightly stronger showing than those above. Without much digging I count at least 10 recordings:
– Moscow Radio/Kovalev ~1954
– Lamoureux/Markevitch 1957
– Moscow Radio/M. Shostakovich 1960s?
– Bochum/Maga 1977
– USSR/Svetlanov 1985
– Berlin Radio/Jurowski 1996
– Moscow Symphony/Golovschin 1996
– Philharmonia/Butt 1998
– Malaysian/Bakels 2004
– Seattle/Schwarz 2010

Of what I heard, the Svetlanov is the most convinced and thus convincing. The recent Seattle recording definitely has the most color and kick, but sort of as an end unto itself; the question is whether that’s what you want.

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See you next time.