STRAVINSKY'S "LOST" TRIBUTE TO RIMSKY-KORSAKOV SET TO PREMIER IN RUSSIA FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 107 YEARS - WORLDWIDE LIVESTREAM TO BE MADE AVAILABLE FOR HISTORIC EVENT

Stravinsky, left, and his music teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov, right.

Christmas will come a tad early this year for maestro Valery Gergiev. 

The esteemed Russian conductor and Mariinsky Theatre Chief announced early last week his intent to re-introduce the works of homegrown iconic composer Igor Stravinsky to Russian audiences, which, by and large, have been starved of the composers work for the better part of a century - a result of a government boycott following the countries’ Communist Revolution in 1917, and an outright ban on performing works by Stravinsky – labeled “degenerate music” - during the second world war which lasted until the early 1960s. According to Gergiev, the Russian nation, since the end of the war, has only produced some 10% of Stravinsky’s works in the form of live productions, prompting the famed conductor to announce that he has thus chosen 2017 to honor the composer by reintroducing his vast repertoire to native audiences.

Gergiev's fellow music loving countrymen will be honored with a preview of what’s to come in the New Year on December 2nd, with a rare performance of Stravinsky’s Pogrebal'naya Pesnya (Funeral Song) – the Russian composer’s tribute to fellow composer and teacher, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov following the latters death from complications of angina in June 1908.

The short work (said to be only 12 minutes long) has only been heard once in 107 years – when it was performed seven months after Korsakov’s death, in January 1909 - and had long since believed to have been destroyed – the unfortunate and destructive byproduct of revolutionary and civil war.

Stravinsky himself is said to have mourned the loss of the work, which immediately preceded his notorious skyrocket to international fame when he premiered his much acclaimed [The] Firebird on the Paris Stage under Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes machine. The composer claimed a faulty memory and a strong desire to “...see what I was composing just before The Firebird.”

Now, a century plus later, the previously internationally-unknown composer will finally get his wish, albeit 45 years too late (Stravinsky died of heart failure in 1971 whilst living in New York). It is all thanks to some persistent Russian musicologists and archivists who bravely kept both word of mouth and search alive for Stravinsky’s lost work, which they believed might have been stored among piles of aging, un-cataloged music in the archives of The St Petersburg Philharmonic or the Conservatoire - even though “rummaging was not encouraged” during the reign of the Soviet Union – particularly for a person their Government considered to be “not a person” at all ^{[see links below - The Guardian]}. Their unyielding hutzpah led to one eagle-eyed librarian discovering missing orchestral parts of the score long believed to have been lost forever whilst rummaging through the archives – and lost forever, they may well have been – her find came as a direct result of a 2015 Conservatoire complete overhaul, in which all loose manuscripts were to be re-shelved – with works like Stravinsky’s Funeral Song facing the very real potential of another accidental oversight - once more relegating the composers lost work to yet another bin, to be buried in some dusty, lonely corner of the archives from whence it came.

Be sure to watch the live stream December 2 at 2:00 PM ET, which will be brought to audiences in Russia and around the globe by Medici.tv and Mezzo.

In the meantime, enjoy Gergiev’s impassioned interpretation of Stravinsky’s “The Firebird” (‘Finale’):



Read more about this discovery (and the upcoming performance):

• Press release from Boosey.com
• Discovery of Pogrebal'naya Pesnya at The Guardian (2015)
• New York Times announces Facebook will host Livestream at NYTIMES
• US, UK, Worldwide premiers post Dec 2, 2016 at Boosey.com 

-Rose.

BACK TO HOME PAGE

CLASSICAL MUSIC MAYHEM VII Feat. Did You Know? CURSES & HEXES, HOMICIDE, ATTEMPTED MURDER, THUGGERY and FRAUD!

It’s time again for another installment of CLASSICAL MUSIC MAYHEM feat. Did You Know?

Today’s post features a sordid romp through the dark underbelly of the otherwise pristine world of Western Classical Music. Forget Dante’s Virgil: the following naughty little devils looked to Beelzebub himself as a guide through the blazing inferno of hell – boasting such bestial sin as

CURSES & HEXES, HOMICIDE, ATTEMPTED MURDER, THUGGERY and FRAUD!

We begin in that most metropolitan of cities, New York, NY:

IRONIC DEATHS

“Vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore …
e diedi il canto agli astri, al ciel!,
…perché, Signor, ah, perché me ne rimuneri così?”

[I lived for art, I lived for love... and offered songs to the stars and to heaven!
…why, Lord, ah, why do you reward me thus?]

–Tosca’s aria, Tosca, Puccini

News article concerning Versalle's
death, New York Times.

American Baritone Leonard Warren wasn’t the only famous singer to suffer an ironic fatality mid performance. In January of 1996, another American performer met an untimely end on the operatic stage, seconds after belting out a line from the work’s libretto that seemed to be written exclusively for him. The performer was the 63-year old tenor Richard Versalle, the opera was the MET premiere of Leoš Janáček's "The Makropulos Affair." The line: “too bad you can only live for so long” proved to be the tenor’s last words: immediately after singing the nine ominous lyrics from atop a 10 foot ladder, Versalle crashed to the floor, unconscious. He was pronounced dead shortly after arrival at St Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital.

