From the Back Room: Music by Balakirev

Mili Balakirev (1837-1910) is known more for his influence on other composers, such as Tchaikovsky, than for his own music.

Young Balakirev

That said, Balakirev's Islamey, Tamara and Russia are heard now and then. And his Overture on Themes of Three Russian Songs, which leads off today's LP, has even appeared on this blog before - in the Kansas City Philharmonic recording led by Hans Schwieger. It's an appealing work. When I posted the Kansas City disc, I noted that Schwieger had chosen "scores that were unusual but still appealing."

The performances on today's LP are old-school Russian, and of uncertain vintage. They have a rough and ready feel that is something of a shock to Western sensibilities. But they also are authentic for their period.

Nikolai Anosov

The Overture on Themes of Three Russian Songs is conducted by Nikolai Anosov (1900-62) with the USSR State Symphony Orchestra, which I believe is now the Moscow State Symphony. Anosov was the orchestra's music director from 1945-50.

Also on this LP is Balakirev's complete incidental music for a production of Shakespeare's King Lear, a rarity. The overture is occasionally heard, but the set of incidental music as it appears here not so.

Leo Ginsburg

The King Lear music is conducted by Leo Ginzburg (1901-79), who leads the USSR Radio Symphony Orchestra, now known as the Tchaikovsky Symphony.

Both works were written in 1858, early in Balakirev's career, when he was barely in his 20s. The Overture on Russian Themes is an overt expression of the Russian musical nationalism that the composer promoted.

But what of the Shakespeare music? Leon Botstein has written: "Since Shakespeare had been appropriated by the French and German in translation, [Russian] nationalist intellectuals used Shakespeare to demonstrate that Slavic languages ... could transmit the English original of the world’s greatest playwright just as well as German or French ... Not surprisingly, many nineteenth-century Russian and Czech composers were eager to write symphonic music designed to accompany or evoke popular nationalist productions of Shakespeare’s plays."

The Overture on Russian Themes is vividly played, as was the Russian manner at the time. If you listen into the third minute of the overture, you will hear a familiar theme later used by Tchaikovsky in his Symphony No. 4. The recording is reasonably good mono.

The recording of the King Lear incidental music is more opaque. It features, if that is the right word, the empty-tub tympani and squalling brass that once were common in Russian recordings. Here too the performances are vivid.

This particular pressing dates from 1962, a few years before the establishment of the Melodiya company. The pressings are on the MK label, "MK" being an abbreviation for "Mezhdurodnaya Kniga," or "International Books," an export arm. In this case, MK sent the pressings to the US company Artia, which packaged them and bundled them off to its notoriously spotty distribution network.

Sorry, but I've been unable to find the dates of the recordings; the year listed in the file metadata represents the publication date of this record.

This is one of my "From the Back Room" posts that respond to reader requests.

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