On November 6, 2005 we honored the music of Russia and its renowned classical composers. The concert featured some of their greatest musical treasures arranged especially for wind symphony.
and
Included folk songs and dancers of the scintillating Russian folk ensemble Druzhba. Their musicians and dancers had the audience tapping its toes and clapping its hands.
Pass the vodka, please!
Performed November 6, 2005
Hofmann Theatre
Dean Lesher Regional Center
for the Arts
1601 Civic Dr., Walnut Creek, California
Druzhba Russian dance ensemble performed with their local all-star musical group which included Balalaikas, Domra and other instruments. Special arrangements were composed by Joe Smiell for performance with the Contra Costa Wind Symphony.
(Click on titles/composers for program notes and bios)
March of the Life Guards ................................... Unknown
Overture Solonelle Op. 72 ............................ Reinhold Gliere
Bogoroditse Devo ................................. Sergei Rachmaninoff
Armenian Dances ................................... Aram Khachaturian
1. Allegro moderato
2. AllegroVocalise Op. 34, No. 14 ........................ Sergei Rachmaninoff
March Op. 69, No. 4, Cavalry March .......... Sergei Prokofiev
Finale, Symphony No. 5 ......................... Dmitri Shostakovich
Druzhba, a Russian folk ensemble of instrumentalists and dancers, now joins the Wind Symphony. Special arrangements of the following traditional Russian folk music were composed for this concert by Joe Smiell.
Toska Po Rodine ("Homesickness")Accordian Dance *
Paidooli
Spoon Dance *
A Slavonic Woman's Farewell ............... Vacily AgapkinKorobushka Officer's Dance
Plate Dance *
Overture Solonelle Op. 72 -- Reinhold Gliere
More completely known as Solemn Overture for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution. Composed for military band in 1937. {Gliere Bio} {Back to Program}
Bogoroditse Devo -- Sergei Rachmaninoff
Though Rachmaninoff avoided affiliation with the established church, elements of its music and ritual appeared in several of his compositions, and he contributed magnificent settings of the Divine Liturgy (1910) and Vigil (1915). Both works, but especially the latter, were influenced by a late-19th-century movement to return Russian sacred music to a style based on traditional Russian chant and harmonizations. Unlike many pieces from Rachmaninoff’s Vigil, the stunning Bogoroditse Devo (the Orthodox version of Ave Maria) does not contain chant per se, but uses chant-like melodic formulas with simple yet expansive harmonic textures.
Translation:
Rejoice, O Virgin Mother Of God,
Mary full of grace, the Lord is with You.
Blessed are You among women,
And blessed is the Fruit of Your womb,
For You have borne the Savior of our souls.
{Rachmaninoff Bio}{Back to Program}
These two Armenian Dances are among several works for military band by Aram Khachaturian. The dances were originally written in 1943 for the Red Army Cavalry Band and were adapted for modern band instrumentation by the gifted American musician and scholar Ralph Satz.
{Khachaturian Bio}{Back to Program}
Originally written for voice and piano in 1912, this is thought by many to be one of the composer’s most famous and hauntingly beautiful compositions. The melody has been described as “a prayer, full of anguish for that which is irretrievably lost.”
Commissioned for an unknown band in the Soviet Union, Cavalry March is one of the few original band works by Prokofiev. It is the last in a suite of four marches, as discussed below by Noëlle Mann, Curator, The Serge Prokofiev Archive, Information Services, Goldsmiths College, University of London.
[The following is from liner notes for the Chandos CD “ Russian Wind Band Classics”.
Used with permission.]
"Marches for military band Op. 69 (1935-1937)
1. March for the Spartakiade
2. Marching Song (Lyrical)
3. March
4. Cavalry March (Over the Bridge)
“Until today, only the first two marches of Op. 69 were available for performance. Prokofiev composed the third march for a competition but never orchestrated it, which might explain the absence of a title. On the manuscript of the piano score he wrote: ‘If the March is too long or the second trio too difficult, cut the trio out’. The suggestion was taken up by V. Shpirko, Editor of the publisher Muzyka, who orchestrated part of this work in 1968. With the trio re-instated in an orchestration by Samuel Becker, tonight’s performance will be the world première of the complete march. When Prokofiev realized that the fourth march, Cavalry March, would not be published either, he incorporated it into another work of the same period, Songs of our Days Op. 76. The Cavalry March has now been re-united with the other three marches, which makes this performance of Op. 69 the first ever of the work as conceived by Prokofiev in 1937.”
According to Shostakovich, “The idea behind my symphony is the making of a man. I saw him, with all his experience, at the center of the work, which is lyrical from beginning to end. The Finale brings an optimistic solution to the tragic parts of the first movement.”
The symphony was first performed in Leningrad on November 21, 1937. It is said that the applause after the symphony finished was longer than the symphony itself, so overcome were the audience with the emotion of having listened to a piece of music that wasn't merely political hackwork, and that wasn’t afraid to display some real human emotion.
The Soviet authorities subtitled the work A Soviet Artist’s Reply to Just Criticism, a reference to the denunciation of the composer in a January 1936 article in Pravda, the official Soviet newspaper. However, while this final movement is often criticized for sounding shrill, Testimony – Volkov’s 1979 expose of anti-Soviet themes within Shostakovich’s work – declares the movement to be a parody of shrillness, representing “forced rejoicing”. It includes a quotation from the composer’s song “Rebirth”, accompanying the words “A barbarian painter” who “blackens the genius’s painting”. In the song, the barbarian’s paint falls away and the original painting is reborn. It has been suggested that the barbarian and the genius are Stalin and Shostakovich, respectively. The work is largely somber despite the composer’s official claim that he wished to write a positive work.
