Michael Glinka: Romanzen auf CD

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Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (1804—1857). Songs. Vocal Cycle “Farewell to St. Petersburg”

The golden age of the Russian art song — the beloved child of poetry and music — in the middle of the 19th century is connected with the name of Mikhail Glinka. The founder of Russian classical opera, the composer of masterpieces of orchestral and chamber music, Glinka had become the first among equals in the sphere of the romance.

Toward the time of the beginning of Glinka’s endeavors in the sphere of vocal music (the 1820s) the romance had existed for slightly more than a century. From the first compilation of lyrical songs “Amid Work Idleness” by Grigory Teplov (1759) to the “Russian songs” (a term meaning: songs on Russian texts) of the end of the 18th century and the art songs of the pre-Glinka period as well as by Glinka’s contemporaries (Aliabiev, Varlamov, Guriliov) it is not merely a genre that had emerged, but an integral musical-poetical tradition. In the liaison of “poetry and music” the romance has always been “led”: the determinative influence of poetry on the romance tradition is discernible on various levels (in the dominating themes, poetic motives, varieties of genre, as well as the rhythmic and melodic formulas, reflecting the peculiarities of versification).

“In Glinka’s romances always present is a keen knowledge of the intonation—musical vocabulary of the epoch, and, particularly, the language of the Russian everyday musical lyric poetry, with a constancy of its own point of view, “its own handwriting” in working with these elements” (Boris Asafiev).

Glinka’s personal, unique qualities become apparent everywhere. His melodies are simultaneously expressively inelaborate and virtuosic (the composer, having studied singing in Italy had subsequently become an outstanding vocal teacher of his time).

The piano parts to his songs also demonstrate a balance on a borderline between simplicity and intricacy; just as in the case of Schubert and Schumann’s songs, they frequently present commentaries to the “action” and endow it with a new dimension. The form of his art songs is natural; in some cases it follows the “inner form” and dramaturgy of the literary source, while in other cases it endows the latter with a new accentuation.

The majority of Glinka’s art songs were written by him prior to the mid-1840s. the exterior reason for this is his sojourn abroad (in France and then in Spain) when he switched his attention to orchestral music. However, particularly those years witness the end of the most important epoch of Russian art — the so-called “era of Russian poetry” (or the “Pushkin era”).
Glinka’s art songs became not only an integral part of this artistic milieu but also one of its most important forms of expression; at a certain point Glinka had “exhausted” the possibilities of the genre.

The romance cycle “Farewell to St. Petersburg” (1840), which could be seen as the culmination of Glinka’s song legacy of the 1830’s, owes its appearance to the composer’s friendship with the poet and playwright Nestor Kukolnik (1809—1868).

In his autobiographical “Notes” Glinka remembered his request to the poet to write a text to a new melody (“Bolero”, subsequently to become the third number of the romance cycle). “He consented and also suggested to me a number of poems written by him. in this regard Platon (the brother of Nestor and Vasilly Kukolnik-Ed.) came up with the idea of a set of twelve songs, which were subsequently (…) published under the name “Farewell to St. Petersburg”. I had a few spare melodies ready, and my work progressed quite successfully.”

The work on the song cycle went very quickly; from the quoted lines of the “Notes” and also from other sources it becomes clear that in some cases Kukolnik had composed texts to already composed melodies. On August 9, 1840 the entire work was performed at the farewell dinner in honor of Glinka at the Kukolniks’ house. Glinka was really saying farewell to St. Petersburg, as he thought, for a long time. Being in love with Ekaterina Kern, the composer was at the same time bound by the duties of marriage (which was a burden to him and from which he tried to free himself for many years). The only solution he could think of was to depart abroad with his beloved. However, due to a set of circumstances, the love story was not destined to develop into something more substantial: Glinka and Ekaterina Kern had parted on their way, the composer went to his family estate Novospasskoye (of the Smolensk region), where he worked on his opera “Ruslan and Lyudmila” (having finished the introduction at that time period). In the autumn of 1840, having undergone illness on the way back, Glinka returned to the capital.

From Glinka’s perspective at that time, “behind him” he had St. Petersburg and “in front of him” (as he thought) he had far away mysterious lands. From the contrast of these poetical-musical “themes” (in the broad sense) the cycle has evolved. The image of St. Petersburg in Glinka’s and Kukolnik’s composition is embodied in a set of “genre” songs: a polka (“Who Is She and Where Is She”); a lullaby (“Sleep, My Angel, Slumbe”), a barcarolle (“Asleep are the Blue Waves”); a drinking song (“Farewell, good friends…”). The “Passing Song” stands out by itself. All the “Russian” pages of the cycle are combined by an elegiac mood: the elegy is presented here not only as a genre variety of the art song, but also as a feature of Russian consciousness. However the cycle does possess true elegies, such as, for instance, “The Skylark”. The unfading splendor f this masterpiece of Glinka lies in the unusual, seemingly “natural” simplicity of the melody (close to the so-called “Russian songs” of Glinka and his contemporaries) and, simultaneously, the romantically intricate piano ritournelles, close to those of John Field (with whom Glinka had studied piano) and Chopin.

