Factory! Russian Music after the Bolshevik Revolution

Nikolay Roslavets: Chamber Symphony
Aleksey Zhivotov: Fragments for Nonet
Leonid Polovinkin: Telescope II *
Vladimir Deshevov: Rails *
Sergey Prokofiev: Overture on Jewish Themes
Aleksandr Mosolov: Four Newspaper Advertisements
Dmitry Shostakovich: Preludes, Op. 34 *
Aleksandr Mosolov: Factory *

* indicates arranged for ensemble by Vladislav Soifer

Studio for New Music, Moscow, conducted by Igor Dronov
Saturday, May 18th, 2002 - Magdalen Auditorium, Oxford

Summary for the Busy Executive: youthful exuberance conquers all!

This was the first public concert of the Oxford Contemporary Music
Festival given by the orchestra-in-residence, the Studio for New Music,
Moscow.  The ensemble was founded in 1993 by composer Vladimir Tarnopolski
and conductor Igor Dronov, and specialises in 20th century and contemporary
music.  Unsurprisingly, it consists exclusively of young musicians, making
the most, apparently, of the group's first visit to the UK.  They would
teach us a great deal during the next two hours - not the least striking
lesson being just how much volume fifteen or so musicians can create when
given their heads!

Tarnopolski, through an (excellent) interpreter, opened the concert
by observing that most of the composers represented were comparatively
little known, in Russia as much as anywhere else.  The pieces chosen,
mostly forgotten today, represent the full spectrum of post-Scriabin
orchestral writing and range from starkly modernist to dismal urbanism.
The unifying factor, as we were shortly to confirm for ourselves, was a
youthful energy that shone like a beacon from the heart of each piece.

The Roslavets Chamber Symphony dates from about 1927 and is an angular,
frankly discursive fifteen-minute work that is instantly appealing.  A
harsh clarion call from the trumpet finds a doleful response in a lyrical
dialogue between oboe and violin.  There are hints of jazz rhythms and
harmonies in some of the brass writing, though the harmonies frequently
wander off into new territory.  Whether this is a result of the composer's
own search for the new, or whether it was the decision of orchestrator
Aleksandr Raskatov (Roslavets having left only piano scores for the work)
is a moot point.  It is a fascinating piece, however:  a surprisingly
subtle horn/bassoon combination producing an uncannily realistic train
whistle sound, followed by an extraordinarily effective conversation
between violin, cello and percussion.  The almost inevitable expression
of vast Russianness (or Russian vastness?), achieved with muffled timpani
punctuation, closes a brief but stunning piece - a great opener!

Zhivotov's Fragments for Nonet is, according to the sadly too-brief
programme notes, unique in Soviet music in that it "...combines the
aesthetic of Constructivism with the form of a miniature." Quite what
that means, I'm nor certain - but I am certain that the nine short pieces,
scored for string quartet, clarinet, bassoon, flute, trumpet and piano,
and lasting for a total of a little more than ten minutes, makes me want
to hear more of this man's music.  Opening with a pithy and harmonically
tight brass fanfare, the various fragments cover a wide range of orchestral
colour and texture; a trumpet obbligato over muted strings (fragment number
two); actinic piano dissonance (number three); a macabre little waltz in
the strings, who then provide a ghostly accompaniment for a bassoon, muted
with an enormous red handkerchief!  (numbers four and five); a vivid
impression of a marionette under the influence (number six); an insistent,
heartrending trumpet call closes the ninth and final fragment, leaving a
definite desire for more.  Another extremely appealing work, beautifully
interpreted by these young musicians.

The programme note for Polovinkin's Telescope II filled me with
foreboding and it took an effort not to have a preconceived picture
of artistic brutalism imitating an increasingly constricted series of
telescope tubes.  Nothing could have been further from the truth!  Opening
with a murmur in the lower strings accompanied by gong and clarinet, the
work unfolds by sustaining ever-varying chords of increasing harmonic
complexity, then moves into a brief lyrical episode, punctuated by very
Prokofiev-like motifs in the clarinet.  A typically Soviet trumpet sound
announces the almost inevitable march that has great appeal and leads into
a syncopated jazz piano 'riff' underlying an increasingly frantic tutti.
Out of this emerges a wondrous - but, alas, regrettably brief - theme,
one worthy of Liadov's Enchanted Lake or Gliere's Ilya Muromets - truly
fabulous writing.  The music is certainly not derivative, but it does
call to mind at various points Strauss - there are several points at
which you are utterly convinced the strings are about to break away in
a Heldenleben-like orgy of richness - and the Copland of Danzon Cubano.
Tiptoeing drunkenly to a docile finish, this is a work that demands further
study - if only I can find a recording!

