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Georgy Sviridov (1915–1998) studied with Shostakovich, who openly praised his student’s ability to set verses to music in a most accessible and beguiling manner. Sviridov was also the composer of a film score for a 1960s movie titled Vremya Vpered (I’m transliterating here, I hope not too badly), which translates as “Time Forward.” A snippet of that score became the theme music for the Soviet evening news, making its creator the most publicly exposed of all serious Russian composers for many years.
Here Sviridov focuses on the vast Russian tradition of choral music, much of which lies in the liturgical realm—a place roundly discouraged during the Soviet era. Tchaikovsky sued the churchly powers of his time in order to use their exclusively held melodies and harmonies in modern composition. He won, and among his beneficiaries were Rachmaninoff, and the far lesser known but nonetheless splendid Alexander Kastalsky (1856–1926), Alexander Grechaninov (1864–1956), and to a great extent, Georgy Sviridov. Though only the Three Choruses on “Tsar Feodor Ioannovich”—incidental music which Sviridov composed between 1969 and 1972 for a production of a five-act tragedy by Alexei Tolstoy dealing with the story of Boris Godunov—falls into that category, that traditionally Russian liturgical sound inhabits, to a greater or lesser extent, everything else on this offering.
Some years ago I acquired a release (Olympic 520) that contained a fine recording of the Three Choruses by the Yurlov State Choir. Given its idiomatic rightness, it has long been my gold standard. That recording was made by Melodiya in 1992, and is, given the coughs and occasional rustling in the background, a live concert pickup. As such, it projects a compelling sense of a musical happening. This Alto release, recorded a year later by a similar Russian team, is a studio effort that offers a wider dynamic range, more detail, and far more vivid vocal color. The singing is equally idiomatic.
The remaining three pieces are even rarer on disc than the Three Choruses. Pushkin’s Garland, composed in 1979 and designated by Alto “Concerto for Chorus,” is a large-scale (over 30 minutes in length) work in which 10 highly contrasted poems of the Russian Shakespeare are masterfully set using a synergistic combination of traditional and modernistic harmonies, now and then a percussion ensemble with piano, and occasionally haunting offstage voices. It is a tour de force that truly deserves to be heard by the world at large.
The Songs of Troubled Times, also of 1980, is a setting of four poems by the Russian symbolist poet Alexander Blok. Here Sviridov becomes a minimalist employing the simplest and most direct of harmonic schemes and sonic textures. As in the best of vocal writing, here the words become totally subsumed into the music, and the music becomes totally subsumed into the words, blurring the demarcation between them.
Night Clouds, a choral cantata composed in 1979, also sets verses by Blok. This time they are far more despairing than before—an evocation, to me at any rate, of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 3:00 in the morning, which goes far beyond that example as only Russians, given their tumultuous history, can. The last song, titled “Puppet Show,” once again brings the percussion ensemble into the fray. The result is grotesque, and, given Sviridov’s language, a once again satisfying glimpse into the universal human condition.
The repertoire alone makes this release self-recommending. But then you get all that other good stuff. - FANFARE: William Zagorski
Track listing:
Three Choruses from Tsar Feodor Ioannovich
1. Prayer
2. Sacred Love
3. Poem of Repentance
Pushkin's Garland
4. Winter Morning
5. Ring for My Sweetheart
6. To Mary
7. The Echo
8. The Greek Feast
9. Camphor & Musik
10. Reveille is Sounded
11. Natasha
12. Arise, O Timid One
13. The White-Fanged Magpie
Songs of Troubled Times
14. Autumn
15. Bright Fields
16. Spring & The Wizard
17. The Icon
“Night Clouds” Choral Cantata
18. Night Clouds
19. On the Green Bank
20. Hands of the Clock nearing Midnight
21. Love
22. Puppet Show
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