Meadowlands, wide meadowlands,
Heroes cross the fields,
Ekh, heroes of the Red Army.
Girls are crying,
Today the girls are downhearted,
Their dear ones have gone away,
Ekh, away to the army.
Girls, look there,
Look there, out on our road,
The distant road is pulsing,
Ekh, the jolly road.
But out there we see,
We see a grey storm cloud,
The enemy’s evil in the forest,
Ekh, the enemy’s evil, like a storm cloud.
Ekh, girls, look there,
We’re ready to take the enemy,
Our quick-legged steeds,
Ekh, our quick moving tanks.
Ekh, let the work
Bubble gaily in the kolkhozy,
We’re supervisors today,
Ekh, today we’re sentries.
Ukrainian folk dance Hopak (originally Gopak) was a dance for men only. Later it was performed by couples, male soloists, and mixed groups of dancers. In the western Ukraine it was danced in a closed circle.
The Hopak has no fixed pattern of steps. Dancers competitively improvise steps, high leaps, squatting kicks, and turns; women dance simple steps, sway, clap, or circle.
Agapkin composed this song in 1912, as Russia was awash in rumors about the impending new Balkan War, in which the Slavs would be pitted against the Ottoman Turks, and Orthodox Christianity against Islam. In fact, the inspiration is said to have come from early newsreels containing poignant footage of Slavic soldiers parting from their wives and families. Although, this particular war did not materialize, the song spread like wildfire, and became the most popular military march during WWI when new words were written for it.
The word “Slavic” in the title of the march, which otherwise invokes only Russia , is a tribute as much to the pan-Slavist ideology of the preceding century as to its transformation into Russian nationalism on the eve of WWI.
Like other iconic artifacts of the pre-1917 era, the march underwent a revival after the collapse of communism. It gave its name even to a new brand of vodka. Most notably, though, during the debates surrounding Russia ’s new national anthem in the 1990s, Joseph Brodsky, along with many others, including General Lebed, petitioned Boris Yeltsin to adopt “The Slavic Woman’s Farewell” as the national anthem of the new Russia. Later, in 2000, during the heated controversy on the same subject under Vladimir Putin, the Yabloko Party proposed it as an alternative to both Glinka’s (de facto anthem under Yeltsin) and the old Soviet workhorse.
Curiously, the march continues to carry its anthem aura even now that the official Russian hymn has been adopted. During the greeting ceremony in Seoul in March 2001, President Putin was greeted first by the two official anthems of Russia and South Korea and immediately afterwards by Proshchanie Slavianki.
His music has appeared in many films including the classic Soviet movie (1960) and in the modern Russian submariner movie, 72 Meters (1986).
The marching song is so deeply imprinted on the Russian psyche that Sergey Bodrov managed to provide a whole layer of ironic meaning in his celebrated anti-war film Prisoner of the Caucasus (1996) by using it as the film’s main theme.
There are different versions of words for the march. Here is the most famous and known version of V. Lazarev that was made right after the beginning of WWI. It is considered to be the original text of the march.
“The Slavic Woman’s Farewell”
The minute of a farewell is beginning,
You look anxiously in my eyes,
And I sense the dear breathing
But a thunderstorm is beginning far away.
Foggy and blue air shook
And an alarm touched my temples.
And Russia calls us for a feat.
I feel the wind from the movement of regiments.
Refrain:
Farewell, the paternal land,
Recall us,
Farewell, beloved look,
Forgive-farewell, Forgive-farewell . . .
Years are passing and are passing,
Trains are going in darkness.
And soldiers are in the trains
And a soldier’s star
Is shining in the dark sky.
And soldiers are in the trains
And a soldier’s star
Is shining in the dark sky.
There are only a forest and a steppe around and stops in a steppe
There is the light of evening and new dawn.
So don’t forget the farewell of a Slav woman,
Repeat it inmost in your heart!
No, a heart will not be apathetic,
The tights of truth are shining . . .
We were devoting our lives
For a love, for a great brotherhood.
Farewell, the paternal land,
Recall us,
Farewell, beloved look,
Not the every from us will return home.
Years are passing and are passing,
But you, song, is always together with us.
We remember you,
And a soldier’s star
Is shining in the dark sky.
Vasily Ivanovich Agapkin (1884 – 1964). After the revolution of 1917 Agapkin became a functionary of VChK-OGPU-NKVD. However he was not involved in their crimes. He was the leader of the orchestra of this secret service.
Years later it was Agapkin who lead the combined military orchestra during the famous Parade on the Red Square on the November, 7th of 1941. “The Farewell of Slav Woman” was one of the four marches that were played in that Parade.
His performance experience also includes tours of the U. S., Canada, Korea, Japan, and the Bahamas, and he has performed with the San Francisco, Calgary, Edmonton, Miami, and Baltimore symphonies among several others.
Smiell appeared in and performed music for the ABC network’s movie production of “A Christmas without Snow”, in Coppolla’s “Hearts of Darkness”, and performed music for Warner Brother’s “ Battle of the Bulge.”
He has been writing music since his early days. He enjoys writing variations of classical pieces, and has arranged folk songs from many countries. He has written well over 700 arrangements for concert bands and folk groups. His many years of experience has produced an inner ear so good that he can write out parts before writing the master score.