Piano
and voice – Olga Vasiliev.
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“Children’s Album” by
Peter Tchaikovsky…
We often
hear this concert announcement in a hall, or over the radio and television,
preceding known and loved piano miniatures rendered now by a renowned maestro,
now by a little beginner.
There
twenty four easy pieces first appeared in print in 1878 – an endeavour of
Russia’s largest music publishers, the house of Peter Jurgenson, Tchaikovsky’s
personal friend and admirer of his music.
The
title page of this first edition reads: “Dedicated to Volodya Davydov.
Children’s album. Collection of Easy Pieces for Children,” and below, in
parentheses, “An imitation of Schumann. Opus 39.”
Now, who
is this Volodya Davydov, and why did Tchaikovsky dedicate the album to him?
Here is the story.
The
composer spent several weeks in 1877 with the Davydovs, his cousins, on their
country seat of Verbovka. Volodya, his little nephew, tortured his ears for
several hours a day with piano exercises. The uncle wrote for him a cycle of
pieces, versatile in nature and technically accessible to the clumsy childish
fingers. The unique suite sets ever new tasks to the player. Any child can cope
with these short and easy pieces, melodically expressive, simple in harmony,
and attractive with folksy reminiscences. The initial variant was made
specially for Volodya. Later, Tchaikovsky turned to the Album time and again to
develop on it with consideration for beginner musicians in general, but
preserved the title-page dedicated to the child who had first prompted him to
write it.
Later,
Anton Arensky, Samuel Maikapar and Vladimir Rebikov wrote collections of piano
pieces for children posing similar problems and ways to solve them. Before
Tchaikovsky, great German composer Ribert Schumann (1810-1856) wrote his “Album
fur die Jugend”, due to which his name came up on the title page of
Tchaikovsky’s suite in it’s the first publication.
Victoria Beketova.
VICTOR
LUNIN
One day,
as he was listening to a rendition of “Children’s Album”, Victor Lunin wondered
why this memorable, expressive music hadn’t moved anyone to write lyrics to it.
The idea
of verse to accompany it was all the more daring because we all know the music
since childhood. The customary pattern runs the other way round, with a
composer making music to verses he likes, which set the rhythm and tune, and
whose verbal imagery prompts the musical treatment. So Lunin was facing a
formidable task, to come out as co-author and, in a sense, rival of a composer
of genius in one of his best-known works.
But
then, it also takes some courage to re-create in Russian classics of foreign
poetry – and this was Lunin’s profession. He translated an amazingly wide range
of English and American poetry from Walt Whitman to Ben Johnson, from Thomas
Moore to Walter de la Mare, from Shelley to Kipling, and from nursery rhymes to
the Beatles’ songs, and every time he deliberately obliterated his personality
to transpose another’s style and manner into a different language.
A born
musician and erudite music-lover, expert translator and author of brilliant
nursery rhymes, he qualified for the task as few did. His verse books for
children – “I’ve Seen a Miracle”, “The Magic House”, “ABC”, “The Pastry Lisa”
and others – combine spontaneity and the simplicity of vocabulary with
sparkling puns in which kids take such delight.
This
time, too, Lunin deeply penetrated the childish heart and mind. It’s a real
sorrow when a dearly loved doll falls ill, and a tragedy when she dies. But
then, the doll life is nothing but a game. So the child’s bereavement soon
passes, and a merry waltz dries his tears.
Lunin
subtly copes with the thematic changes characteristic if “Children’s Album”,
where “The Russian Song” and “Kamarinskaya” dance tune intersperse with the
“Polka” and “Old French Ditty”. In this latter, sixteen lines suffice for him
to retell the story of Sir Lancelot and Elaine the Fair. He makes a ballad of
“Mazurka” and breaks into sentimentality in “A German Song”.
Choral
songs – “Mornings Prayer”, which opens the Album, and “In church”, which rounds
it off –hold a special place in the suite. Here, too, the poet finds words
precisely translating the spirit and intonation of the music.
Perhaps,
this is where lies the secret of the listener’s impression that the verses were
made with, not after the music – an impression illusionary but all the more
wonderful.
Igor Kalugin.