The next meeting of the Society on Monday 29th April 2019 and will be a members’ evening. Usual place and usual time, 7:30. A reminder if you are not a member that there is free parking just outside the door.
The following meeting on 29th April is a members’ evening so please bring along a suggestion for playing. No more than 10 minutes (including any introduction) it will help Tony to put together a programme for the evening.
16 April 2019
There are many people – even among keen classical music enthusiasts – who have never heard of this composer. At our meeting last night (4 March 2019) this was corrected with an excellent presentation by Alan Forshaw.
It was perhaps unfortunate that Alkan lived at the time of Liszt and Chopin who dazzled the Paris public with their playing and compositions. These are now household names and their works regularly played in concerts. Another factor is that Alkan composed largely for the piano so there are no symphonies, operas or song cycles etc. This narrowness of repertoire combined with the fiendish difficulty of many of his compositions may have led to his virtual disappearance.
Alkan was a prodigy entering the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 6 and giving a recital on the violin, at 7. He was born in 1813 in Paris. He started composing at 15 and this composition – Variations on a theme from Steibelt’s Orage Concerto – was the first piece to be played. The second was Concerto da Camera No 2 in C# minor which was first performed in Bath, England which he visited in 1833.
We then heard extracts from Trois Grandes Etudes Nos 1, 2 and 3. What was notable about these was that No 1 was for the left hand only and No 2 for the right. Listening to these justifies the word ‘fiendish’.
Although Alkan composed mostly keyboard works, the next piece was the finale from the Piano Trio with strings. We then heard four examples from Twelve Studies in all the major keys Nos 1, 5, 8 and 12. These were followed by some extracts from Concerto for solo piano.
Alkan was overlooked by the Conservatoire when they appointed Marmontel – a mediocre talent and former student of Alkan’s – to the post of head of piano studies. Following this acute disappointment and sleight, Alkan retired from public view for around 20 years although he did continue to compose.
He was a practising Jew being from a devout Jewish family and for a time, was organist at his local synagogue. He spoke Hebrew. Some of his later compositions had Jewish themes.
In some senses his life mirrored his compatriot Berlioz – 10 years his senior – who also had problems with the French musical establishment. Berlioz composed nothing for the piano but some commentators said Alkan was ‘the Berlioz of the piano’. They differed in that Alkan continued to follow the German tradition whereas Berlioz forged a new individual path whilst continuing to be an admirer of Beethoven.
The chair of the Society, in his vote of thanks said that, like many he suspected in the audience, he had heard little of Alkan, and Alan had shown what a remarkable and individual composer he was. His music follows fairly straightforward musical forms – variations for example are quite easy to follow – but he pushed his technique to extreme limits.
There is a society devoted to his works http://www.alkansociety.org
Peter Curbishley
The next meeting is on 18 March and continuing the French theme, is about great French singers of the past.
The next meeting of the Salisbury Recorded Music Society will be held on Monday 1 April 2019 at 7.30pm in our usual venue, when we shall be very pleased to welcome our own Ed Tinline who will be presenting an evening on the trumpet and other brass instruments.
I hope you will be able to come on Monday.
TONIGHT!
The new season kicks off on Monday 17th at 7:30 as usual and at the usual place. You can access the programme here:
Hope to see you!
The new seasons programme has now been agreed and contains an exciting mix of composers and presentations. Starting on Monday 17th of September with Anthony Powell’s intriguingly entitled: One composer’s journey into silence and then to resignation.
The programme includes presentations on Debussy, Ravel and Elgar among others. There is also an evening on the music of Valentin Alkan – a ‘neglected genius’ as the presenter will say. We heard something of him last season so hearing more will be interesting. There are many such composers who were immensely popular in their day but are almost unheard of now.
We will be posting details nearer the time so keep an eye on this site to see what’s happening.
If you are not a member details are on a tab at the top of the site and remember parking is easy and free.
Entry is £3 for visitors.
The full programme can be downloaded from the link below and may we ask members to print off a copy and possibly give it to someone who might be interested. We are printing the leaflets so they should be available next week in Oxfam and the TIC (if it hasn’t disappeared that is).
