Friday 7 October 2011 7.30pm
Barbican Hall
Olga Borodina
Songs by Rimsky-Korsakov, Cui,
Mussorgsky, Borodin, Balakirev,
Shostakovich and Sviridov
Philips Classics
Olga Borodina mezzo-soprano
Dmitri Yefimov piano
tonight’s programme
Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908)
Of What I Dream in the Quiet Night, Op. 40 No. 3
Not the Wind, Blowing from the Heights, Op. 43 No. 2
The Clouds Begin to Scatter, Op. 42 No. 3
The Lark Sings Louder, Op. 43 No. 1
Mily Balakirev (1837–1910)
The Bright Moon
Three Forgotten Songs – Spanish Song
I Loved Him
César Cui (1835–1918)
Desire, Op. 57 No. 25
The Fountain Statue at Tsarskoye Selo, Op. 57 No. 17
I Touched the Bloom Lightly, Op. 49 No. 1
Interval: 20 minutes
Modest Mussorgsky (1839–81)
Night
Georgy Sviridov (1915–98)
The Crimson Forest Sheds its Attire
A Winter’s Road
Drawing Near To Izhory
Russia Cast Adrift
Alexander Borodin (1833–87)
The Sea Princess
Dmitry Shostakovich (1906–75)
Six Spanish Songs, Op. 100
Programme produced by Harriet Smith; printed by Aldridge Print Group; advertising by Cabbell (tel. 020 8971 8450)
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programme note
The rise of the Russian art song
There is a single heart-stopping moment in the second part
of Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s opera The Passenger, now
happily rescued from the cultural limbo to which it was
consigned in the late 1960s by the Soviet authorities. In the
heart of the 20th-century darkness, in Auschwitz, Katya sings
a Russian folk song. It was taught to her by her Babushka,
she tells the other women sitting on their bunks in their hut.
Halfway through the unaccompanied song she breaks off.
Katya cannot remember how it continues. The dramatic
point is clear. In a place where the only end is death there
are no continuities, no threads stretching from the past into
any kind of possible future.
song, bricks are thrown from hand to hand and towns spring
up like mushrooms. To the sound of women singing, Russian
man is swaddled, married and interred.’ So who sang
Russian women from their cradles to the grave? In his
excitement about Russian traditional song Gogol has
forgotten to tell us. But then, as any late 19th-century musical
ethnographer would tell you, the men collected the songs
and the women sang them!
However, it’s the cultural message here that really resonates.
Katya’s folk song, whether it’s traditional or something that
Weinberg conjured up out of his imagination, immediately
signals Russianness. And this takes us back to a debate that
has wrapped itself around Russian song throughout the 19th
century and, for darker political reasons, into the Soviet era:
that in folk songs one heard the true Russian music.
Gogol is a man of his own time, a Russian writing in the
1830s and 1840s, puzzled about his nation, its identity and
where it might be heading under that supreme autocrat
Nicholas I, of whose reign one historian observed, ‘the main
failing … was that it was all a mistake’. Yet when Nicholas
died in the middle of the Crimean War the Russian empire
was larger than it had ever been, embracing a total of nearly
eight million square miles. The question that preoccupied
artists and thinkers as well as those in power was how to find,
or rather forge, a national identity that would fit this vast and
heterodox empire.
When Nikolai Gogol saw Glinka’s opera A Life for the Tsar
– supposedly the beginning of modern Russian music – he
mused on a new national art. ‘What an opera one could
make out of our national motifs! Show me a people that
have more songs. Our Ukraine rings with song. Along the
Volga, from source to sea, on all the drifting trains of barges
the boatmen’s songs pour forth. To the strains of song, huts
are carved from pine logs all over Russia. To the strains of
On 2 April 1833, just three years before the premiere of
A Life for the Tsar, Nicholas I’s Education Minister had
promulgated the doctrine of Official Nationality. All Russians
were to subscribe to three inseparable and unchanging
principles: orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality. Church and
State should enshrine identity. As Francis Maes, author of
A History of Russian Music, puts it, ‘… orthodoxy was the
basis of the emergence of the Russian people, while
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programme note
autocracy was the political means for ensuring the survival of
that people. The combination of orthodoxy and autocracy
constituted the essence of Russian nationality.’
There would seem to be a paradox here. If a yearning to
create a specifically Russian music at the time that Glinka is
writing A Life for the Tsar is linked to orthodoxy and
autocracy then it must be yoked to nationalist political
conservatism. Yet Glinka, and certainly the so-called Mighty
Handful who followed him – Balakirev, Cui, Mussorgsky,
Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin – are generally regarded as
being progressive.
The debate about what might constitute a national musical
style ranged wider than a traditional opposition between
conservative and progressive politics. Indeed this supposed
opposition is somewhat better expressed as the difference
between Russian artists who looked inwards, sometimes
relishing a kind of local orientalism, and those who looked
West, between slavophiles and cosmopolitans. Naturally
one should be wary of both terms as the dead hand of Soviet
musicology rattles the language. ‘Cosmopolitan’ is perhaps
one of the most insidious words in the Soviet cultural lexicon
and only a sentence away from ‘formalism’ as a term of the
deepest opprobrium and the cause of many ‘a Soviet artist’s
creative response to justified criticism’, to borrow
Shostakovich’s famously abject words.
However, radical slavophiles argued that everything had
been wrong in Russia since the reforms of Peter the Great,
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that by looking to the West the nation had lost its soul. The
cosmopolitans, on the other hand, relished the achievements
of the West and believed that its reform and modernity set an
example that Russia should follow: specifically the models of
the symphony, the concerto and – above all – the emerging
tradition of the art song.
