Descriptive Analyses of Piano Works / For the Use of Teachers, Players, and Music Clubs

by Edward Baxter Perry

Rubinstein: Kamennoi-Ostrow, No. 22

Kamennoi-Ostrow is the name of one of a group of islands situated in the Neva River, some miles below St. Petersburg, “Ostrow” being the Russian word for island, and “Kamennoi” the specific name for this particular island, signifying at once small and rocky. This island is a favorite pleasure resort, both winter and summer, for the wealthy and aristocratic classes of St. Petersburg; one of the imperial palaces is situated upon it, besides many cafés, dance halls, summer and winter concert gardens, and the like. In winter it is the objective point for countless gay sleighing parties, in which the lavish Russian nobles vie with each other in the display of elaborately decorated sledges, fine blooded horses in glittering harness, and piles of almost priceless furs. At this time the highway to and from the island is the smooth, solid ice of the frozen river. In summer the transit is made by boat, and the gaiety is higher during those gorgeous summer nights, when the midnight sun, never quite vanishing below the southern horizon, floods the scene with its wondrous, mystical light, unlike either moonlight or the ordinary light of day, but described by enthusiastic beholders as possessing a peculiar, magical charm wholly its own and scarcely to be imagined by those who have never witnessed it.

Rubinstein, who spent many years of his later life at St. Petersburg, was naturally a frequent visitor at Kamennoi-Ostrow. In fact, on several occasions he spent a number of weeks consecutively at one of its summer hotels and became very familiar with all phases of gaiety at this festive resort and well acquainted with most of its habitués. His set of twenty-four pieces for the piano, entitled “Kamennoi-Ostrow,” is a series of tone sketches suggested by and representing various scenes and personages which his sojourn there brought within his experience. The No. 22, which is probably the best of the set and certainly the most widely known, is intended as the musical portrait of a lady, Mademoiselle Anna de Friedebourg, a personal acquaintance of Rubinstein, to whom the composition is dedicated. It is a portrait drawn in tender yet glowing tints against the soft background of the summer night, outlining, however, the spiritual rather than the physical charms and characteristics of the lady, affording us a conception of her individuality as well as the mood of the surroundings. The first and principal subject, a slow and song-like lyric melody, enunciated by the left hand, with its peculiarly warm and mellow character, reminding one, in color and quality, of the tone of the G string on the violin, is intended to suggest the personality of the lady, or perhaps, more strictly, the emotional impression which this personality produced upon the composer; while the delicate, vibratory accompaniment of the right hand indicates the poetic setting or background, the luminous midsummer night, in one of those island pleasure gardens, the weird light quivering down through tremulous leaves, the mingled scent of flowers and faint sea-breezes, the hum of summer insects, and the whisper of the reeds stirred by the lazily flowing river.

Upon the dreamful hush of this audible silence sounds clear, but sweet and silvery, the little bell of a Greek Catholic chapel, not far distant, calling to midnight mass and ringing out at regular intervals, with soft persistency, through the whole of the second strain or movement. Below and subordinate to it is heard a curious series of colloquial phrases of melody, subdued and fitful, like the fragments of a murmured conversation, as if a low and interrupted dialogue were taking place. Then the full, rich chords of the organ roll out upon the quiet night, flooding it at once with ample waves of grave, solemn harmony. This is followed by a brief passage of recitative in single notes, suggesting the voice of the priest intoning the service within the chapel. It is said to be an exact reproduction, note for note, of a fragment of very ancient Hebrew music, once forming a part of the religious exercises of the Jews and long ago incorporated into the Greek Catholic service.

Then comes an effective, but seemingly irrelevant, cadenza in double arpeggios which, though pleasing, has no apparent connection either with the subject or the mood of the rest of the composition, but which serves indifferently well as a means of leading back to the first theme, presented this time with full, flowing accompaniment in a more impassioned guise, as if to indicate the deeper, more intensified emotions developed by the romantic scene and poetic surroundings.

The composition closes with a momentary return of the little conversational strain, merely suggested and only just audible this time, like whispered words of farewell; and then a few quiet chords of the organ, lingering and slowly fading into the silence, as a pleasant memory reluctantly dissolves into slumber.

GRIEG
1843	1907