![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drplaceboIt's Forgotten Masterpiece Friday!
Tchaikovsky believed him to be the most talented Russian composer of his generation, and Rachmaninoff was an admirer, but Vasily Kalinnikov (1866-1901) is obscure today. Kalinnikov's career as a composer was short. Though he composed a little throughout his musical career, he did not begin to compose in earnest until he was 26, when tuberculosis forced him to retire from his career as a professional bassoonist. The same disease would take his life shortly before his 35th birthday. It was a tragic story, but not really a "what if": had he not contracted tuberculosis so early in his life, he might never have composed any large-scale works at all.
Kalinnikov's two symphonies were both immediate successes, though he did not live to see his second symphony performed. He is perhaps also remembered as the victim of posthumous plagiarism: the first phrase of the Soviet national anthem (and, with revised lyrics, the present Russian national anthem), composed by Alexander Alexandrov in 1930, was a note-for-note copy of a melody from the middle of Kalinnikov's by-then-obscure symphonic poem Bylina.
Kalinnikov's first symphony was his biggest success: completed in 1895, it was performed all over Europe by the end of the year and remained a staple of the repertoire until the 1920s when it gradually fell out of favor. At the premiere in Kiev, the audience requested and received repeat performances of both of the middle movements. The first movement opens forcefully and ominously, with unison strings. This theme, heard in various forms throughout the piece, weaves in and out of a broad, sunny, equally attention-grabbing second theme; the contrast between the two themes is what makes the first movement so compelling. After an ethereal, magical slow movement and a boisterous, swaggering scherzo, the finale wraps up the piece by combining its own rousing theme with elements from all three movements before. The triumphant conclusion to the final movement is especially elegant in weaving together parts of all four movements.
Tchaikovsky believed him to be the most talented Russian composer of his generation, and Rachmaninoff was an admirer, but Vasily Kalinnikov (1866-1901) is obscure today. Kalinnikov's career as a composer was short. Though he composed a little throughout his musical career, he did not begin to compose in earnest until he was 26, when tuberculosis forced him to retire from his career as a professional bassoonist. The same disease would take his life shortly before his 35th birthday. It was a tragic story, but not really a "what if": had he not contracted tuberculosis so early in his life, he might never have composed any large-scale works at all.
Kalinnikov's two symphonies were both immediate successes, though he did not live to see his second symphony performed. He is perhaps also remembered as the victim of posthumous plagiarism: the first phrase of the Soviet national anthem (and, with revised lyrics, the present Russian national anthem), composed by Alexander Alexandrov in 1930, was a note-for-note copy of a melody from the middle of Kalinnikov's by-then-obscure symphonic poem Bylina.
Kalinnikov's first symphony was his biggest success: completed in 1895, it was performed all over Europe by the end of the year and remained a staple of the repertoire until the 1920s when it gradually fell out of favor. At the premiere in Kiev, the audience requested and received repeat performances of both of the middle movements. The first movement opens forcefully and ominously, with unison strings. This theme, heard in various forms throughout the piece, weaves in and out of a broad, sunny, equally attention-grabbing second theme; the contrast between the two themes is what makes the first movement so compelling. After an ethereal, magical slow movement and a boisterous, swaggering scherzo, the finale wraps up the piece by combining its own rousing theme with elements from all three movements before. The triumphant conclusion to the final movement is especially elegant in weaving together parts of all four movements.
(no subject)
Date: 2017-10-06 09:39 pm (UTC)