Notes for: July 25, 2017
The first three composers on today’s program suggest just how complex the relationship between art and politics was in the Soviet Union. Prokofiev left the country, but homesickness brought him back; Glière stayed and remained in Stalin’s good graces; Shostakovich learned at an early age the steep price of modernism.
Prokofiev had little interest in the revolutionary fervor sweeping Russia in 1917. He had won early fame, and his career was booming. Listeners were intrigued by his modernist harmonic style, with its unusual combination of old and new. Preoccupied with his music, he was indifferent to the political and social turmoil all around him. In fact, 1917 was one of his most productive years, during which he composed the First “Classical” Symphony, the First Violin Concerto, the Third and Fourth Piano Sonatas, and “Visions fugitives.” Still, it was becoming increasingly clear to him that for now, at least, Russia was not a good place for artists. He left Russia in 1918 for America, intending to stay away for only a few months. He didn’t move back until 18 years later.
Prokofiev felt underappreciated in the United States, where he was viewed primarily as a pianist rather than as a composer. “I arrived too early,” he later wrote; “this infant – America – still hadn’t matured to an understanding of new music.” But a trip to California in 1920 lifted his spirits. “I’m as ecstatic about California as it is about me,” he wrote to a friend. “I am smiling along with the California countryside.” In his new mellow mood, he wrote the lyrical “Five Songs Without Words” for voice and piano (Op. 35). Unlike Prokofiev’s earlier declamatory treatment of the voice, here the style was soft and flowing, with soaring, long-breathing legato phrases. As Harlow Robinson notes, “So ‘instrumental’ are these five songs that it was easy for Prokofiev to revise them slightly for violin and piano in 1925.”
By 1925 Prokofiev had moved to Paris, where he and the violinist Pawel Kochanski transcribed the songs so that they could perform them together in concert. Prokofiev had to do little more than add violin embellishments to the vocal line. Each of the three melodies you’ll hear tonight is a beautiful and expressive miniature with its own character and color. In the first, Andante, the violin floats dreamily over the piano’s gentle, at times tonally ambiguous accompaniment. The next, Animato ma non allegro, with its turbulent fortissimo opening and restless piano throughout, is as unsettled as the Andante is calm. The playful Allegretto leggero e scherzando, with its syncopated rhythms, sounds charmingly French – you can imagine a boulevardier sauntering down the avenue. All three are distinguished by Prokofiev’s lyricism and his distinctive harmonics.