Album Notes

Mirror Suite (1960)
Vocal cycle to the poems by Federico Garcia Lorca (Russian translation by V. Burich) for soprano, flute, violin, guitar, percussion and organ
1. Symbol
2. The Great Mirror
3. Reflection
4. Beams
5. Response
6. Sintoism
7. Eyes
8. Beginning
9. Lullaby to the sleeping mirror

Les Plaintes de Shchaza (Laments of Shchaza) (1962)
Vocal cycle to the Dagestan folk poems for soprano, English horn, violin, viola, percussion and harpsichord
10. Lento ma non troppo
11. Presto
12. Lento rubato
13. Aussi vite que possible

14. CONCERT ITINERANT (WANDERING CONCERTO) (1967) to the poems by Omar Khayam for soprano, violin, flute, percussion ensemble and chamber orchestra


(1-9) : Lydia Davidova – soprano, Andrei Volkonsly – organ
Soloists of the Symphony Orchestra of Leningrad Philharmonic, Igor Blazhkov – conductor
Recorded in 1966 in Leningrad

(10-13): Lydia Davidova – soprano, Andrei Volkonsly – harpsichord
Soloists of the Symphony Orchestra of Leningrad Philharmonic, Igor Blazhkov – conductor
Recorded in 1966 in Leningrad

(14): Tatiana Marushchak – soprano, Grigory Sandomirsky – violin, Natalia Pshenichnikova – flute, Mark Pekarsky percussion ensemble
«Collegium Musicum» chamber orchestra, Timur Mynbaev – conductor

Recorded live during the “Altenativa?” festival in Moscow, October, 1989.

