Rachmaninov & Shostakovich Before the Iron Curtain

Alexander Mosolov
The Iron Foundry  4’

Dmitry Shostakovich
Concerto for piano, trumpet and strings (Piano Concerto No. 1)  21’

INTERVAL: 20 minutes

Sergey Rachmaninov
Symphony No. 3 in A minor  40’

Marie-Ange Nguci piano
Philip Cobb trumpet
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Dalia Stasevska conductor

This concert is being broadcast live by BBC Radio 3 in Radio 3 in Concert. It will be available for 30 days after broadcast via BBC Sounds, where you can also find podcasts and music mixes.

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The Iron Foundry is Mosolov’s most celebrated work (the Russian title is simply Zavod – ‘Factory’). It was premiered in Russia in 1927 as part of a suite Steel, purportedly from an unrealised ballet. The musical representation of machine noise was a major trend of the time. Arthur Honegger brought it to the wider public in 1923 with Pacific 231, his famous imitation of a high-speed steam train. Sergey Prokofiev portrayed a factory in his ballet Le pas d’acier (‘The Steel Step’, first performed in 1927). In the film world, Gottfried Huppertz provided a machine-music score for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (also 1927). Even these robust examples of the genre pale in comparison with the supreme drive and brilliance of Mosolov’s short piece. An assemblage of repetitive grinding motifs is punctuated by heavy percussion blows (the score famously includes an iron sheet), and out of this din emerges a glorious horn theme. The Iron Foundry was greeted with delight and outrage in equal measure. Orchestras queued to perform it, while Soviet critics complained that it glorified the machine at the expense of the worker. The 1930s Paris recording under Julius Ehrlich stands as a monument to Mosolov’s brief period of fame.

Alexander Mosolov

In the 1920s Alexander Mosolov was one of the most promising young Soviet composers and, alongside Shostakovich, was making a name for himself across Europe. His challenging and abrasive modernist style belonged to the aesthetic of the machine and the cityscape, but he was also seen more particularly as the musical representative of Soviet industrialisation. For all his promise, however, his fame was short-lived. By the end of the decade the artistic environment in the USSR was more restrictive, his musical innovations were suspect in the eyes of the state and commissions dried up. Outspoken, hot‑tempered and given to drink, Mosolov made his position still more precarious, and in 1936 he was finally expelled from the Union of Composers for brawling. During the Great Purge of 1937 he was sentenced to eight years in the Gulag for ‘anti-Soviet activities’, a common charge of the time. Although he was released after just eight months, he emerged a broken man. He still composed prolifically but his music was much blander, and he spent much of his time collecting and arranging folk songs. The revival of his earlier music came posthumously, in the late 1980s, by which time many of his scores had long since disappeared.

1  Allegro moderato –
2  Lento –
3  Moderato –
4  Allegro con brio.

Marie-Ange Nguci piano
Philip Cobb trumpet

Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto is one of his most direct engagements with the European neo-Classicism that was pioneered by Stravinsky and Hindemith in the 1920s. Among other things, this trend revived the genre of the concerto grosso, which had flourished in the early 18th century. Unlike the solo concerto, it pitted a group of players against the orchestra, and the virtuoso writing for both piano and trumpet places Shostakovich’s piece in this concerto grosso tradition. As with his fellow neo-Classicists, Shostakovich makes irreverent use of historic idioms, but here he takes this to a hooliganistic level.

The Concerto seems to begin in an earnest vein, with an allusion to Beethoven’s ‘Appassionata’ Sonata and some Bachian counterpoint, but this is followed by a string of frivolous operetta-like melodies, the trumpet’s interjections further lowering the tone.

The second movement is a languorous Boston waltz, which Shostakovich fits out with overblown crises, a parodic moment of transcendence and a jazz solo on muted trumpet. An improvisatory link and another moment of misleading earnestness take us into the finale, where the fun really begins.

The 18th-century master of the frantic, witty finale was Haydn, and Shostakovich’s piano-writing follows his lead, playfully underlining the influence by having a trumpet quote directly from a Haydn piano sonata in D major, which appears in the ‘wrong’ key. Later, the trumpet is given the chance to shine in a longer solo reminiscent, at first, of Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto but giving way to a more modern kind of comedy. The music begins to switch ever more rapidly between old and new, serious and ridiculous, and the cadenza then takes this to the outer limits in an explosion of lowbrow pianistic virtuosity, as if Brahms had hauled an Odessa street song into one of his Hungarian Dances. Here Shostakovich is also looking back to his job as a silent-movie pianist in the mid-1920s, when he had to improvise kaleidoscopic accompaniments to chases, fights and passionate kisses.

