Russkaya Cappella Online Festival of Music

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.

This entry is a little unusual, as it is about a musician rather than an individual piece. Anton Rubinstein is a hugely significant figure in the development of Russian music; he founded the St Petersburg Conservatory in 1862 and became its first Director. His brother, Nikolai, founded the Moscow Conservatory in 1866. Anton Rubinstein was famous in the nineteenth century for his bravura performances at the piano, and was a prolific composer of operas, piano concertos and symphonies. This recording was the focus of a presentation by Christoph Flamm at the recent Early Recordings: Methodologies in Research and Practice online conference. It comes from Julius Block's collection of wax cylinders, and while the pianist hasn't been definitively identified, it is very likely to be Rubinstein accompanying the tenor Vasily Samus . There are two short songs here, with a fragment of speech in between; the first, 'Yearning', is by Rubinstein and the second, 'Don Juan's Ser...

This piece returns us to choral music after the delightful loopiness of Shostokovich's dancing noses. Alexander Gretchaninoff was a contemporary of Rachmaninoff and Kastalsky, and like them, wrote large-scale works for choir in the second decade of the twentieth century. Gretchaninoff is probably best known in choral circles for his All Night Vigil, which predates Rachmaninoff's setting by three years.  His settings of music for Passion Week may be less familiar; this version of Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence starts serenely and concludes with a double-choir mimicking the distinctive sound of Russian bells.

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.

This piece is another choice from Richard, our President.  And...deep breath folks...it is written by an Icelander!  Hildur Gu ðnad ó ttir composed the soundtrack for the recent HBO / Sky UK television drama Chernobyl, based on the events of 1986. Here the soundtrack uses an arrangement of Vechnaya pamyat' (Eternal Memory), usually sung during a funeral or memorial service. This recording is sung by  Homin Lviv Municipal Choir  

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 le...

Our next selection, Evening Bells, has been made by George, our committee's Tenor Representative. He writes "This song is a family favourite and, interestingly, our familial love for it can be traced back at least a century. My great-grandfather George used to love it, my grandmother Alla loves it, my mum too and so do I. The lyrics of this song were adapted from a poem written by the Irish poet Thomas Moore, in his collection National Airs ." This version is sung by the Moscow Patriarchal Choir, and is borrowed with our thanks from Norman Fowler Sutton's extensive YouTube channel, where a  transliteration and translation of the lyrics can be found.