Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra & Vasily Petrenko - Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov - Op34, Op36, Op35 [Official Digital Download 24/192]

It was Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov’s older brother, Voin, who first put ideas of travel, ships and the sea into the would-be composer’s head. The young Nikolay had never set foot aboard a boat but Voin’s evocative letters home from the Far East, where he was stationed in the Imperial Russian Navy, proved more than sufficient. Nikolay’s career path looked set even from his childhood bedroom, where he learned nautical terms, rigged-up model ships and practiced tying knots, his mind full of the adventure and romance of seafaring. In 1856, he enrolled as a naval cadet and completed six years of training.

During that time another passion nudged its way into Rimsky’s heart: music. Barely a year into his studies at the naval academy, the young Nikolay saw his first opera. Soon he heard symphonies by Beethoven and Mendelssohn and encountered a piece by his senior Mikhail Glinka, Jota Aragonesa. Even before he embarked on a three-year voyage around the world aboard a clipper, Rimsky knew he wanted to be a composer, not a seaman. Afterwards, having sailed into some of the great ports of the world, he returned home happy never to leave Russia again – the only journeys Rimsky wanted to make were musical.

Rimsky’s family wealth meant he could embark upon a musical career without too much difficulty, however disapproving his relatives. First, he took piano lessons from Theodore Canille, which afforded him introductions to the most important Russian composers of the day: Mily Balakirev, César Cui and Modest Mussorgsky. Balakirev furnished Rimsky with a rudimentary education in theory and harmony, but the youngster had to put in the hours privately to refine his skills (particularly in the field of counterpoint).

Thus Rimsky slipped into the milieu of those composers and became associated with the push for Russian nationalism in music. But as the youngest of the posse that became known as The Mighty Handful, Rimsky was acutely aware of nationalism’s limitations as well as its opportunities, and his travels had attuned his ears to the cosmopolitan. However much he cultivated a distinctly Russian sound in his music (most obviously in his Russian Easter Festival Overture), Rimsky became convinced of the need to bring the nationalist movement, as it existed, to a point of closure. In so doing, he would form a link between his own generation and the Russian composers of the early twentieth century who would reinvent the country’s national musical vocabulary once more (among them Igor Stravinsky, one of his pupils).

Rimsky believed wholeheartedly in the validity of impregnating his scores with indigenous Russian ingredients; his argument was for doing so within a broader range of methods, resources and musical expression. The composer collected and edited folksongs and had a knack for underlining their ‘Russianness’ even in music that felt more outward looking and international. In 1889, he visited the Universal Exhibition in Paris and heard performances of two of the works recorded here, both recently composed: the Russian Easter Festival Overture and Capriccio Espagnol. Soon afterwards, Rimsky heard the same pieces performed in Brussels, noting that both the Parisians and Belgians responded far better to his bright, decorative, exotic and fantastical Russian music than to the doleful images of his country presented in music by Balakirev and Cui. …

TRACKLIST

1. Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra & Vasily Petrenko - Capriccio Espagnol, Op. 34: I. Alborada
2. Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra & Vasily Petrenko - Capriccio Espagnol, Op. 34: II. Variazioni
3. Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra & Vasily Petrenko - Capriccio Espagnol, Op. 34: III. Alborada
4. Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra & Vasily Petrenko - Capriccio Espagnol, Op. 34: IV. Scena e canto gitano. Allegretto
5. Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra & Vasily Petrenko - Capriccio Espagnol, Op. 34: V. Fandango asturiano
6. Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra & Vasily Petrenko - Russian Easter Festival Overture, Op. 36
7. Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra & Vasily Petrenko - Scheherazade, Op. 35: I. The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship
8. Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra & Vasily Petrenko - Scheherazade, Op. 35: II. The Tale of The Kalendar Prince
9. Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra & Vasily Petrenko - Scheherazade, Op. 35: III. The Young Prince and The Young Princess
10. Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra & Vasily Petrenko - Scheherazade, Op. 35: IV. Festival at Baghdad – The Sea – The Shipwreck



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