Shostakovich seriously considered a career as a concert pianist, up to 1927, when a disappointing result at the first Chopin Piano Competition dampened these ambitions and led him to switch his priorities to composition. He still maintained a profile as a pianist, and wrote this concerto’s piano part as a vehicle for his own talents. He gave the premiere in Leningrad (St Petersburg) in 1933 and continued to play the piece in later years, enjoying opportunities to show off as he delivered the finale with superhuman rapidity.

Dmitry Shostakovich

Dmitry Shostakovich has emerged as one of the 20th century’s greatest composers, but his standing is bound up with his biography, the oppression of the Stalin regime and the politics of the Cold War. He was a musical prodigy, and his graduation work, the First Symphony, soon won him international fame. At home he became the No. 1 composer, the most admired and best paid. Even so, he also suffered from harsh official censure, beginning in 1936 when his internationally acclaimed opera The Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District was withdrawn from Soviet stages following direct criticism from Stalin himself. His Seventh Symphony, written during the siege of Leningrad, became an international symbol of resistance to Nazism but prompted sneers from Western composers such as Stravinsky, who thought that art serving any kind of politics was distasteful. After Shostakovich’s death, his work was mined for messages of resistance to the regime, and such messages can indeed be found next to ciphers and hidden quotations relating to his private life. Shostakovich’s massive output, including the monumental cycles of 15 symphonies and 15 string quartets, thus remains a magnet for intense engagement – and not only for the reasons of its transcendent beauty and power.

INTERVAL: 20 MINUTES

1  Lento – Allegro moderato
2  Adagio ma non troppo – Allegro vivace – Tempo come prima
3  Allegro

Rachmaninov composed his Third Symphony during two summers on his Swiss estate, where he had tried to recreate the stable and peaceful surroundings of his pre-Revolutionary life in Russia but with modern comforts. At first glance, the Symphony is a nostalgic piece brimming with echoes of Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov and his own younger self – a ‘truly Russian’ symphony. Yet this familiar idiom has been subtly modernised: there are ruptured textures and surprising turns, and deceptive paths that seem to lead nowhere. Rachmaninov’s writing for the orchestra, taking a cue from Richard Strauss, becomes highly individualised, and its lushness often takes on a hard edge.

The very first notes make us scour the orchestra for their source: what is this beautiful instrument? Perhaps a saxophone? In fact it is a unique mix of clarinet, muted horn and muted cello – a voice of divine beauty. The melody sounds as if it might be a Russian Orthodox chant but, if it is, the source has yet to be found. This ‘chant’ will become a motto, appearing at crucial junctures and also insinuating itself into seemingly unrelated themes. Then we hear more of the trademark Rachmaninov: huge curtain-raising chords and a resolute march-like theme. It is as if the composer were gathering together his most recognisable traits, but only in order to redirect them towards new goals.

Rachmaninov said that he always had a programme in mind, a story or at least an image behind the music, but he rarely made these public. The Third Symphony, admittedly, is not easy to ‘read’, to find the key to the narrative. Many years earlier, Rachmaninov had concealed a Faustian design in his First Piano Sonata (1907): the movements represented, in turn, Faust, Gretchen and Mephistopheles. We might sense that something similar underpins the Third Symphony, but transplanted in Russian soil.

The first movement flows from Rachmaninov’s lyricism: a gloomy and nostalgic stream initiated by the clarinets, then a warm and hopeful stream in the cellos. There is an ecstatic and heroic climax before the themes are developed with longing, anxiety and high drama, which is reined in by the return of the motto.

Next comes an Adagio-cum-Scherzo. The motto is now an epic song, and the achingly beautiful solo violin evokes Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade – or perhaps Gretchen? Out of the orchestral whirlwind emerges an odd triple-time ‘march’, a sinister portent.

The jolly Russian dance at the beginning of the finale promises an easy ride but it is deceptive. A tone of subtle mockery undermines it and there are questions and hesitations, as if asking ‘What’s next?’ There is a fugue, then a passage full of oriental languor, but these are red herrings. What was hidden then reveals itself as the ‘Dies irae’ motif, the chant from the Requiem Mass that became a Romantic symbol of death, now swept up into a danse macabre. But the Russian motto is given a competing dance of its own. Which will have the last word?

Sergei Rachmaninov

Sergey Rachmaninov entered the stage as a remarkable, once-in-a-century pianist, a gifted conductor and a composer whose first opera was blessed by Tchaikovsky. He seemed to have it all, but the failed premiere of his ambitious First Symphony in 1897 was a terrible setback that plunged him into a lengthy bout of depression and affected his confidence for the rest of his life. He emerged a winner, writing piano concertos, solo piano works, operas and songs that won him a wide popular following both in Russia and abroad. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, when his country estate was ransacked, he emigrated from Russia and reinvented himself as a full-time touring pianist, only occasionally setting aside time to compose. Despite the condescension of the critics, who dismissed him as a relic of the past and his popularity as a passing fad, his music has stood the test of time. His work often took on a second life in popular culture, when it was taken up in film scores and pop songs. Rachmaninov’s melodies flowed from sources in Russian folk and liturgical music but have become internationally recognisable symbols of deep human passion.