Most people have pdf now but if not, you can get a free download here
Peter Curbishley
The final meeting of the current season of Salisbury Recorded Music Society will be held, tonight, Monday 4th June 2018 at 7.30pm in the usual venue. The evening will be in the form of a concert, for which Paul Goldman has assembled three historic recordings:
– Bellini: “Norma” Sinfonia/Overture. Vittorio Gui conducting the Orchestra EIAR, Turin, 1937
– Elgar: Cello Concerto. Beatrice Harrison with Elgar conducting The New Symphony Orchestra, London, 1928
– Beethoven: Symphony No 7. Bruno Walter conducting the Columbia Symphony Orchestra, New York, 1969
We hope to see you on Monday and that you will enjoy this rather different style of evening to conclude our 2017-18 season.
Tonight, Monday 23rd April, is a member’s evening. Starts at 7:30 as usual and details of how to find us are on the front page.
The June meeting will be a little different from normal and will be in the form of a concert of three works;
Normal place and normal time with easy parking. If you don’t know where we are go to the ‘Find us’ tab on the home page where there is a map and a postcode. Only £3 for non-members
The next meeting will be on Monday 9 April starting at 7:30 pm as usual. It will be presented by Ed Tinline and in entitled With few strings attached – music for wind ensemble. Details of how to find us are on the tab marked ‘Find Us’. Parking is easy and free. Accessible for mobility impaired. £3 at the door for non-members.
It was strange standing here in Salisbury giving a talk on Shostakovich – a man who was persecuted by the then Soviet regime – when a few hundred yards away from where the talk was given the terrible events took place allegedly perpetrated by the modern Russian state.
It is difficult to understand this man without the context of the times he lived through. His life parallels the recent history of Russia. He was born in 1906 a year after the failed 1905 revolution into a period of considerable unrest. Prior to the final revolution there were several unsuccessful ones. Much of his life was lived in constant fear.
Most people are aware of the symphony he wrote and the subtitle ‘a Soviet artist’s reply to just criticism’ which was actually written by a journalist and was never accepted by Shostakovich himself. It seems also to imply that there was a single event and once he had written this subsequent symphony, everything was subsequently normal. Nothing could be further from the truth. He was a constant thorn in the side of the party apparatchiks. He was too famous to liquidate as there would be an international outcry. Nevertheless, the party could make life extremely difficult for him and made it difficult also for people to be friends with him. Few composers have been so central to the history of his time. He experienced war, revolution, anti-Semitism, dictatorship and terror.
His family came from Siberia and Poland. His father worked in Weights and Measures and there is a link to Mendeleyev the discoverer of the periodic table. He started learning the piano in 1915 and entered the St Petersburg Conservatoire in 1919. Teaching at the Conservatoire was unimaginative and there were no compositional classes. Glazunov was a key supporter at this time. Life was a constant struggle and they were frequently in debt. His father died when he was young.
He lived through the Revolution which started in St Petersburg which subsequently became Leningrad. Central to the story is the status of Leningrad which became the second city after Moscow and a window on the west. This was both a problem and an opportunity for artists. Leningrad was looked upon as ‘elitist’.
His First Symphony a graduate piece which showed considerable flair and promise. Strongly influenced by the work of Hindemith and was a kind of anti-symphony. The symphony was dedicated to a friend Misha Kvardri. Two years later, he was arrested and shot. This is a reminder of the terrible times Shostakovich lived in: friends, acquaintances, supporters, even family members, disappear in the night and ended up in the gulag or are executed. This got worse after the rise of Stalin in 1924 when anti-bourgeois policies, class warfare and actions against the kulaks were launched with terrible consequences for millions of Russians.
To make money he played in cinemas which he did from 1923 until 1926. He also composed for the cinema. Extracts from films and the following extracts were played:
• Five film extracts. – The Counterplan
o Alone
o Sofia Perofskaya
o Hamlet
Altogether wrote for 15 films. He wrote music in the jazz idiom although the idiom was hard to see except for the use of the saxophone.
• Extract from Jazz Suite #2 composed in 1936
He started playing the piano in performance in 1923.
In 1925 the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians RAPM founded in Moscow. The central message was that ‘music should have a social message and be accessible to the wider masses.’ They harassed intellectuals and wreaked havoc in higher institutions. Shostakovich was sacked from a college post. Many intellectuals and teachers were deprived of their livelihoods and denounced.
