Artvoice: Buffalo's #1 Newsweekly
Home Blogs Web Features Calendar Listings Artvoice TV Real Estate Classifieds Contact
Previous story: The warp and woof of Waldorf
Next story: God's Favorite, Area, and The Cavalcaders

UB Symphony offers Rimsky-Korsakov rarity

First For the First

Christian Baldini

This Sunday evening, November 9 at 8pm, the UB Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of its young, dynamic music director and conductor Christian Baldini, will offer the Buffalo premiere of a major symphonic work in Lippes Concert Hall in Slee Hall on the Amherst Campus. Local classical music lovers might well ask, “So what’s the big deal?” Indeed, the Music Department at UB regularly offers local, national, or even international premieres of numerous new musical compositions every year—witness its highly successful, long-running June in Buffalo contemporary music festival. What makes this occasion special is that the work being premiered, the Symphony No.1 in E minor, Op.1, was written by a major 19th-century Russian composer, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and that it received its first public performance in St. Petersburg in 1865. Somewhat surprisingly, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra has never performed any of the three symphonies composed by Rimsky-Korsakov on its Classics Series programs.

Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) was one of a circle of Russian composers known in their country as “The Mighty Handful,” but more commonly referred to in English as ‘“The Five.” Led by Mihly Balakirev, the members of the group, which included Alexander Borodin, Caesar Cui, and Modest Mussorgsky, as well as Rimsky-Korsakov, the youngest member, were dedicated to composing art music that was specifically Russian in character, and that did not exclusively rely on Western European music as taught in European-style conservatories. Born into an aristocratic family, Rimsky-Korsakov’s musical abilities surfaced early, but he was initially prevented by the rigid class structures of imperial Russia from pursuing a musical career, which was considered unacceptable for a member of his class. As an officer in the Russian navy, he continued to study music privately, eventually meeting Balakirev in 1861.

Rimsky-Korsakov describes the genesis of his first published work, the Symphony No. 1, in his autobiography, My Musical Life. Before meeting Balakirev, Rimsky-Korsakov had begun composing the first movement of a symphony. Balakirev approved of the work, and urged him to continue, subjecting the movement to rigorous criticism and orchestrating the first page of the movement himself, after Rimsky-Korsakov’s initial attempt demonstrated the student’s weaknesses. Rimsky-Korsakov proved himself a quick learner, and before he set out on a three-year world cruise in 1862, he had completed three movements of the symphony. He completed the missing slow movement while the ship visited England, and mailed it back to Balakirev. When the voyage ended in 1865, Balakirev encouraged Rimsky-Korsakov to resume work on the symphony, which the composer then re-orchestrated. Balakirev conducted the work’s successful premiere in December 1865. When Rimsky-Korsakov appeared on stage to acknowledge the applause, wearing his uniform—a requirement at the time—the audience was greatly surprised that a naval officer had written the work. Rimsky-Korsakov went on to have a very successful career, both as a composer and as a teacher, after initially, by his own account, learning as much from his students as they did from him. He taught many composers who later gained international fame, including Glazunov, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Respighi.



an excerpt L’Histoire du Soldat at A Musical Feast

In a recent interview, Baldini traced his interest in Rimsky-Korsakov’s music to his interest in the music of Stravinsky, who acknowledged in his own memoirs the powerful influence that Rimsky-Korsakov’s lessons in orchestration had on him. Baldini returned recently from a prestigious conducting assignment at England’s Adleburgh Festival, where he had first conducted works by Stravinsky and Prokofiev in 2007. Invited back for this year’s festival, Baldini led a performance of Britten’s chamber opera The Rape of Lucretia. Scored for 12 instruments and eight singers, the work was an ideal match for the talents that Baldini displayed last season as the conductor of an exciting performance of Stravinsky’s rhythmically challenging L’Histoire du Soldat at A Musical Feast. Baldini has done much to improve the quality of the UB Symphony, especially by encouraging member development among the non-music major performers, who might be engineers, liberal arts majors, or even medical students. “I keep trying to improve the overall quality of the orchestra,” said Baldini, who has almost doubled the number of players in the orchestra, “and I am honored to be able to present the Buffalo premiere of Rimsky’s Symphony No. 1.”

The program will also include a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Francesca da Rimini, Op. 32, a SymphonicFantasy after Dante. For further information, visit slee.buffalo.edu or call 645-2921. Admission is free.

blog comments powered by Disqus