More from the Mighty Five

No. 287 of the ongoing  ITYWLTMT series of audio montages, which can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast287

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This week’s Friday Podcast, another installment in our Beaten Path series, revisits the St-Petersburg  entourage of Mily Balakirev’s protégés, with major works by Cesar Cui and Alexander Borodin.

Cesarius-Benjaminus Cui was born in Vilnius, Vilna Governorate, Russian Empire (now Vilnius, Lithuania), to a Roman Catholic family, the youngest of five children. His French father, Antoine had entered Russia as a member of Napoleon's army in 1812, settled in Vilnius upon their defeat, and married a local woman. The young César grew up learning French, Russian, Polish, and Lithuanian.

Cui enjoyed a long double career, one in music, as writer, critic and composer, and the other as a leading authority on military fortification, with the final rank of Lieutenant General. As a composer he turned his early attention to opera. Cui’s posthumous reputation as a composer has depended largely on compositions on a much smaller scale than his operas or ambitious works, songs, including an 1890 setting of twenty poems by Richepin and short pieces for violin and piano.

Today’s Cui selection, his Suite generally numbered fourth, with the explanatory subtitle “A Argenteau”, orchestrated in 1887, is based on pieces from a piano suite of the same date, both a tribute to the Countess Mercy Argenteau. The first movement of the fourth orchestral suite celebrates a great cedar-tree on the estate of the Countess at Argenteau, followed by a Spanish-style Serenade, with a plucked string accompaniment. A fanfare leads into a battle for toy soldiers, leading to a scene of solemnity at the Chapel. The last movement celebrates a well known landmark on the Argenteau estate there, the rock of the movement title.

Like Cui, Borodin also had a “day job”, that of doctor and chemist. As a chemist, he is best known for his work in organic synthesis, including being among the first chemists to demonstrate nucleophilic substitution, as well as being the co-discoverer of the aldol reaction.  As a composer, Borodin is best known for his symphonies, his two string quartets, the tone poem In the Steppes of Central Asia and his opera Prince Igor. His music is noted for its strong lyricism and rich harmonies. Along with some influences from Western composers, as a member of The Five his music exudes also an undeniably Russian flavor. His passionate music and unusual harmonies proved to have a lasting influence on the younger French composers Debussy and Ravel.

Borodin met Balakirev in 1862 and its while under Balakirev's tutelage that he began his Symphony No. 1 in E-flat major; first performed in 1869, with Balakirev conducting. Borodin's fame outside the Russian Empire was made possible during his lifetime by Franz Liszt, who arranged a performance of the Symphony No. 1 in Germany in 1880, and by the Comtesse de Mercy-Argenteau in Belgium and France.

Balakirev’s symphonic poem Russia completes today’s montage. Originally his ‘Second Overture on Russian Themes’, it was revised and published as Musical Picture, ‘1000 years’ in 1869, and further slight revisions were made and a superfluous programme was concocted for it in the 1880s. The three folksongs employed by Balakirev had all been collected by himself on an expedition up the River Volga in 1860, and are furnished with an authentic ambience very seldom matched and never surpassed by other Russian composers.

I think you will love this music too.