Yet folk songs were just as appealing to the cosmopolitans as
they were to the slavophiles, for all that cultural historians
continue to pit one group against the other. Within 19thcentury Russian music this particular opposition is sometimes
expressed as a fundamental difference between
Mussorgsky, say, and Tchaikovsky, or Rimsky-Korsakov and
Rachmaninov. This may be a convenient way of accounting
for the very different styles of these composers but it ignores
what each of them reveals through his choice of subject
matter, and the musical forms they have in common. When
listening to Russian songs from the 19th and indeed into the
20th century it is more helpful to see all composers aspiring
to write Russian music but for a range of different reasons,
and taking up different positions at different times on a
continuum that has slavophilia at one end and the West at
the other. Three simple examples help clarify this: the ‘Polish’
Act in Mussorgky’s Boris Godunov, Tchaikovsky’s Vakula the
Smith and Shostakovich’s Spanish Songs, which Olga
Borodina includes in tonight’s recital.
Shostakovich’s songs and those of Tchaikovsky and
Mussorgsky are all familiar fare in the concert hall; indeed
programme note
Mussorgky’s The Song of the Flea and Tchaikovsky’s much
abused None but the Lonely Heart have sometimes seemed
to epitomise what we expect from a Russian art song. So we
should be surprised and not a little ashamed to discover just
how many songs were composed in the 19th and 20th
centuries. The Mighty Handful collectively wrote over 500.
Rimsky-Korsakov, born in 1844, was the youngest member of
the Mighty Handful. An officer in the Imperial Navy who had
shown less interest in music in his youth than in literature, he
was mentored by the older composer Balakirev as he
embarked on a parallel career as a composer. RimskyKorsakov, who remembered his father singing songs at the
family piano, was at first committed to creating music with a
distinctly Russian timbre, which meant a taste for exotic
orientalism (his masterly Scheherazade for example). In later
years he came to embrace the music of Wagner, particularly
after he was appointed a professor at the St Petersburg
Conservatoire in 1871. It was almost certainly his gifts as an
orchestrator that helped him secure this influential post.
Rimsky-Korsakov’s songs were composed for the drawing
room, often celebrating nature, as in The Lark Sings Louder,
but keeping it at a safe distance beyond the salon window.
But sometimes the weather refuses to remain out of doors.
So there’s sound and fury in Not the Wind, as if the casement
were banging. Elsewhere tender hearts, finer feelings and a
rarely too demanding vocal line are the standard features of
these songs. But The Clouds Begin to Scatter is a gem of a
Pushkin setting, with landscape and human heart beating
as one.
While Rimsky-Korsakov chose the navy, César Cui enlisted
in the Imperial Army, working principally as an engineer
teaching his fellow soldiers about fortifications. As a critic
Cui chose to champion his fellow Russian composers, though
musically he is arguably the least Russian of the Mighty
Handful. Perhaps this is partly because he was born a
Catholic in Vilnius and Chopin was one of his earliest musical
influences. It was his first meeting with Balakirev that drew
him into the sphere of the other composers within the group.
Cui is best remembered as a composer of operas and,
above all, for his songs. If he excels himself in atmospherics
in setting Pushkin’s The Fountain Statue at Tsarskoye Selo, a
summer home for the Romanov court south of St Petersburg,
Desire maps the heavy human heart without a shred of selfpity. The poem that becomes I Touched the Bloom Lightly
was written by Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, who
together with Stanislavski founded the Moscow Arts Theatre
and rescued Chekhov for the theatre after the disastrous first
night of The Seagull.
Modest Mussorgsky’s Night is another Pushkin setting and
one of the finest of the composer’s early songs, with an
almost Impressionist piano part that ripples under the vocal
line in the opening stanza, perhaps hinting at the balalaika.
The serenade becomes more serious as the song continues
with bell-like chords for the ‘darkness of the night, in the
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programme note
midnight hour’. A carillon of different moods is packed into
under four minutes: miniature but masterly. And it’s as much
French as it is Russian, proving again that simplistic ideas
about Russianness versus western influences rarely make
much sense when you actually listen to the music.
Alexander Borodin was another of Balakirev’s pupils and,
like others among the Mighty Handful, led a double life – as
a composer and as a professor of chemistry at the Academy
of Medicine. He’s best-known as a symphonist and as the
composer of Prince Igor, with its celebrated Polovtsian
Dances representing for many the acme of Russianness.
Due to the demands of his scientific career, Borodin
composed fewer songs than his contemporaries, and he
tended to write his own texts. The Sea Princess, composed in
1868, just six years after he had started working with
Balakirev, is a case in point; another version of the water
sprite or sea nymph as femme fatale, a sister to Ondine or
Rusalka. It’s a heady song of seduction and Borodin reveals
himself to be a master of effects, with rocking chords in the
piano part that keep slipping chromatically. This hypnotic
rhythmic pattern casts a powerful spell, as we seem to slide
beneath the surface of the water into the arms of oblivion.
Russians, quite as much as their cousins in the West, were
more than half in love with easeful death.
Without the tireless efforts of Mily Balakirev to educate his
friends, the Mighty Handful might not have been so mighty.
It is clear that he was one of those people who possess the
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kind of personal magnetism as a friend, teacher and
enthusiast to inspire everyone who comes into contact
with them, making them believe that their reach can exceed
their grasp. There is, however, a price to be paid for such
charisma, not least the belief that you are right and the rest
of the world is wrong, and the tendency to meddle with
other people’s work. No wonder both Mussorgsky and
Rimsky-Korsakov had begun to go their own ways by the
end of the 1860s.
Glinka had been much impressed by Balakirev’s music and
the debt is repaid in the latter’s Spanish Song. I Loved Him,
on the other hand, with its expansive vocal line, rapidly
changing rhythms and searching chords is unmistakably
Balakirev, right down to the grandiloquent postlude for the
pianist – perhaps the composer – having the last word.