The “faraway lands” in “Farewell to St. Petersburg” are, first of all Palestine (for Russian culture this is a far-away land — not as much a geographical as a spiritual symbol, an embodiment of the ideal, divine beginning) and Spain. At the same time the “exotic” songs likewise feature an important role of genre qualities. An interesting feature of a sort of “genre mystification” is in the aforementioned “Bolero”, in which Glinka masterfully balances between the rhythmic-intonational forms of this Spanish dance and those of a Polonaise.

The themes of the “homeland” and “faraway countries” are both connected by a third theme – that of the wanderer, so typical for Romantic art. It brings Glinka’s composition close with the well-known examples of European music (for instance, Franz Schubert’s song cycles “Die Schöne Müllerin” and “Die Winterreisse”).

Glinka’s song cycle poses quite unusual and complex artistic problems for the performer and the listener. First of all, Glinka constantly balances between the chamber art song, essentially a household genre at its core, and the concert art song. As a result, some of the songs of the cycle (particularly those, gearing towards the chamber tendency, a clear genre nature) are extremely popular, while others are scarcely performed at all. At the same time, the “large” concert-type songs present themselves as wonderful specimens of Glinka’s style. In the latter vein are such songs as, for instance, “Fantasy” (“Halt, My Loyal Steed …”) presenting itself as a song-ballad (starting in A major and ending in F major), in the only one of its kind of concentric form; or the “Cavatina” (“T’was Not So Long Ago You Blossomed Like a Rose”), with a juxtaposition of sections, contrasting in their tonal and rhythmical relationships, typical for a large opera aria.
The entire “Farewell to St. Petersburg” is abound with Glinka’s amazing novelties: such is the play of the chiaroscuro (between the major and the minor) in the lullaby (“Sleep, My Angel, Slumber…”), reminding of the song “Der Müller und der Bach” from Schubert’s “Die Schöne Müllerin”; absolutely untypical for the Russian art song of that time are the harmonies based on the natural diatonicism in the “Jewish Song” (“The Mist Descended from the Mountainous Countries”)…

Beautiful as may be the separate numbers from “Farewell to St. Petersburg”, it is the performance of the complete masterpiece in its entirety which enriches our perception not only of Glinka’s songs but of his overall style. For instance, the interconnection between the works written simultaneously – “Farewell to St. Petersburg”, the music to N. Kukolnik’s tragedy “Prince Kholmsky” and the opera “Ruslan and Lyudmila” – becomes apparent. By this is meant the relation of the overall conceptions, as well as the common features of the intonations and musical themes: for instance, between the “Lullaby” and the Cavatina of Gorislava (in the Third Act of the opera), between the “Romance” (“Who is she and where is she…”) and one of the themes of Ludmila’s Cavatina (from the First Act of the opera).

In the present recording the piano part in both individual songs and the song cycle “Farewell to St. Petersburg” is performed on a so-called romantic clavier “Erard” (1839). The aim of the musicians was to recreate not only the sound but the performers’ atmosphere of that distant time period.

Andrei Andrianov (tenor)
Born in Moscow in 1969. Since the age of six he has performed as a soloist in numerous children’s musical choirs. During the years 1980—1983 he was a soloist of the Large Radio and TV Children’s Choir. In 1999 he graduated from Moscow State Conservatory majoring in “solo singing”.

The main sphere of activity of the singer is historical performance in general, especially dealing with the Baroque period. As an invited soloist Andrei Andrianov has frequently sung together with the leading authentic ensembles — “Madrigal”, “Moscow Baroque”, “Soloists of the Baroque”, “Sankt-Joseph-Kapelle” and numerous others. Andrei Andrianov also specializes in Jewish cantata-oratorio (cantorial) music, — for over ten years he has participated in the Male Choir of the Moscow Choral Synagogue (“Zimra”) and the “Hassidic Cappella” (formerly the Choir of the Cantorial Art Academy). Since 2006 he has been a soloist at the Moscow “Amadeus” Theater. He is on the faculty at the Department of Historical and Contemporary Performing Arts of the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory.

Alexei Shevchenko (romantic clavier)
Pianist, organist and harpsichordist Alexei Shevchenko was born in 1979 in Kuibyshev (recently Samara).
Graduated from the Central Music High School affiliated with the Moscow State Conservatory as a piano student of K. Shashkina, after which he graduated from Moscow Conservatory, where he studied “piano, harpsichord and historical piano” (as a pupil of assistant prof. Yu. Martynov) and “organ” (as a pupil of prof. A. Parshin).

As an organist he took part in master classes of Martin Haselbeck (Germany), Andrea Marcona and Christopher Stembridge (Italy); as a performer on the historical piano he took part in the master classes of Malcolm Billson (USA), Andreas Steier (Germany), Bart van Oort (Netherlands), Tom Begin (Belgium) and Clair Chevalier.

Alexei Shevchenko is a winner of the First Prize at the International Competition for Organists in Italy “Marcello Galanti” (2001) and a participant of numerous international festivals, held in Russia and abroad. In a duo with Maria Uspenskaya he took part in international festivals of early music in Utrecht (Nethelands, 2003) and Sopron (Hungary, 2005).

Since September 2003 Alexei Shevchenko has been teaching performance on historical keyboard instruments and chamber ensemble at the Department of Historical and Contemporary Performing Arts at Moscow State Conservatory. Presently he actively engages in numerous performances as an organist, a pianist and as a performer on historical keyboard instruments: the harpsichord, hammerklavier piano, the romantic piano, etc.

Mikhail Segelman