Deshevov's Rails is a delight.  Marred only by the fact that it is a mere
ninety seconds or so in length, it starts life as what you might think of
as a stereo sampler - the music moves round the stage from instrument to
instrument with bewildering speed.  Most of the work in carrying the piece
is undertaken by the brass - especially the trumpet, which leads the way
into the quirky, ironic march a la Shostakovich that characterises the
piece.  The brevity of the work, coupled with the facts that it closed
the first half of the concert and the ensemble obviously had so much fun
performing it, meant that we had it twice - not that we didn't demand it.
Rails is one of those electric miniatures with which you can set a concert
hall alight.  Why don't we hear more of this type of thing programmed? Fear
of the unknown - or is it that it is itself truly unknown? More power to
the Oxford Contemporary Music Festival for bringing this type of music to
a wider audience - though, sad to relate, there were probably no more than
two hundred people in the audience - a travesty compared to the richness of
the feast on offer!

The Overture on Jewish Themes was probably the most 'mainstream' of the
works programmed, which did not prevent the ensemble providing a fresh and
exuberant interpretation.  "Klezmer with class" was a phrase that sprang
to mind at one point, and at another, marked by a lilting, sideways-moving
dance theme, I would have been entirely unsurprised to see Topol swing
across the stage.  This was a fine performance of a piece that is far from
being a workhorse, created for chamber ensemble in 1919 then orchestrated
in 1934.  The biting nasal quality of the cello in its high register was
particularly effective.

Mosolov's first piece of the evening was the only work with which I failed
to identify from the outset.  Four Newspaper Advertisements is a setting
for soprano with piano accompaniment (presented in an orchestrated form
here) of - well, four newspaper advertisements, actually.  The text of the
first one - "Tell everybody to buy and apply only P. E. Armenyeyev's best
quality leeches" - may give you the idea that this is a little out of the
ordinary as regards source text.  The regrettably anonymous soprano was
somewhat overmatched by the ensemble and I should perhaps listen to a
recording (see below) before passing judgement on the work.  In its
performance here it seemed to me to be acutely angular and abrasive in the
extreme - perhaps deliberately so, given the unusually sparse but immensely
varied series of accompanying motifs in the ensemble, but it seemed not to
match the mood of the rest of the concert.

A recent convert to Shostakovich's piano music, I found the arrangement
of four of his 1932-33 Twenty-Four Preludes to be breathtaking.  I don't
know the originals well enough to know which four were performed here (more
research in the wee small hours!) but there was one in which a devastating
and undisciplined little waltz immediately took centre stage.  It did
strike me there was a power to this music that is perhaps not quite as
obvious in the solo piano original - but maybe that was just the enthusiasm
of being there.  An engaging transition to what - for me - quickly became
the star piece of the evening.

Aleksandr Mosolov is not a name well known to me - though I intend to put
that right as soon as possible.  His Factory (the original title is Zavod,
which apparently means factory, though the piece is often referred to as
Foundry or Iron Foundry) is a titanic piece of audacity.  Praised by a
Soviet critic in the 1920s as "...a mighty hymn to machine work", this is
as massive a piece of writing celebrating the technological zeitgeist as
any in similar vein - Honnegger's slightly earlier Pacific 231 included.
Not having heard it before, I was completely unprepared for the unbridled
power of the work, made especially visual when the four-man brass section
rose to its feet, presumably to increase the volume.  I have a number of
rock musician friends who tell me that sheer volume in music making only
realises its potential with the electronic amplification of rock 'n roll.
I wish I could have recorded this performance (especially when they
reprised the second half of the work as an encore and the bassoonist got
to his feet to join the brass in what - had there been no audience - would
have undoubtedly become a major jam session!) to prove them wrong.  The
tumultuous applause attested to the fact the audience approved - to say
the very least!  An astonishing work with which to round off a thoroughly
engaging evening - and one that is recorded, I am glad to say - there is
a Melodiya disc available with both the Mosolov pieces referred to above,
which I have ordered today and shall await with bated breath.  I recommend
every lover of raw, big-boned, powerful orchestral music do the same!

Tim Mahon
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