Dmitry Shostakovich composed his Six Spanish Songs in
1956. They are based on traditional Spanish folk melodies
and texts, which should remind us that for the Soviet
authorities folk music was just as much an expression of the
‘people’ and their identity as it had been for the Russian
autocracy in the 19th century, even if the people have
metamorphosed into the proletariat. On the surface these
songs sound suitably Spanish although in ‘Zvjozdochki’ (Little
Stars) there’s a delicious lurch into an unmistakably
Shostakovichian harmony, while the accents in ‘Ronda’ are
clearly Russian. Is this a composer taking a line for a walk –
though never less than seriously – or are musical thoughts of
programme note
abroad always happier than Soviet home thoughts? Perhaps
Shostakovich is even teasing the idea of the folk song in the
first of them, ‘Farewell Granada!’. Nothing is ever certain
from this master of irony.
Slav by instinct, cosmopolitan in his poetic tastes – though
you could argue that Russia has adopted Shakespeare,
while Burns represents a good working-class poet from an
oppressed culture!
Georgy Sviridov was a pupil of Shostakovich at the
Leningrad Conservatoire from 1936 to 1941. Born in 1915, just
two years before the Bolshevik Revolution in the Kursk
region, Sviridov died in Moscow in 1998 a decade after the
Soviet Union had unravelled. In his lifetime he was a hugely
popular and successful composer whose gift for melody
caught both the official and the public ear. A Piano Trio in
1946 that sounded like a kissing cousin of Tchaikovsky’s
music brought him his first Soviet prize and in time he would
twice be awarded the Order of Lenin and become a Hero of
Socialist Labour.
The Crimson Forest Sheds its Attire, Drawing Near to Izhory
and A Winter’s Road are all from Romances to Words by
Alexander Pushkin, the composition that made Sviridov’s
reputation. ‘To me Pushkin sounds as the realisation of the
high predestination of man.‘ Sviridov said. ‘Each epoch
interprets him in its own way. Averse to idealising the Pushkin
era, I do not want to give him a modern interpretation either.
I simply try to follow him into his unattainable heights as best
I can.’ Russia Cast Adrift is the title-work in a cycle of settings
of Sergey Esenin’s poetry composed in 1977.
Sviridov was thought to encapsulate Russianness in his music,
which perhaps meant his gift for a certain kind of melody
with its roots in traditional music, eschewing counterpoint
and rarely developing his musical ideas. His choice of
subjects and his preferred musical forms have a ‘national‘
identity too. The composer thought his best work was to be
found in his choral writing and his songs, where throughout
his life he set Russian poets, beginning with Pushkin while still
a student. Latterly he set works by Lermontov, Blok, Esenin
and Pasternak and, looking further afield, poetry by
Shakespeare and Burns. In this sense he is the most recent
Russian composer to look, Janus-like, both East and West,
It is surely apt that a recital which has explored the idea of
Russianness in the songs of seven composers should end with
such a carefully worked evocation of Russia. Yet listening to
this music you do wonder whether it’s the real thing or the
idea of it: Russia mapped on the ground or conjured up in
the head. But maybe that blend of the experienced and the
imaginary is the motor that always drives cultural
nationalism, from the Pyrenees to the Urals.
Programme note © Christopher Cook
For texts please see page 8.
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text
Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov
O chjom v tishi nochej, Op. 40 No. 3
O chjom v tishi nochej tajinstvenno mechtaju,
O chjom pri svete dnja vsechasno pomyshljaju,
To budet tajnoj vsem. I dazhe ty, moj stikh,
Ty, drug moj vetrenyj, uslada dnej mojikh,
Tebe ne peredam dushi mojej mechtan’ja.
A to rasskazhesh’ ty, chej glas v nochnom molchan’ji
Mne slyshitsja, chej lik ja v sjudu nakhozu,
Ch’ji ochi svetjat mne, ch’jo imja ja tverzhu.
Of What I Dream in the Quiet Night
My secret dreams, in the quiet of the night,
My constant thoughts during the hours of the day,
Will not be revealed to anyone, not even to you, my verse,
My fickle friend, the delight of my life,
I will not disclose to you my heart’s desire.
For you would tell the world whose voice I hear in the
silent night,
Whose face I see everywhere, whose eyes shine before me,
Whose name is always on my lips.
Apollon Maykov (1821–97)
Ne veter, veja s vysoty, Op. 43 No. 2
Ne veter, veja s vysoty
Listov kosnulsja noch’ju lunnoj.
Mojej dushi kosnulas’ ty.
Ona trevozhna, kak listy,
Ona, kak gusli, mnogostrunna.
Not the Wind, Blowing from the Heights
Not the wind, blowing from the heights,
That touched the leaves in this moonlit night.
My soul alone was touched by you.
It is trembling, like leaves,
It is full of sounds, like the lyre.
Zhitejskij vikhr’ jejo terzal
I sokrushitel’nym nabegom,
Svistja i voja, struny rval
I zanosil kholodnym snegom.
The storm of life tormented it,
And with relentless drive and power
This howling storm just snapped the strings
And covered them with icy snow.
Tvoja zhe rech’ laskajet slukh,
Tvojo legko prikosnoven’je,
Kak ot cvetov letjashchij pukh,
Kak majskoj nochi dunoven’je.
But, oh, your words – they sound tender,
The touch of you is lightly felt.
It is like fluff which flies from flowers,
It is like a breath of night in May.
Alexey K. Tolstoy (1817–75)
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text
Redejet oblakov letuchaja grjada, Op. 42 No. 3
Redejet oblakov letuchaja grjada.
Zvezda pechal’naja, vechernjaja zvezda!
Tvoj luch oserebril uvjadshie ravniny,
I dremljushchij zaliv, i chjornykh skal vershiny.
The Clouds Begin to Scatter
The flying chain of clouds begins to scatter in the sky.
O you, the Evening Star, the star of woe on high!
Your beam is silvering the distant withered plains,
And both the dreamy bay and murky rocky chains.
Ljublju tvoj slabyj svet v nebesnoj vyshine;
On dumy razbudil, usnuvshie vo mne.
