Reviewing my CD finds from half-price day at the Friends of the Multnomah County Library Annual Booksale.
Prokofiev: Symphony #6.
National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine
Theodore Kuchar, Conductor
Prokofiev and Shostakovich are the two giants of 20th Century Soviet music, and even though they have distinctly different styles and biographies, I have never really been able to untangle them from each other. Their lives and work were both formed through a weird fusion of the Russian classical tradition, the new musical ideas of the day, and the brutal absolutism of Stalin’s dictatorship. Stalin and his minions demanded that culture serve the state, and so mandated that composers create music accessible to the average person. Meanwhile, composers elsewhere were busily cutting off the limb of atonality and serial composition that Schoenburg had led them on onto. Thus it is that we arrive at a slightly uncomfortable state, with the only symphonic music written between Appalachian Spring and Phillip Glass that has anything resembling an enduring audience today being the stuff that was written according to the dictates of a man and a system that caused as much pain, fear, and suffering as anyone, ever. But this does not make it bad music.
If you read up on Prokofiev’s Sixth, you’ll be told that 1) it is “about” World War II, and 2) that it is riddled with slyly dissident material. Both things may well be true, and if you want to think about that while listening, be my guest. To my mind, though, saying an instrumental composition is “about” an abstraction is asking it to carry an awful lot of weight.
What you have in the notes is a piece rooted deep in the Russian tradition. Indeed, there’s no ten-second segment of the Sixth that would not be able to pass as a short segment of a Tchaikovsky symphony. At the same time, though, the work as a whole is nothing like Tchaikovsky. There are no grand, sweeping gestures, no sweet sweet sweet melodies, and no relentless march towards a towering conclusion. The mood ranges from analytical to ironically jaunty, with no moments of titanic triumph or of maudlin despair. For anyone who might happen to have Lietenant Kije on their mind, there is nothing here so grabby as that very fun Prokofiev piece, although the scherzo does manage to work up a reasonable toe-tapping head of steam.
Prognosis: I like any given measure of the Sixth, but it hasn’t really come together as an interesting whole for me. I’ll keep it, but I doubt it will ever be in heavy rotation.
Prokofiev: Symphony #6.
National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine
Theodore Kuchar, Conductor
Prokofiev and Shostakovich are the two giants of 20th Century Soviet music, and even though they have distinctly different styles and biographies, I have never really been able to untangle them from each other. Their lives and work were both formed through a weird fusion of the Russian classical tradition, the new musical ideas of the day, and the brutal absolutism of Stalin’s dictatorship. Stalin and his minions demanded that culture serve the state, and so mandated that composers create music accessible to the average person. Meanwhile, composers elsewhere were busily cutting off the limb of atonality and serial composition that Schoenburg had led them on onto. Thus it is that we arrive at a slightly uncomfortable state, with the only symphonic music written between Appalachian Spring and Phillip Glass that has anything resembling an enduring audience today being the stuff that was written according to the dictates of a man and a system that caused as much pain, fear, and suffering as anyone, ever. But this does not make it bad music.
If you read up on Prokofiev’s Sixth, you’ll be told that 1) it is “about” World War II, and 2) that it is riddled with slyly dissident material. Both things may well be true, and if you want to think about that while listening, be my guest. To my mind, though, saying an instrumental composition is “about” an abstraction is asking it to carry an awful lot of weight.
What you have in the notes is a piece rooted deep in the Russian tradition. Indeed, there’s no ten-second segment of the Sixth that would not be able to pass as a short segment of a Tchaikovsky symphony. At the same time, though, the work as a whole is nothing like Tchaikovsky. There are no grand, sweeping gestures, no sweet sweet sweet melodies, and no relentless march towards a towering conclusion. The mood ranges from analytical to ironically jaunty, with no moments of titanic triumph or of maudlin despair. For anyone who might happen to have Lietenant Kije on their mind, there is nothing here so grabby as that very fun Prokofiev piece, although the scherzo does manage to work up a reasonable toe-tapping head of steam.
Prognosis: I like any given measure of the Sixth, but it hasn’t really come together as an interesting whole for me. I’ll keep it, but I doubt it will ever be in heavy rotation.
6 comments:
Don't know this piece, but I've always liked Prokofiev (and similarly pretty much loathed anything by Schostakovich that I've played or heard). I love the violin concertos in particular. I find it fascinating that Soviet authorities saw classical music as a threat. I'm trying to envision, say, George Bush sending a rabid Dick Cheney and his stormtroopers after, say, John Adams (the composer, not the decomposed president) or Philip Glass for penning a piece that contained, say, a snippet of an Arabic folk tune. On the one hand, as a classical musician, I'd love to be thought of as that relevant and important, on the other hand, I'm REALLY glad I'm not!
For my money, any work of art that requires a theoretical apparatus to digest can go saw off its own limbs as much as it pleases (yes, I'm talking to you, Schoenberg!). I've got other things to do with my time. Not that intellectual understanding can't deepen an appreciation of a work, but if the intellectualism is the ONLY thing sustaining it, if it has no resonance with any basic aspect of human experience, then really, there's not enough hours in the day to waste on it.
@DocSchnell: I'm going to review "The Rest Is Noise," a history of 20th Century music, for Beethoven's Birthday. Short version: you want to read it. You, DrSchnell, want to read it in particular. It's fabulous at answering the twin mysteries of how c. music got so politicized, and why the European musical tradition burned itself at the stake for half a century (although it takes a much more even tone on the latter than either you or I).
My favorite Prok/Shosty piece is actually by the latter; I LOVES the 2nd Piano Concerto. My other Soviet fave is by a B-lister, the Kabelevsky Cello Concerto. You like yourself a good cello concerto, dontcha?
Intellectualism is a basic aspect of human experience.
Tell us more about that....
In fact, my cello teacher just got me started on learning the Kabalevsky, which I had never heard before! Right now it sounds like crap (with my playing, not because of its own merits or lack thereof). But I'm sure it will be lovely in a few months time.....
re: Nichim:
True, though I'd also argue that intellectualism devoid of grounding in any other aspect of the real world is wankery. But maybe that's just because I've been in the process of reading a particularly wankish theoretical geography book in order to review it. I'm looking forward to using the phrase wankery in a book review.
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