RPYO & RPO Side-by-Side Concert - Truth to Power
The RPYO returns from their whirlwind tour to Boston and Montreal with this “Truth to Power” side-by-side concert with your RPO. Embark on an exhilarating musical odyssey exploring the vibrant essence of Russian music through two masterful compositions. Immerse yourself first in the spirited vitality of Russian Sailors' Dance - a compelling piece from Glière's ballet The Red Poppy. “Truth to Power” then features Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 11, "The Year 1905," a powerful reflection on the complexity of the Russian Revolution of 1905, marked by its dramatic intensity and vivid melodies.
https://rpo.org/event/rpyo-concert-truth-to-power/ ß link to purchase tickets (Pay What You Want)
PROGRAM NOTES:
REINHOLD GLIÈRE “Russian Sailors’ Dance” from The Red Poppy:
Following the Russian Revolution of 1917 that overthrew the Imperial government and established a communist state in Russia, the Bolshoi State Theatre in Moscow sought stories and subjects to use as propaganda to drum up support for Vladimir Lenin and his Soviet leadership. It found just the story in The Red Poppy, a tale about Soviet sailors who rescue overworked and exploited Chinese dockworkers. In addition to shining a heroic light on Soviet leadership, the story also supported the secondary cause of showing solidarity with China as an international ally. (Unfortunately, the Chinese, portrayed as needing rescuing, were unhappy with the plot.). The work was commissioned as a ballet, choreographed by Lev Lashchiline and Vasily Thikhomirov, with music written in 1926 and later revised by the Kiev-born composer Reinhold Glière, whose music adhered to the Russian Romantic tradition. The Red Poppy became known as the first Soviet-themed ballet, and the music was Glière’s most famous work. The “Russian Sailors’ March” appears at the end of Act One, titled in the score as “Dance of the Sailors from the Soviet Ship,” and exudes the fortitude and strength of the Soviet sailors. The melody is based upon a familiar Russian Revolution folk song called “Yblochko,” which translates to “Little Apple” and featured lyrics that embraced the new communist regime. Musically, Glière’s version is a theme with variations that gradually builds in loudness and speed, reaching raucous levels at a prestissimo tempo. Due to Glière’s exciting, appealing music, the “Sailors’ Dance” is frequently performed as a standalone dazzling display for orchestra. As for Glière, he managed to avoid artistic censorship by aligning with the Soviet government, resulting in a fate far different than composers like Rachmaninov and Shostakovich.
DMITRY SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 11 in G minor, Op. 103, “The Year 1905”:
For most of Shostakovich’s career in communist Russia, he avoided the government’s ire. But there were a couple of notable exceptions. In November 1936, the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin attended a performance of Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and walked out. The next day, a government-issued newspaper criticized the work’s formalism, a coded term for Western influence and modernism. Shostakovich’s future was on thin ice, but he managed a fairly quick turnaround with his celebrated Fifth Symphony. The second time was in 1948, when he and composers such as Sergei Prokofiev and Aram Khachaturian were again criticized by a major member of the communist party for their formalism. This time, Shostakovich’s works were banned, he lost his teaching position at the Moscow Conservatory, and he feared for his life overall. The campaign against Shostakovich softened slightly in 1949 when Stalin needed to send cultural representatives to New York and chose Shostakovich; Shostakovich didn’t dare to say anything to offend the Soviet Union despite being asked directly about his feelings. The biggest pressure lift, however, was in 1953 when Stalin died. However, his livelihood remained dependent on the Communist Party. So, with the events of 1948 still fresh in his mind, he set out in 1957 to write a Soviet symphony for the 40th anniversary of the 1917 Russian Revolution that depicted the “Bloody Sunday” events of January 9, 1905. “Bloody Sunday” was a date in which police fired on protesters of the Tsar in St. Petersburg, killing several hundred people. It was seen as one of the earliest events that led up to the 1917 Russian Revolution, in which Vladimir Lenin took over as leader of the new communist Soviet Union. As biographer Laurel Fay wrote of the symphony, “A more monumental, accessible, or effective tribute in commemoration of the fortieth anniversary could scarcely have been imagined.” The symphony weaved in about a dozen revolutionary songs, including one Shostakovich heard as a kid on the occasion of the 1917 Revolution, a funeral march called “You Fell a Victim.” Even though the symphony could be analyzed as a well-constructed appeal to the Soviet propaganda machine, its themes about tyranny and oppression were general enough to be heard with a broader moral character. And although the timing has been debunked, some even thought to hear the work as supporting the 1956 Hungarian uprising, where Hungary revolted against Soviet control. However, any potential correlations weren’t enough to raise eyebrows, as the work was awarded the Lenin Prize in 1958. The symphony is written for a full battery of strings, winds, and percussion—including two harps and a celesta (a small keyboard instrument that sounds like bells). Always inventing within the confines of his political situation, Shostakovich wrote the symphony’s four movements without pause and diverted away from the expected symphonic movement tempos. He begins with an Adagio movement depicting “The Palace Square” on the morning of “Bloody Sunday.” The timpani’s pounding serves as foreboding foreshadowing for the events ahead. The second movement is an Allegro, subtitled “The 9th of January,” which lays out the scene of the protesters’ increasing anger and the subsequent burst of bullet rounds fired at them by the police in the snare drum. The third movement, “Memory Eternal,” is an Adagio based on the tune “You Fell a Victim,” mentioned above. The final movement, Allegro non troppo, “Tocsin,” paves the path for the eventual October Revolution of 1917.
Program notes by Anna Reguero, PhD, a Rochester-based arts writer and music scholar.