Ja pomnju tvoj voskhod, znakomoje svetilo,
Nad mirnoju stranoj, gde vsjo dlja serdca milo,
Gde strojny topoly v dolinakh vozneslis’,
Gde dremlet nezhnyj mirt i tjomnyj kiparis,
I sladostno shumjat poludennye volny.
I love your vague glow there in the heavenly height;
And all my sleepy thoughts were woken by your light.
I do remember you, O star, how you were rising,
Above the peaceful land where everything was pleasing,
Where slender poplars raised their crowns above the dales,
Where tender myrtles slept and cypress in dark veils,
Where in the middle of day the songs of waves were
haunting.
A long time ago when I was there upon the mountain,
Above the sea I dragged my thoughtful laziness,
When all the huts were drowned into the sleepiness,
A maid who looked for you into the darkness came
And to her lady friends she called you by her name.
Tam nekogda v gorakh, serdechnoj dumy polnyj,
Nad morem ja vlachil zadumchivuju len’,
Kogda na khizhiny skhodila nochi ten’ –
I deva junaja vo mgle tebja iskala
I imenem svoim podrugam nazyvala.
Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837)
Zvonche zhavoronka pen’je, Op. 43 No. 1
Zvonche zhavoronka pen’je,
Jarche veshnije cvety,
Serdce polno vdokhnoven’ja,
Nebo polno krasoty.
The Lark Sings Louder
The lark sings louder than ever,
The spring flowers look brighter than before –
My heart is overflowing with inspiration
And the sky is filled with beauty.
Razorvav toski okovy,
Cepi poshlyje razbiv,
Nabegajet zhizni novoj
Torzhestvujushchij priliv.
Having broken the bonds of melancholy
And loosed its crude chains,
New life floods in triumphantly,
Rising like the tide.
I zvuchit svezho i juno
Novykh sil moguchij stroj,
Kak natjanutyje struny
Mezhdu nebom i zemlej.
A potent harmony of new vigour rings out,
Fresh and young,
Like music of tensioned strings
Between the sky and the earth.
Alexey K. Tolstoy
Please turn page quietly
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text
César Cui
Kui, Op. 57 No. 25
Medlitel’no vlekutsja dni moji,
I kazhdyj mig v unylom serdce mnozhit
Vsjo goresti neschastlivoj ljubvi
I tyazhkoye bezumija trevozhit.
Desire
My days are slowly drawing to an end
And each moment
The bitterness of unhappy love
Grows in my heart and soul.
No ja molchu; ne slyshen ropot moj;
Ja sljozy l’ju; mne sljozy uteshen’je;
Moja dusha, ob’yataya toskoj,
V nikh gor’koje nakhodit naslazhden’je.
My tears pour and console me
But all is silent
And no one hears
My deep and bitter anguish.
O zhizni son, leti, ne zhal’ tebja,
Ischezni v t’me, pustoje prividen’je;
Mne dorogo ljubvi mojej muchen’je;
Puskaj umru, no pust’ umru, ljubja!
The life I knew before loving you
Has disappeared in empty darkness,
My sufferings are dear to me,
So let me die, but in the act of love.
Alexander Pushkin
Zarskoselskaya statuya, Op. 57 No. 17
Urnu s vodoi uroniv.
Ob ytyos yeyo dyeva razbila.
Dyeva pechal’no sidit,
Prazdnyi dyerzha cherepok.
Chudo! Nye syaknyet voda, izlivayas’iz urny razbitoi;
Dyeva nad vechnoi struyoi
Vechno pechal’na sidit.
The Fountain Statue at Tsarskoye Selo
A young girl dropped a pitcher of water,
It hit a stone and broke.
The girl sits, gloomily,
Holding the jug, now useless.
A miracle! The water pours endlessly from the
broken pitcher;
The girl sits, eternally sad,
Looking down at the eternal flow.
Alexander Pushkin
Kosnulas’ ja cvetka, Op. 49 No. 1
Kosnulas’ ja cvetka gorjachimi ustami;
I lepestki rassypalis’, lezhat.
Ja stebel’ lish’ derzhu, a zhizn’ i aromat
Vernjosh’ li ty bezsil’nymi slezami?
Ty ne ljubil menja! Bezzhalostno, surovo,
Razvejal tvoj obman serdechnyje mechty,
Kak lepestki cvetka. Ikh vozvratish’ li ty?
I serdcu mojemu vernjosh’ li schast’je snova?
Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko (1858–1943)
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I Touched the Bloom Lightly
I touched the bloom lightly, with passionate lips;
And the petals, fallen loose, lie.
I keep only the stem; but the life and fragrance
Will you restore with feeble tears?
You did not love me! Unpityingly, harshly,
Your deception shattered my heart’s dreams,
Like the petals of the flower. Will you restore them?
And will you return happiness to my heart again?
text
Modest Mussorgsky
Noch
Tvoy obraz laskovyi tak poln ocharovanja,
Tak manit k sebe, tak obol’shchajet,
Trevozha son moj tichij
V chas polnochi bezmolvnoj …
I mnitsa, shepchesh ty.
Tvoi slova, slivajas’ i zhurcha,
Chistoj strujkoj nado mnoj v nochnoj tishi igrajut,
Polny ljubvi, polny otrady,
Polny vsej sily char volshebnoj negi i zabvenja
Vo t’me nochnoj, v polnochnyj chas,
Tvoji glaza blistajut predo mnoju,
Mne, mne ulybajutsja, i zvuki, zvuki slyshu ja:
Moj drug, moj nezhnyj drug …
ljublju tebja … tvoja … tvoja! …
Night
The image of you, endearing and beguiling,
Beckons seductively,
Disturbing my peaceful slumber,
In the silent midnight hour …
You seem to whisper.
Your words, murmuring and mingling,
Like waters of a clear brook, in the silence of the night,
Flow over me, full of love, full of delight,
Full of magic power of enchanted bliss and oblivion.