He composed the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District (shortened in the west to Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk) from a libretto by Nikolai Leskov. It was performed in January 1936 and the audience included Stalin, Molotov and Mikoyan. They leave after 2nd act and this heralds a dramatic reversal of his fortunes. The opera is a success around the world however. An article in the next day’s Pravda called it ‘muddle instead of music’. His composition ‘insulted the audience with noise, cacophony, hammering, and screaming.’
Shostakovich said the article ‘changed my entire existence for ever. It was unsigned and so represented the opinion of the party – or actually Stalin’s opinion and that was considerably more serious.’
Friends and colleagues distance themselves from him. The Leningrad Composers Union voted in favour of the Pravda article. At the meeting where this is decided only one person spoke in favour of Shostakovich. He was subsequently persecuted, his music was no longer performed and he was deprived of his livelihood.
In 1936 he composes his 4th Symphony which was withdrawn at the last minute. He receives a visit from Otto Klemperer and Shostakovich plays the symphony to him on the piano and Klemperer was very impressed. He suggests reducing the number of flutes but Shostakovich refuses. ‘What is written by the pen cannot be scratched out with an axe’ he said. That might sound better in the original Russian. Shostakovich almost never agrees to alter a score nor corrections nor alterations in the harmony or in the orchestration. But his metronome markings are often completely wrong. After one conductor said the speeds marked for a piece were impossible to play and Shostakovich agrees to change them and explains that he has an ‘old and unreliable metronome but he just did not want to throw it out.’
1936 sees the start of the great purges, millions disappear or are shot. Shostakovich was advised by Tukhachevsky to ‘admit his errors’. He is himself shot a year later. Shostakovich’s position becomes very precarious and many friends, colleagues and relatives disappear.
Meeting the NKVD
On a Saturday in 1937 summoned to meet the NKVD. After general conversation, and questions about his social life, he was asked about plot to assassinate Stalin. Shostakovich said there were no discussions about assassinating comrade Stalin. He was pressed on this and each time he denied that any such conversations took place. He was asked to return on the following Monday by which time he was to have remembered discussion about the plot. After a difficult weekend, Shostakovich returns to the NKVD headquarters and gives his name to the guards on the door. They refuse him entry saying they have no record of his name on their list. After some discussion and finding out who his interrogator was, it turns out that the interrogator himself has been arrested and Shostakovich was free to go.
He composes 5th Symphony which a journalist describes as ‘a Soviet artists reply to just criticism.’ WWII and Leningrad surrounded by the Nazis. It is the start of terrible privations.
His poor eyesight means he cannot serve in the armed forces but acts as a fire warden. Shostakovich was flown out of the city in October.
He writes Symphony #8 but this is not well received because it is not ‘optimistic’ enough. By the time it was ready for performance, the tide of war against Germany had changed and the official reception was ‘icy’.
In general, the communist party had two main problems with him. Firstly his courage which made him difficult to control and secondly, his unpredictability. This was set against his international prestige which made him useful to the regime. Shostakovich felt constantly under threat and always travelled with toothbrush and toothpaste in the expectation of arrest.
Post-war and the nature of the purges changed. Intelligentsia was targeted and there were attacks on what was termed ‘formalism’. Both Shostakovich and Prokofiev suffered during this period and he was forced to write music for propaganda films.
The Zhdanov Decree, Zhdanovschina (sometimes called ‘Zhdanov’s purge’) started in 1948-9. Many suffered and lost their livelihoods. Public humiliations of artists was frequent. All composers were summonsed to a conference where he encouraged mediocrities to turn against the more successful composers such as Shostakovich, Shebalin and Khachaturian. They had to sit and listen to slanders against them. The only people who wanted to listen to his music were ‘foreign bandits and imperialists’ it was claimed.
The audience heard the famous story in Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn about clapping and no one able to stop clapping after a Stalin speech. Also told was the phone call Shostakovich receives from Stalin as told by Julian Barnes. Composes 1st Violin Concerto possibly in 1951. Not performed until 1955. Criticised by the party for its ‘gloomy, introverted psychological outlook.’
• Extract from Violin Concerto
The evening ended with the second movement of the tenth Symphony.
Peter Curbishley
Salisbury Recorded Music Society 