Three vocal cycles by Andrei Volkonsky

The compositions by Volkonsky, recorded on this CD belong to some of the best compositions of New Music of Russia, the epoch of the beginning of the Second wave of Avant-garde.
The composer who wrote them has become sort of a legend. Andrei Mikhailovich Volkonsky was born on February 14, 1933 in Geneva, into an old aristocratic family of Mikhail Petrovich Volkonsky. Already from the age of five Andrei Volkonsky began to improvise. The compositions he wrote in his childhood, were heard by Sergei Rachmaninoff. He studied piano in Geneva and Paris; among his teachers was Dinu Lipatti. In 1947 his family moved to the USSR. In 1950-54 Andrei Volkonsky studied composition at Moscow Conservatory with Yuri A. Shaporin. In the terrible environment of the official crackdown against “formalism”) Andrei Volkonsky stalwartly went against the current; he studied virtually by himself.
To create means to create something new. One after another, the compositions of Andrei Volkonsky from the 1950’s quickly moved the young composer to the front ranks of the art of his time: this is manifested by two cantatas, both written in 1952 – “Rus” (based on Gogol’s texts, where Rus – or Russia - sped ahead in jazz rhythms, forbidden by the ideology) and “Le Visage du Monde” (set to the text of Paul Eluard), as well as a Concerto for Orchestra (written in 1955 in honor of the 200th anniversary of Moscow University. In 1956 Volkonsky wrote “Musica Stricta,” a cycle for piano with innovative content, musically manifested in the avant-garde serial technique. With this composition, as well as with a number of other works, Volkonsky established a new era in the history of contemporary Russian music. Despite the ideological prohibitions, Soviet Russia began to adhere to the most contemporary trends of 20th century art. Volkonsky was followed by other talented composers: E.Denisov, A.Schnittke, S.Gubaidulina and others. The boldness of the innovative composer was not appreciated immediately. As the composer himself remembered: “At first, nobody even really acquiesced what it was. For a few more years my music was continued to be performed. But since 1962 it was completely forbidden.”
Organically incapable of the Soviet type of duplicity, the multifaceted musician found another path for himself – that of a performer. Being a highly talented performer on keyboard instruments Andrei Volkonsky had moved from piano to harpsichord and organ. Volkonsky was able to open up a new trend – performance of early music as a demonstration of a historical understanding of contemporary musical thinking. Authenticity as a style had become all but obsolete in 20th century thinking. As Volkonsky states: “My compositional creativity was reflected in my performance”. In 1964-65 Volkonsky established the “Madrigal” early music ensemble, which remains famous up to the present days (currently its director is a follower of Volkonsky’s traditions, Lydia Davydova).
The state politicy of repression and prohibition had compelled Volkonsky to emigrate in 1973. He lives in Aix-en-Provence in the south of France. Among his compositions from this period one can first of all name Immobile for piano and orchestra (1978), “What is it that still lives” for voice and string trio set to the text of J.Bobrovsky (1985), Psalm 148 for vocal trio, chord organ and timpani (set to the Biblical text).
The three vocal cycles, presented in this compact disc, pertain to the period of the flourishing of Andrei Volkonsky’s innovative musical style.
MIRROR SUITE (1959) for soprano and instrumental ensemble, set to the texts of Federico Garcia Lorca (in translation by V.Burich) is a composition, which in its own time presented itself as an impressive historical document, an assertion of the young composer’s spiritual strength and independence. The opening outcry “Christ” became a challenge to the undivided rule of the Marxist-Leninist dogma of Soviet art. Volkonsky did not intend to “epater” the Soviet “bourgeois,” he was just being himself – not merely independent of the constraints of the ideology, but already decisively by himself ahead of everybody else.
The musical-artistic conception of the “Mirror Suite” was decisively ahead of the dominating folkloristic-neoclassical style of Soviet music. Volkonsky’s new sound world turned out to be saturated with bright, transparent, light sonorities and permeated with radiant intonations both in the soprano and in the instrumental parts, with exquisite and colorful percussion sounds (the percussion performer had six timbres at his disposal). The text of Garcia Lorca is truly poetical in its nature, containing elements of surrealistic irrationalism. In the text there is a virtual development of the idea of mirror-symmetry, reflection, multiplications (the human being is adorned in colors of “the great mirror”, i.e. heaven; the lunar colors, i.e. mercury, the fire-fly, a lantern; God in the partition of brotherly embraces; the Finale involves the mirror’s “falling asleep”). The eight-note series at the basis of the musical composition also has qualities mirror-symmetry.
Each of the movements presents itself as a poetic picture, inspired by the individual idea of its respective text. All movements are presented as a “series,” each piece with a distinct timbral color. Thus, the final Lullaby is carried out in the delicate colors of harmonic pluckings of the guitar and a mysterious network of temple-blocks.
The orientation towards innovative compositional techniques is connected with the care for a cantilena lyrical quality of the vocal party, which would appeal to the singer.
LES PLAINTES DE SHCHAZA (THE LAMENTS OF SHCHAZA) (1960) is a four-movement vocal cycle for soprano and instrumental ensemble set to the texts of the lakk poet Shchaza. The work demonstrates a quick further development of Andrei Volkonsky towards the type of contemporary music, analogous in the character of style to Boulez and others.
It seems a paradox that the composer would chose for his setting a folk text which, seemingly, has little in common with the composer’s refined style, with the avant-garde clarity and an extremely exquisite quality of the music. Shchaza was a folk lakk singer, who improvised her rhymes, performing upon invitation to festivities and weddings. Undoubtedly for Andrei Volkonsky there was a situation of a conscious piquancy (even absurdity), the connection of an extremely naive generic text (of course it is concealed in the music, to a certain degree, when it is vocalized) and a highly refined delicacy of musical expression.
The first movement is a slow vocalize. The soprano part – just voice and no words - is woven into most intricate sound fibers and sonorities of the instrumental trio. The melody of the vocalize is marked with a stylistically distinguished cantilena quality. The voice here is just another instrument of the ensemble.
The second movement is endowed with an elusively gliding motion of quickly gleaming shadows of sounds. The sound groups, as if pouring into each other, change from one to another, continuously interrupted by pauses. The pungent yet most delicate dissonance of the sonorities in light, phantom-like instrumental colors brings out various sonorous figures in the soprano part, which presents a successive display of murmurs, gliding motion, detached sounds and cantilena.
The third movement, which goes along virtually without a tempo, alleviates all the tension. The “released,” free musical time alternately slowly sags, suddenly condenses and then stretches out again.
The most complicated is the fourth movement, the Finale of the cycle. The main type of sonority is a spectrum, similar to a cloud of bright sparks. The sonority is continuously interrupted with pauses of various lengths. The brilliant thread of the vocal part is abundant with virtuoso rhythms and leaps.
The last stanza features a return of the music from the very beginning of the cycle.
The melody again turns into a vocalize. The last sound of the composition is a quiet rattle of a tambourine.
CONCERT ITINERANT (WANDERING CONCERTO) (1964-67) for voice, flute, violin and 26 instruments, set to the text of Omar Khayam is a large-scale composition, the conception of which reflected the consciousness of a world citizen.
The individual artistic image of the composer harmonizes well with the conception of grasping various periods of time (the millenium of the 11th through the 20th centuries) and space dimension: merging the contemporary Western avant-garde with ancient Eastern poetry, displaying a freshness of a non-European artistic world-view.
The Eastern element is demonstrated in the text of the vocal part, which is elaborated by the musical style itself.
The overall character of the work is a refinement and pungency of expression in conjunction with a remarkable clarity and diversity of timbral colors. A great impression is produced by the rich sound palette, arising from the technique of creating a wide assortment of ensemble combinations out of the woodwind, string and percussion instruments within the total ensemble of orchestral instruments. The style of the “Wandering Concerto” has a characteristic feature of “wandering” through various artistic dimensions of space: from the static sonorities held for a long time, from lyrical rounded motives to wide leaps, not to mention timbral modulations and transitions between the different instrumental timbres, between themselves and the voice part.
(Yyri. N.Kholopov)