In the darkness of the night, in the midnight hour,
Your eyes shine before me.
They smile at me … me, and sounds, I hear sounds:
My dearest, my beloved!
I love you! I am yours! Yours! …
Alexander Pushkin
Alexander Borodin
Morskaya zarevna
Pridi ko mne nochnoj poroj,
o putnik molodoj!
Zdes’ pod vodoj
i prokhlada, i pokoj.
Ty zdes’ otdokhnjosh’,
ty sladko zasnjosh’,
kachajas’, na zybkikh vodakh,
gde, negi polna,
lish’ dremlet volna
v pustynnykh beregakh.
Po zybi morskoj
sama za toboj
carevna morskaja plyvjot!
Ona manit, ona pojot,
k sebe tebja zovjot …
The Sea Princess
Come to me at night,
O youthful traveller!
Here under the water
It is cool and calm.
You will rest here
And find sweet sleep,
Rocked by the rippling water,
Where, full of ease,
The waves slumber
On the abandoned shores.
In the ripples of the sea,
After you herself
Swims the Sea Princess!
She beckons and sings;
To herself she calls you …
Alexander Borodin
Please turn page quietly
11
text
Mily Balakirev
Vzoshjol na nebo mesjac jasnyj
Vzoshjol na nebo mesjac jasnyj,
Tumany v pole uleglis’,
Ja zhdu tebja, moj drug prekrasnyj,
Na zov moj nezhnyj otzovis’.
Sojdi sjuda na bereg tjomnyj,
Nas skrojet sumrak goluboj,
I ne primetit vzor neskromnyj
Mojej besedy zdes’ s toboj.
O! ty uznajesh’, kak ljublju ja,
Dlja chuvstv serdechnykh net rechej,
Jikh skazhet sladost’ poceluja,
Ob’jatij zhar, ogon’ ochej.
Vzoshjol na nebo mesjac jasnyj,
Tumany v pole uleglis’,
Ja zhdu tebja, moj drug prekrasnyj,
Na zov moj nezhnyj otzovis’.
The Bright Moon
The crescent moon is shining brightly,
The mist has settled in the field,
I am waiting for you, my fair beloved,
Answer my loving call.
Come hither, to the dark river bank,
The blue dusk will conceal us,
And our conversation will be hidden
From the eyes of the indiscreet.
Oh! You will know how much I love you,
Words cannot convey the feelings of my heart,
They will find expression in the sweetness of my kiss,
The warmth of my embrace, the fire in my eyes.
The crescent moon is shining brightly,
The mist has settled in the field,
I am waiting for you, my fair beloved,
Answer my loving call.
M. Yatsevich
Tri abytye pesni – Ispanskaya pesnya
Spish’ li ty, moja devica?
Otvorjaj skoreje dver’!
Chas nastal davno zhelannyj,
Mozhno nam bezhat’ teper’.
Three Forgotten Songs – Spanish Song
Are you sleeping, my lovely?
Quickly, open the doors!
The long-awaited moment has come:
We are now free to run.
Jesli nozhku ne obula
Ty v atlasnyj bashmachok,
To ne nuzhno, ved’ doroga
Nam idjot cherez potok.
If you have not slipped
Your dainty feet into your satin shoes,
Don’t bother, for our journey
Will take us across the river.
Chrez struji Gvadalkvivira
My pojdjom, drug milyj moj, chas nastal davno zhelannyj,
Ty moja teper’,
Ja tvoj.
We’ll cross the waters of the Guadalquivir.
My beloved, the long-awaited moment has come,
You are mine, now,
And I am yours.
M. Mikhaylov
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text
Ja ljubila jego
Ja ljubila jego
Zharche dnja i ognja,
Kak drugim ne ljubit’
Nikogda, nikogda!
I Loved Him
I loved him
Hotter than the day and the flame,
No one had loved
Like that before, ever!
Tol’ko s nim lish’ odnim
Ja na svete zhila,
Jemu dushu moju,
Jemu zhizn’ otdala!
I lived with him only,
Him alone,
I gave my soul to him,
I gave him my life!
Chto za noch’, za luna,
Kogda druga ja zhdu?
Vsya bledna, kholodna,
Zamiraju, drozhu!
What do I care about the night or the moon,
When I am waiting for my beloved?
Pale and cold,
I stand, trembling!
Vot idjot on, pojot:
‘Gde ty zor’ka moja?’
Vot on ruku berjot,
Vot celujet menja!
Here he comes, singing:
‘Where are you, my little ray of sunshine?’
He takes my hand.
He kisses me!
Milyj drug, pogasi
Poceluji tvoji!
I bez nikh pri tebe
Ogn’ pylajet v krovi.
My love! Damp down the fire
Of your kisses!
Even without them
The fire burns in my blood.
I bez nikh pri tebe
Zhgjot rumjanec lico,
I volnujetsja grud’
I blistayut glaza!
Even without them
Blush burns my face.
My heart pounds,
My eyes shine.
I blistajut glaza
Slovno v nebe zvesda!
My eyes shine,
Like the stars in the sky!
Alexey Koltsov (1809–42)
Interval: 20 minutes
Please turn page quietly
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text
Dmitry Shostakovich
Ispanskiye pesni, Op. 100
Proshchaj, Grenada!
Proshchaj, Grenada, moja Grenada,
S toboj naveki mne rasstat’sja nado!
Proshchaj, ljubimyj kraj, ochej uslada,
Navek proshchaj! Akh!
Budet pamat’ o tebe moej
Edinstvennoj otradoj
Moj ljubimyj, moj rodimyj kraj!
Spanish Songs
Farewell Granada!
Farewell, Granada, my Granada,
I must part from you for ever!
Farewell, beloved land, delight of my eyes,
Farewell for ever! Ah!
Memories of you will be
My only joy
My beloved, my native land!
