St Petersburg полностью

After Glinka came Dargomyzhsky with his Malorossiiskaya (Ukrainian) and Chukhonskaya (Finnish) fantasies for orchestra. But it was the Caucasian motifs that Russian composers found the most attractive. Here the pioneer was the leader of the Mighty Five, Balakirev, who brought back notations of local folk songs and dances from his trips through Georgia. Balakirev was especially enchanted by the Georgian lezghinka: “There is no better dance. Much more passionate and graceful than the tarantella, it reaches the majesty and nobility of the mazurka.”60 The result of Balakirev’s Caucasian enthusiasms were his symphonic poem Tamara and the piano fantasy Islamey, which elicited the praise of Franz Liszt, became popular with the public, and is still the touchstone for Russian piano virtuosi.

The extreme importance of Oriental motifs for the Mighty Five was underscored by Rimsky-Korsakov: “These new sounds were a sort of revelation for us then, we all were literally reborn.”61 He was the first in the group to write a major work of an Oriental character, the symphony Antar (1868), which was followed by his symphonic suite Scheherazade, still a staple of symphonic orchestras around the world.

A little-known episode in the history of Petersburg music is indicative of the importance for it of imperial themes. In 1880 the twenty-fifth anniversary of Alexander II’s reign was marked with great pomp. Among other festivities tableux vivants were planned, depicting various significant moments of Alexander II’s era, including Russia’s military victories. The music for these “living pictures,” commissioned by the government, was written by leading composers, including Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Borodin, and Tchaikovsky.

Mussorgsky’s chauvinism is well known. It was second only to Balakirev’s, whose religious fanaticism and anti-Semitism were legendary. The Polish characters in Boris Godunov are drawn with extreme antipathy; they are no less caricatures than the Poles in Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar, which is particularly striking in the much more realistic and psychologically sophisticated opera by Mussorgsky.

Paradoxically, Mussorgsky’s “Jewish” music hardly reflects his anti-Semitic feelings at all. The marvelous choruses “The Destruction of Sennacherib” and “Jesus Navin” (the musical theme for which Mussorgsky borrowed from neighborly Jews), “Hebrew Song,” as well as the famous “Two Jews, One Rich, One Poor” from Pictures at an Exhibition are imbued with respect for biblical Jewish figures but also with sympathy for modern Jewish people, who suddenly found themselves on the territory of the Russian Empire with the annexation of the Ukraine, Lithuania, and Poland, where millions of Jews resided.

In just the same way, Mussorgsky’s orchestral march “The Capture of Kars,” intended to accompany one of the living pictures in honor of the conquest of that Turkish fortress by Alexander II’s army, is triumphant but by no means jingoistic. Moreover, Mussorgsky’s vocal ballad “Forgotten,” composed six years earlier, is one of the most powerful antiwar statements in world music. The remarkable story of its creation gives evidence of the existence inside Petersburg culture of a powerful opposition to its prevailing imperial ambitions.

In March 1874 the battle artist Vassily Vereshchagin opened an exhibit in Petersburg of his works, depicting the conquest of Turkestan by Russia. Diligently crafted, almost photographic in technique, his paintings re-created the highlights of the military actions in central Asia. A tireless laborer and flashy self-promoter, Vereshchagin knew how to present his works to best effect. They were dramatically lit, in later years with custom-built electric projectors, a recent innovation. The exhibit enjoyed a sensational success with the Petersburg public.

Astonishing in their naturalistic detail and unsettling in their fearless depiction of the horrors of war, Vereshchagin’s canvases were enormously popular not only in Russia but also in Europe, where the artist was considered the best contemporary Russian painter, and in New York City, where Vereshchagin’s exhibition of 1889 brought him $84,000, a large sum for those days.

To get into the Vereshchagin show in Petersburg, people spent hours in line, shivering in the cold spring wind. The Petersburg intelligentsia attended, including Stasov and Mussorgsky. The high military authorities were also there. And inevitably, a scandal broke out.