What makes Versalle’s untimely demise perhaps even more ironic than Warren’s, who also met his end at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House some 36 years prior – collapsing dead on the very same stage seconds after belting out the lyric "to die, a momentous thing!” from Verdi’s La Forza – was the subject matter of Janáček’s opera itself: The plot of The Makropulos Case concerns a certain diva, who, after ingesting a life-extending elixir some 337 years prior, notices the concoctions promise of eternal youth and immortality is beginning to weaken, making her demise all but an utmost certainty.

Talk about a theatrical ending! 

New York City wasn’t the only home of the ironical. I’d be remiss if I neglected to mention the infamous passing of the French playwright and actor Molière in Paris, during his famous – and final – performance on stage - whilst starring in his own ballet, appropriately titled La Malade Imaginaire (The Imaginary Invalid): a collaboration with the 17th century composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier.

The three act comédie-ballet featured Molière himself as a typical hypochondriac – believing himself to be assailed by numerous illnesses, subjecting himself to countless amounts of enemas and weary of suffering an untimely demise. Dressed in medical smock and bandaged, the actor hacked and coughed his way through the performance – all a part of playing the character of an invalid – or so those in the audience thought. What attending patrons – and perhaps even Molière’s fellow actors on the stage with him didn’t know – was that the hacking and coughing by Molière wasn’t acting at all – the playwright was actually stricken with consumption (pulmonary tuberculosis), and was in fact, coughing up very real phlegm and blood. The stubborn actor insisted (to himself) on finishing his performance, come hell or high water. Hell would come soon enough, when the playwright collapsed on stage due to a massive hemorrhage. He would succumb to another, even larger hemorrhage backstage, which ultimately ended his life.

Molière's famous death is depicted in the 2000 French masterpiece, Le Roi Danse:



A FINAL RECORDING, A FITTING FAREWELL:

This last entry into Ironic Deaths is more decidedly felicitous – and features one of the most gifted heldentenors the world had yet known in 20th century Swedish performer Jussi Björling...

QUOTE OF THE DAY - NOVEMBER 7, 2016: HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW'S "UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE" THEORY & WHITACRE'S MODERN APPROACH

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Today’s Quote of the Day comes to us from 19th century American poet and translator Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It is short, yet succinct:

“Music is the universal language of mankind” 

 

I can think of no greater example of Mr. Longfellow’s observation than Eric Whitacre’s “Lux Aurumque,” the present century American composer/conductors exquisite choral work, performed “virtually” from the private homes of 185 specially selected singers, all of whom appear as members of a massive choir through individual video submission. What results from this rather unconventional, very modern staging is a harmony so exquisite, so gooseflesh-inducing, it takes one’s breath away...charioting the listener far off into a peaceful, distant realm – one untarnished by earthly discord, unbiased by gender, race or creed. One that only knows of - and can only speak of - mellifluous beauty.

Members of Whitacre's “Virtual Choir” - who hail from 12 different countries across the globe - usher the listener into that purified realm for a brief interlude of harmonious reverie - no matter how fleeting - wherein there exists unblemished man.

Universal language, indeed:



-Rose.

BACK TO HOME PAGE

UNRAVELING MUSICAL MYTHS RECEIVES PRAISE FROM SIRIUSXM RADIO SYMPHONY HALL HOST AND NEWLY-MINTED AUTHOR LAUREN E. RICO, CALLS IT A "MUST" SEE, "AWESOMELY COOL WEBSITE!"

Rose, author of
Unraveling Musical Myths

Unraveling Musical Myths is both honored and humbled by the kind praise bestowed upon it's pages by SiriusXM Radio Symphony Hall host and author Lauren E. Rico.

Rico, author of the steamy, classical music infused Reverie series mentioned this blog on social media and via her monthly newsletters, distributed to her adoring fan base in an effort to keep her followers up to date with her latest publishing and recording efforts.

In her November 2016 issue, she writes:

"If you're a classical music lover,
this awesomely cool website is a MUST!"

[Read full review here]

Thank you Lauren,  Unraveling Musical Myths thinks you - and your work - are awesomely cool, too.

To learn more about Lauren E. Rico, visit LaurenRico.com, and be sure to read my review for her debut novel, Reverie by clicking the link below.

REVIEWS BY ROSE: LAUREN E. RICO'S REVERIE

Also, to keep up with Lauren on Symphony Hall, check out SiriusXM's schedule by visiting the link below:

SiriusXM Symphony Hall Classical Music Weekly Program List

UPDATE (DECEMBER 2016): The sun continues to shine on Ms. Rico - who has recently announced she will be joining the hallowed ranks of WQXR public radio in New York come early January 2017 - this, in addition to announcing the development of an all-new novel to follow the Reverie trilogy!

Read more about these exciting developments below:

IN THE NEWS: SIRIUSXM RADIO HOST AND AUTHOR LAUREN E. RICO JOINS PRESTIGIOUS WQXR feat Did You Know?

-Rose.

BACK TO HOME PAGE