Navek mne serdce toska pronzila,
Pogiblo vsjo, chto v zhizni bylo milo,
Moja ljubov’ ushla vo mrak mogily,
I zhizn’ ushla! Akh!
I vokrug mne vsjo postylo,
Zhit’ kak prezhde, net uzh sily
Tam gde junost’ tak byla svetla!
Forever my heart will be pierced with sorrow,
All is perished, that to my heart was dear,
My love has gone into the gloom of the grave
And my life is also gone! Ah!
And around me all is hateful,
I have not the strength to live as before,
There, where my youth was so bright!
Sergey Bolotin, adapted from a text in Spanish by José Rizal
(1861–96)
Zvjozdochki
Pod kiparisami starymi
serebritsja pribrezhnaja glad’.
K miloj idu ja s gitaroju,
chtoby pesnjaam jejo obuchat’.
Little Stars
Under the old cypresses
The water near the shore gleams,
I come with my guitar
To teach my sweetheart songs.
No uchit’ besplatno mne net okhoty:
Ja beru s nejo poceluj za notu.
Stranno, chto ona k utru uznajot,
vsjo krome not!
But my lesson shan’t be free:
I shall take a kiss for each note …
Strange – in the morning she remembers
Everything except the notes!
Zhal’, chto nachat’ snova pozdno!
Zhal’, chto uzhe svetel vozdukh!
Zhal’, chto i dnjom ne drozhat puglivo
Nad zalivom zvjozdy …
A shame it’s too late to start again!
A shame the air is already light!
A shame the stars above the bay
Twinkle no more in the daytime …
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text
V zvjozdochkakh nebo beskrajnee,
imi znojnaja polnoch polna.
Miloj mojej nazyvaju ja
vsekh beschislennykh zvjozd imena.
The boundless sky is star-covered,
The balmy midnight is full of them.
I teach my sweetheart the names
Of all the countless stars.
Ja poznan’jami dorozhu svoimi
I beru s nejo poceluj za imja.
Stranno, chto urok kazhetsja jej prost –
vsjo krome zvjozd!
I value my knowledge
And take a kiss for each name.
Strange how easy she finds the lesson
Except for the stars!
T. Sikorsky, adapted from an unattributed Spanish text
Pervaja vstrecha
Ty u ruch’ja vody mne dala kogdato,
Svezhej vody, kholodnoj,
kak sneg v ushchel’jakh sinikh gor.
Nochi temnej tvoj vzor,
v kosakh aromat lepestkov dikoj mjaty …
Vidish’, opjat’ kruzhit khorovod,
Buben gremit, zvenit i pojot.
Kazhdyj tancor podruzhku vedjot,
smotrit na nikh, ljubujas’, narod.
Bej, moj buben bej, gremi, budto grom!
S miloju mojej my tancujem vdvojom.
Lenta na tebe nebes golubej.
Bej, moj buben, bej! Buben, bej! Buben bej!
Mne ne zabyt’ vovek e` toj pervoj vstrechi,
Laskovykh slov i smugloj ruki,
i bleska chjornykh glaz …
Ponjal ja v e` tot chas,
chto tebja ljublju i ljubit’ budu vechno!
First Meeting
Once, you gave me water from a stream,
Fresh water, cold,
Like snow in ravines of blue mountains.
Your gaze was darker than night,
In your plaits the aroma of wild-mint petals …
See, the round-dance turns once more,
The tambourine roars, rings and sings.
Each dancer comes with his partner.
People watch them admiringly.
Beat, my tambourine, beat, roar like thunder!
My sweetheart and I dance together.
Her ribbon is bluer than the sky.
Beat, my tambourine, beat! beat!
I will never forget that first meeting,
Your tender words and dusky arms,
And gleaming black eyes …
In that hour I knew
that I would love you and be loved by you forever.
Sergey Bolotin, adapted from an unattributed Spanish text
Ronda
Shumit khorovod u nashikh dverej,
vesel’ja pora nastala.
Idi tancevat’ so mnoju skorej,
vozdiki cvetochek alyj!
lunoj tishine slyshen zvon ruch’ja …
daj ruku mne, devuchka moja,
Gvozdiki cvetochek alyj!
Ronda
The noisy round dance is at our door,
Now is the time for merriment.
Come quickly – dance with me,
My scarlet carnation-flower!
In moonlit silence the noise of the stream is heard …
Give me your hand, my little girl,
My scarlet carnation flower!
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text
Ulica slovno jarki sad.
Shutki zvenjat, glaza blestjat.
Ronda kruzhitsja i pojot,
Svetitsja zvjozdnym serebrom nebosvod,
Mchatsja vesjolye pary…
E` to rodostnyj prazdnik pervyk cvetov,
E` to prazdnik nashej ljubvi!
Igrajut v luche luny na okne
Derev’ev mindal’nykh teni …
Kogda zhe sjuda ty vyjdesh’ ko mne,
Moj nezhnyj cvetok vesennij?
Vetku mindalja s dereva sorvi,
Ejo mne daj v znak tvojej ljubvi,
Moj nezhnyj cvetok vesennyj!
The street is a bright garden.
Jokes ring out, eyes are shining.
Ronda turns and sings,
Silver shines the starry sky,
Merry couples whirl …
It is the joyful holiday of first flowers,
It is the holiday of our love!
In the window the shadows of almond trees
Play in the moon’s rays …
When will you come out to me,
My tender spring flower?
Pluck a sprig of almond from the branch,
Give it to me in token of your love,
My tender spring flower!
T. Sikorsky, adapted from an unattributed Spanish text
Chernookaja
Mat’ dala tebe ochi zvjozdy,
Nezhnyj cvet tvoikh smuglykh shchjok,
Milaja moja!
S bol’ju v serdce noch’ju pozdnej
Bez tebja ja brozhu, odinok,
Milaja moja!
Akh za chto ja nakazan byl sud’boj?
Akh, zachem povstrechalsja ja s toboj?
