Artur Lourie: Lamentations of the Virgin Mary



Lamentations of the Virgin Mary (29.33 minutes in)

Artur Lourie (1892 - 1966) studied composition with Glazunov in St Petersburg before emigrating to Paris in 1921. He was a friend and supporter of Stravinsky during the 1920s and certain stylistic similarities can be heard in their work.

Lourie's Lamentations was performed at London's Wigmore Hall in 1923 by Cynthia Davril, and it did not make a good impression on the critic of the Westminster Gazette:
 
"... it was an effort which could have been omitted without loss. The composer has still to win fame in this country, but he is evidently a modernist of the deepest dye, so that one sympathised hardly less with the artists called on to make such fearsome noises than with one's self for having to hear them." 

We are, of course, now able to listen and decide for ourselves if the work is fearsome noise or beautiful music. The recording is too large to embed, but is readily available on YouTube and the link above leads to a recording of some of Lourie's work for soprano and for chorus, made by Natalia Gerassimova and the Russian Chamber Choir in 2010.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ivan the Terrible, directed by Eisenstein, score by Prokofiev

Image
Still from Ivan the Terrible (Ivan Grozniy / Иван Грозный) The Swan Our next singer's choice comes from Andy, one of our basses, who recommends Prokofiev's soundtrack for Eisenstein's final masterpiece, Ivan the Terrible.  As Andy says, 'There is something for everyone on here.'  This excerpt, The Swan / Wedding Song, is one of the loveliest moments in the entire score.  Regretably Blogger isn't permitting film footage to be embedded this afternoon, however if the link above should take you straight to the piece on YouTube. If you haven't seen the film already, you're in for a treat. It was made in two parts (although Eisenstein intended it to have three); Stalin was delighted with the first part, released in 1944.  However he was less impressed by part two's portrayal of Ivan, a historical figure he apparently admired. Part two wasn't released until 1958, five years after Stalin and Prokofiev's deaths; by pure coincidence they both die
Read more

Yestignei Fomin: The Coachmen at the Staging-Post

Image
Yestignei Fomin (1761 - 1800) is best known today for his operas. A contemporary of Mozart and Borynyansky, he was the son of a soldier, however his musical promise was spotted early and cultivated in St Petersburg.  He studied in Bologna for a time, returning to St Petersburg to teach at the Theatrical School and compose operas. His Italian education is reflected in the style of his music, although he freely used Russian stories and musical folk idioms. This video is a selection from Fomin's opera 'The Coachmen at the Staging-Post'; you may recognise a version the song 'In the Field Stood a Birch Tree' in the third piece.
Read more

Shostokovich: The Nose

Image
Yes, these really are tap-dancing noses. Shostokovich's first opera, written aged 20, was based on Gogol's short story The Nose, an absurdist satire on bureaucracy and officialdom. The opera fell out of favour the 1930s, but we can enjoy it today as a romp, and also as an example of the inventiveness of composers in the newly formed Soviet republic during the 1920s. According to a commentator below the YouTube clip, who is far better informed than I, the dancers are tapping the Morse code for D-S-C-H, Shostokovich's personal leitmotif. I don't know how well that works in Russian, but it's a nice touch by Royal Opera House.
Read more