^{Programme notes and profile © Marina Frolova-Walker
Marina Frolova-Walker is Professor of Music History at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge. She is the author of Russian Music and Nationalism from Glinka to Stalin and Stalin’s Music Prize: Soviet Culture and Politics.}

Biographies

Dalia Stasevska conductor

Finnish conductor Dalia Stasevska studied violin and composition at the Tampere Conservatory and violin, viola and conducting at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. Her conducting teachers included Jorma Panula and Leif Segerstam.

Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra since 2019, she made her BBC Proms debut that year and conducted the Last Night of the Proms in 2020, as well as the First Night in 2021. This season she became Chief Conductor of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra.

Highlights of the current season include debuts with the New York Philharmonic and the Baltimore and Seattle Symphony orchestras. She also returns to the Oslo Philharmonic and Royal Stockholm Philharmonic orchestras, as well as to Finnish National Opera for a double bill of Poulenc’s La voix humaine and songs by Kurt Weill with Karita Mattila. Other recent engagements include performances with the Orchestre National de France, the Detroit and Montreal Symphony orchestras, the Swedish Radio Symphony and the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra.

In the opera house she has conducted Madam Butterfly and Lucia di Lammermoor for Norwegian Opera, as well as Don Giovanni for the Royal Swedish Opera, Eugene Onegin for Opéra de Toulon, The Cunning Little Vixen for Finnish National Opera and Sebastian Fagerlund’s Höstsonaten (‘Autumn Sonata’) at the 2018 Baltic Sea Festival in Stockholm, featuring Anne Sofie von Otter.

In 2018 Dalia Stasevska had the honour of conducting the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic at the Nobel Prize Ceremony in Stockholm. In 2020 she was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Conductor Award.

Philip Cobb trumpet

Philip Cobb joined the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 2020 as Principal Trumpet, having served for over a decade as Principal Trumpet with the London Symphony Orchestra, which he joined aged only 21.

Born into a family with strong links to Salvation Army music-making, he was also a member of the National Youth Brass Band of Great Britain, in which he played Principal Cornet, before studying at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama under Paul Beniston and Alison Balsom.

In 2006 he was a prize-winner in the Maurice André International Trumpet Competition and the following year he released his debut solo CD, Life Abundant, joined by the Cory Band and organist Ben Horden. During his studies he played in the Salvation Army’s International Staff Band, joined the London Symphony Orchestra’s Brass Academy and also played Principal Trumpet with the European Youth Orchestra.

Philip Cobb has also worked with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Chamber Orchestra and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam, while, as a chamber musician, he has performed with Superbrass, Eminence Brass, Septura and Barbican Brass.

In 2012 he released his second solo CD, Songs from the Heart, joined by the International Staff Band. Recent solo highlights include Ernest Tomlinson’s Cornet Concerto at the 2020 Royal Northern College of Music Brass Band Festival, accompanied by the Tredegar Band, and the solo trumpet part in Copland’s Quiet City at the BBC Proms in 2020.

Marie-Ange Nguci piano

Albanian-born Marie-Ange Nguci entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 13 to study with Nicholas Angelich. She also holds a diploma in Ondes Martenot from the Conservatoire, plays the organ and cello, studied conducting in Vienna and holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts from the City University of New York.

Engagements this season include concerts with the Berlin Konzerthaus Orchestra under Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider, the Danish National Symphony Orchestra under Fabio Luisi, the Tonkünstler Orchestra under Pierre Bleuse at the Vienna Musikverein, the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra under Tabita Berglund, the Flanders Symphony Orchestra on tour with Kristiina Poska, the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris at the Paris Philharmonie and recitals at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Oslo Opera House, Fundación Juan March in Madrid, Piano à Lyon and Bergen International Festival.

Her repertoire ranges from Baroque, Classical and Romantic works to contemporary music, and she has worked closely with composers including Thierry Escaich, Bruno Mantovani, Graciane Finzi, Pascal Zavaro and Karol Beffa. She has performed at music festivals throughout Europe and the USA, as well as in Yekaterinburg and Tokyo. Her first CD, En Miroir, was issued in 2018 and features piano works by composers best known as organists and improvisers – Bach, Franck, Saint-Saëns and Escaich.

Since winning her first international competition in 2011 – France’s Lagny-sur-Marne contest – she has won numerous other awards. Marie-Ange Nguci has been profiled in the French edition of Vanity Fair as one of a group of pioneers under 30 who are changing the world. She is also a laureate of the Yamaha Music Foundation and the International Academy of Music in the Principality of Liechtenstein.