Ja umru ot ljubvi bezumnoj,
Esli ty ne poljubish’ menja,
Milaja moja!
Mat’ dala tebe stan vysokij,
Chjornyj blesk nepokornykh kudrej,
Milaja moja!
Proklinaju rok zhestokij,
Bol’ i muki dushi mojej.
Milaja moja!
O, zachem zhe tebe symela mat’
Mne nazlo krasotu takuju dat’?
Ja umru ot ljubvi bezumnoj,
Esli ty ne poljubish’ menja,
Milaja moja!
T. Sikorsky, adapted from an unattributed Spanish text
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Black-Eyed Maiden
Your mother gave you eyes like stars,
and the soft colour of your dusky cheek,
My darling!
With pain in my heart, late at night,
Without you I wander,
My darling!
Ah! Why does fate punish me so?
Ah! Why did I ever meet you?
I will die of hopeless love,
If you will not love me,
My darling!
Your mother gave you a tall figure,
and the black shine of unruly curls,
My darling!
I curse my harsh fate,
the pain and tortures of my heart.
My darling!
Oh why did your mother
give you such beauty to spite me?
I will die of hopeless love,
If you will not love me,
My darling!
text
Son (Barkarola)
Ne znaju, chto e` to znachit …
Son chudesnyj prisnilsja mne,
Kak budto v lodke rybach’ej,
Ja plyvu po burnoj volne
Chjoln bez vjosel, ja ikh brosil …
Volny penjatsja, zljatsja i topjat moj chjoln,
No otvazhno mchus’ ja sredi tjomnykh,
Sred’ ogromnykh voln,
Ottogo, chto v rybachej e` toj lodke
Po morskoj nepokornoj glubi
Mchish’sja ty, moja gordaja,
mchishsja vmeste so mnoj
I menja ty budto tozhe ljubish’!
O moja golubka! Posmotri zhe,
Kak nesjotsja v svojej lodochke krupkoj po morju
Bednyj paren’, chto tak krepko ljubit tebja!
Dream (Barcarolle)
I don’t know what it means …
I dreamt in a magical sleep,
I was in a fishing boat,
I cruised on the stormy wave,
My boat has no oars – I threw them away …
The waves foam angrily – they try to sink my vessel,
But, bravely, I speed on through the dark,
through the enormous waves,
Because in this fishing boat
on the sea’s unruly depths
Speed you also, my proud one,
Speed together with me
And it seems as if you love me!
O my dove! Look now,
How towards you in his fragile little boat
Comes the poor fellow who loves you so strongly!
Anonymous, adapted from an unattributed Spanish text
Georgy Sviridov
Roniayet les bagrianyy svoy ubor
Roniayet les bagrianyy svoy ubor,
Srebrit moroz uvyanuvsheye polye,
Proglyanet den’ kakbudto po nevolye
I skroyetsya za krai okruzhnykh gor.
Pylai kamin, v moey pustynnoi kel’e;
A ty, vino, osenney stuzhi drug,
Proley mne v grud’ otradnoye pokhmel’e,
Minutnote zabven’ye gor’kikh muk.
Pechalen ya: so ,noyu druga net,
S kem dolguyu zapil by ya razluku,
Komu by mog pozhat’ ot serdtsa ruku
I pozhelat’ vesyolykh mnogo let.
Ya p’yu odin; votshche voobrazhen’ye
Vokrug menya tovarishchey zovyot,
Znakomoye na slyshno priblizheniye
I milovo dusha myoa ne zhdyot.
The Crimson Forest Sheds its Attire
The crimson forest sheds its attire,
The frost silvers the withered field,
Day will peer out as if involuntarily
And will hide beyond the neighbouring mountains.
Blaze up, my hearth, in my empty cell;
And you, wine, the friend of autumnal chills,
Pour into my breast a joyous intoxication,
Momentary oblivion from bitter suffering.
I am sad: I have no friend with me,
Someone with whom I could drink to a long parting,
Whose hand I could shake with heartfelt emotion,
And wish the happy company a long life.
I drink alone, in vain my imagination
Calls to friends around me,
The familiar approach cannot be heard
And my soul does not expect my dearest friend.
Alexander Pushkin
Please turn page quietly
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text
Zimniaya doroga
Skvoz’ volnistyje tumany
Probirajetsja luna,
Na pechal’nyje poljany
L’jot pechal’no svet ona.
Po doroge zimnej, skuchnoj
Trojka borzaja bezhit,
Kolokol’chik odnozvuchnyj
Utomitel’no gremit.
Ni ognja, ni chernoj khaty,
Glush’ i sneg … navstrechu mne
Tol’ko versty polosaty
Popadajutsja odne …
Skuchno, grustno … Zavtra, Nina,
Zavtra, k miloj vozvratjas’,
Ja zabudus’ u kamina,
Zagljazhus’ ne nagljadjas’.
Zvuchno strelka chasovaja
Mernyj krug svoj sovershit,
I, dokuchnykh udaljaja,
Polnoch’ nas ne razluchit.
Grustno, Nina: put’ moj skuchen,
Dremlja smolknul moj jamshchik,
Kolokol’chik odnozvuchen,
Otumanen lunnyj lik.
A Winter’s Road
Through swirling mists,
The moon peers,
And on sorrowful glades
Pours its dolorous light.
Over the tedious winter’s road
Glides a swift troika,
And its monotonous little bell
Tinkles wearily.
Not a light, not one black hovel,
Just remote solitude and snow …
Only the stripped milestones
Flash past me.
It’s tedious and sad … Tomorrow, Nina,
Tomorrow returning to my beloved,
I shall be lost in reverie by the hearth,
And I shall stare in wonderment, never tiring.
Loudly the hand of the clock
Completes its even circle,
Chasing away tiresome folk,
Midnight will not part us.
