Once again, the day is upon us – Johann Sebastian Bach’s birthday. WWFM – The Classical Network is heading into the homestretch on its annual “Bach 500.” Every year, it has been the station’s custom to celebrate Bach while amassing 500 listener donations IN ANY AMOUNT. You set the level. Once the 500 is achieved, the fundraising ends and we douse one another with champagne, metaphorically speaking. The bubbly is in the music.
Please do your part to support classical music in your community and, by way of internet streaming, around the world. It’s contributions from listeners like you that provide a home for shows like “Picture Perfect” and “The Lost Chord.”
How do you make it happen? It’s easy! Head on over to wwfm.org, and click on “Become a member of our Bach 500,” or follow the link below. Or do it the old-fashioned way and call 1-888-232-1212.
Less than 250 laps left in this race! Thank you for your support, and go, JSB, go!
So long, winter. We hardly knew ye! Spring arrives this afternoon at 5:24 EDT.
Last night on “The Lost Chord,” I presented highlights from Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera “The Snow Maiden.” The work is an allegorical fairy tale of humans, quasi-mythological creatures, and the eternal forces of nature, with the story of a star-crossed love bringing about the end of a 15-year winter.
Rimsky’s opera, composed in 1880-81, was based on a play by Alexander Ostrovsky, which was first presented in 1873 with incidental music by Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky.
Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) and Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) shared something of a complicated rivalry. In public, they were genial and even supportive of one another, while in private both grappled with suspicion and envy. By the mid-1880s, Tchaikovsky achieved such eminence that Rimsky found himself creatively paralyzed. For his part, Tchaikovsky swore his publisher to secrecy about his use of a recently-invented instrument, the celesta, to characterize the Sugar Plum Fairy in “The Nutcracker,” so nervous was he that Rimsky would steal his thunder.
Tchaikovsky’s untimely death finally lifted some of the pressure. Rimsky exorcised his demons by setting Nikolai Gogol’s short story “Christmas Eve,” a work Tchaikovsky had already adapted as an opera twice: in 1874, as “Vakula the Smith,” and in 1885, as “Cherevichki” (“The Slippers”). Rimsky’s own operatic version of the tale appeared in 1895.
Rimsky was only 50 when he began work on “Christmas Eve,” but it proved to be the start of something of an Indian summer for the composer. 11 of his 15 operas followed. By the time of his death at the age of 64, he could be said to have been every bit as revered as Tchaikovsky.
Thanks to the orchestral suite Rimsky distilled from “The Snow Maiden,” at least some of his music is better-known, especially “Dance of the Tumblers,” which is a favorite for drive-time radio. The best-known bit from Tchaikovsky’s version, which honestly has never really caught on to the extent that Rimsky’s has, is also his “Dance of the Tumblers.”
Winter isn’t over until a ray of sunshine strikes the Snow Maiden. All hail Yarilo, Slavic god of vegetation, fertility, and springtime!
Tchaikovsky, “Dance of the Tumblers”
Rimsky-Korsakov, “Dance of the Tumblers”
Tchaikovsky, Complete incidental music to “The Snow Maiden”
Rimsky-Korsakov, Suite from the opera “The Snow Maiden”
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov was the composer of no fewer than 15 operas. But how many of them are known in the West?
This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll have a chance to sample one of them, as we welcome spring with selections from “The Snow Maiden.”
Based on an allegorical fairy tale of humans, quasi-mythological creatures, and the eternal forces of nature, it’s the story of a star-crossed love that brings about the end of a 15-year winter. The orchestral suite – which climaxes with the “Dance of the Tumblers” – is fairly popular, but the opera itself is seldom done, at least outside of Russia.
The recording we’ll sample, on the Capriccio label, features the Bulgarian Radio Symphony conducted by Stoyan Angelov. It may not hold a candle to the best Rimsky opera recordings by conductors like Nikolai Golovanov, but it’s enough to give a taste of what American opera lovers are missing.
I hope you’ll join me for “The Thaw of the Wild,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
And lest anyone doubt my motives in celebrating a Russian composer since the invasion of Ukraine, Rimsky was no fan of authoritarianism, or imperialism, for that matter. If you’re interested to learn more, I wrote about it in this post about another one of his operas, last year:
His surname reads the same forward and backward; which is oddly appropriate for a composer whose music plenty of listeners have felt doesn’t seem to really go anywhere. But knowing what I do of Max Reger, I’m sure he couldn’t have cared less about other people’s opinions.
Perhaps the craziest exemplar of crazy German contrapuntalism, Reger could write music of such density that the individual voices could get lost in a tangle, deep inside a knot, somewhere in an impenetrable thicket.
He was mostly a composer of “abstract” music – mainly a lot of fugues and sets of variations – seeing himself as the heir of Beethoven and Brahms. But it is the Baroque masters Reger most closely resembles, in his own gargantuan, overcooked way, especially in his organ works, of which he composed many.
Aside from his sporadically delightful (though occasionally borderline) “Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart” and a handful of organ works, most of his prolific output is known mainly by specialists. For some reason or another, Rudolf Serkin remained a high-profile torchbearer. Serkin recorded Reger’s Piano Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra and, later in life, the “Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Bach.”
To me, Reger comes closest to being palatable – and even charming – when restricted to a single, non-keyboard instrument, as in his sonatas for solo violin and suites for solo cello.
Also, it sounds like he may have actually had some fun composing his “Four Tone Poems after Arnold Böcklin.” Böcklin, you may recall, was the Swiss artist who painted “The Isle of the Dead,” which inspired the third of these. Surprisingly, the tone poems are late works. Did anyone see them coming? I guess after a lifetime of getting all tangled up, Reger just wanted to walk around with loose shoelaces for a change.
Despite the fact that in most of his photos he looks like he’s got a mouth full of sauerkraut, Reger actually proved himself to have a sharp sense of humor. His most famous retort to a critic came in the form of a letter written in 1906. It reads: “I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. I have your review in front of me. Soon it will be behind me.”
Reger, you rascal. Why couldn’t you get more of that into your music?
On the occasion of his sesquicentenary, happy 150th, Max Reger!
“Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart”
“Fantasy and Fugue on B-A-C-H”
Rudolf Serkin plays the “Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Bach”
Serkin plays the Piano Concerto
Sonata for Unaccompanied Violin in G Major, Op. 91, No. 6