It is sad, Nina, my journey is boring,
Drowsing, my coachman has fallen silent,
The little bell is monotonous,
The moon has been covered by mist.
Alexander Pushkin
Pod’ezzhaya pod Izhory
Pod’ezzhaya pod Izhory
Ya vzglyanul na nebesa
I vospomnil vashi vzory,
Vashi siniye glaza.
Khot’ ya grustno ocharovan
Vashey devstvennoi krasoy,
Khot’ vampirom imenovan
Ya v gubernii Tverskoy,
No kolen moikh pred vami
Prekolnit’ ya ne posmel
I vlyublyonnymi mol’bami
Vas trevozhit ne khotel.
Upivayas’ nepriyatno
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Drawing Near to Izhory
Drawing near to Izhory,
I glanced at the heavens
And remembered your glances,
Your blue eyes.
Although I am sadly bewitched
By your maidenly beauty,
Although I am called a vampire
In the district of Tverskoi,
I did not dare to bend
My knee before you,
And I did not wish to disturb you
With entreaties of love.
Revelling disagreeably
text
Khmelem svetskoy suety,
Puzabudu veroyatno
Vashi milye chery.
Lyokhii stan, dvizhenii stroinost’,
Ostorozhnyi razgovor,
Etu skromnuyu spokoinost’,
Khitryi smekh khitryi vdzor.
Yesli zh net … po prezhnyu sledu
V vashi mirnye kraya
Cherez god opyat’ zayedu
I vlyublyus’ do noyabrya, do noyabrya.
In the intoxication of worldly cares,
I shall probably forget
Your dear features.
The slender waist, the harmony of your movements,
The guarded conversation,
That modest calmness,
The sly laughter and the sly nonsense.
If there is none … along the old path
Into your peaceful regions
I shall again call in a year’s time
And I shall fall in love until November.
Alexander Pushkin
Otchalivshaya Rus
Zemlya moya zlataya!
Osennij svetlyj hram!
Gusej kriklivyh staya
Nesetsya k oblakam.
Russia Cast Adrift
Oh, my golden land!
Bright autumnal church!
A flight of clamorous geese
Is chasing clouds.
To dush preobrazhennyh
Neschislimaya rat’,
S ozer podnyavshis’ sonnyh,
Letit leti v nebesnyj sad.
They are a legion of souls reincarnate,
Having lifted off sleepy lakes,
Flying towards the heavenly gardens.
Flying, flying, towards the heavenly gardens.
A vperedi ih lebed’.
V glazah, kak roshcha, grust’.
Ne ty l’ tak plachesh’ v nebe,
Otchalivshaya Rus’?
And they are headed by a swan
Whose eyes, like a grove, are sad.
Is it you crying like that in the skies,
Rus’ that left its shores?
Leti, leti, ne bejsya,
Vsemu est’ chas i breg.
Vetra stekayut v pesnyu,
A pesnya kanet v vek.
Leti moya zlataya Rus’!
Fly on, don’t agonise,
There’s always a time and a shore.
Winds produce a song,
And the song will disappear with passing time.
Fly on, golden Rus’!
Sergey Esenin (1895–1925)
Translated by Tom Kennedy
All texts and translations reprinted with kind permission
from Carnegie Hall
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about the performers
About tonight’s performers
Philips Classics
In concert she has sung Verdi’s
Requiem, Ravel’s Shéhérazade,
Berlioz’s La mort de Cléopâtre,
Rossini’s Stabat mater, Mussorgsky’s
Songs and Dances of Death and
Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky, among
others, working with leading
conductors, including Semyon Bychkov,
James Conlon, Sir Colin Davis, Valery
Gergiev, Bernard Haitink, James
Levine and Riccardo Muti.
Olga Borodina mezzo-soprano
Olga Borodina made an acclaimed
European debut in 1992, when she
appeared in Saint-Saëns’s Samson et
Dalila opposite Plácido Domingo at
the Royal Opera House, Covent
Garden. She subsequently returned to
the house in Khovanshchina, the titlerole of La Cenerentola, Marguerite (
La damnation de Faust) and Marina
(Boris Godunov). She has also sung
Marina and Eboli (Don Carlos) at the
Salzburg Festival and the Princess
(Adriana Lecouvreur) at La Scala,
Milan. For the Opéra de Paris her roles
have included Carmen and Eboli. In
the USA she has appeared at many
prestigious opera houses, including the
Metropolitan Opera, New York, and
San Francisco, regularly returning to
both in repertoire ranging from Rossini
to Rimsky-Korsakov and Bizet to
Mussorgsky.
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Highlights of this season include her
current recital tour of Europe, concerts
with Muti in France and Khovanshchina
for the Metropolitan Opera.
As a recitalist Olga Borodina regularly
appears at prominent venues
throughout Europe and America,
including the Wigmore Hall, Barbican
Centre, Carnegie Hall, La Scala,
Milan, Vienna Konzerthaus, Davies
Hall, San Francisco, Accademia di
Santa Cecilia in Rome, Geneva’s
Grand Théâtre, Barcelona’s Liceu and
the Amsterdam Concertgebouw.
Her extensive and award-winning
discography includes many operas,
recitals and Verdi’s Requiem under
Muti, which won a Grammy earlier
this year.
She was named People’s Artist of
Russia in 2002 and five years later
given the State Prize of Russia.
Dmitri Yefimov piano
Dmitri Yefimov was born in 1965 in
Leningrad. He began his musical
education at the age of five,
subsequently studying with Professor
Egrov at the St Petersburg
Conservatoire, where he now teaches.
Among his competition successes are
the Liszt Piano Competition in Italy in
1992 and, the previous year, the award
of Best Accompanist at the All-Union
Vocal Competition in Alma-Ata.
He has given concerts in Russia,
Germany, France, the UK and the USA
and works regularly with Olga
Borodina, with whom he has
performed worldwide.
Dmitri Yefimov has also recorded
several Beethoven piano sonatas.