“The Hebrew rhapsody for solo violoncello with orchestra bears the name of the great king Solomon. In this, without taking thought for development and formal consistency, without the fetters of a text requiring interpretation, he has given free course to his fancy; the multiplex figure of the founder of the Great Temple lent itself, after setting it upon a lofty throne, and chiseling its lineaments, to the creation of a phantasmagorical entourage of persons and scenes in rapid and kaleidoscopic succession. The violoncello, with its ample breadth of phrasing, now melodic and with moments of superb lyricism, now declamatory and with robustly dramatic lights and shades, lends itself to a reincarnation of Solomon in all his glory, surrounded by his thousand wives and concubines, with his multitude of slaves and warriors behind him. His voice resounds in the devotional silence, and the sentences of his wisdom sink into the heart as the seed into a fertile soil: ‘Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, ... all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.... He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.’... At times the sonorous voice of the violoncello is heard predominant amid a breathless and fateful obscurity throbbing with persistent rhythms, again, it blends in a phantasmagorical paroxysm of polychromatic tones, shot through with silvery clangors and frenzies of exultation. And anon one finds oneself in the heart of a dream-world, in an Orient of fancy, where men and women of every race and tongue are holding argument or hurling maledictions; and now and again we hear the mournful accents of the prophetic seer, under the influence of which all bow down and listen reverently. The entire discourse of the soloist, vocal rather than instrumental, seems like musical expression intimately conjoined with the Talmudic prose. The pauses, the repetitions of entire passages, the leaps of a double octave, the chromatic progressions, all find their analogues in the Book of Ecclesiastes—in the versicles, in the fairly epigraphic reiteration of the admonitions (‘and all is vanity and vexation of spirit’), in the unexpected shifts from one thought to another, in certain crescendi of emotion that end in explosions of anger or grief uncontrolled.”
Schelomo is scored for three flutes (and piccolo), two oboes (and English horn), two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contra-bassoon, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones and tuba, kettledrums, tambourine, side drum, bass drum, cymbals, tam-tam, celesta, two harps, and strings.
ALEXANDER PORPHIRIEVITCH
BORODIN
(Born at St. Petersburg, November 12, 1833;[16] died there February 28, 1887)
SYMPHONY NO. 2, IN B MINOR, OP. 5
I. Allegro moderato II. Molto vivo III. Andante IV. Allegro
Only a Russian can do justice to this music, which is wildly Russian; that is to say, the Russia of the Orient. One is tempted, hearing the repetitions of the first leading theme, a motto phrase it may be called, to say with Hamlet: “Leave thy damnable faces and begin,” but the monotony of repetition becomes irrepressive. A Russian critic was reminded more than once in the course of the first and last movements of the ancient Russian knights in their awkwardness, also in their greatness. We are told that Borodin intended to portray them in tones. He himself said that in the slow movement he wished to recall the songs of Slav troubadours; to picture in the first movement the gatherings of princes, and in the finale the banquets of heroes where the Russian Guzla and bamboo flute were heard while the mighty men caroused. It is easy in the lyrical passages to be reminded of corresponding phrases in Prince Igor, nor is this surprising, for he was working on the symphony and the opera at the same time. He was then obsessed by the life of feudal Russia.
No composer can be called great simply because he is a nationalist in his music. The folk tunes of a nation have often worked damage to the composer relying on them for his themes, and content with the mere exposition of them. Rimsky-Korsakov and Moussorgsky were nationalists, but their music passed the frontier; it gives pleasure in every country. Is Borodin to be ranked with them?
Eric Blom, speaking of Borodin as a pioneer, remembers how he was once condemned as an “incompetent amateur who wrote hideous discords because he did not know the rules of harmony”—an unwarranted and foolish condemnation, as unjust as Tchaikovsky’s characterization in the bitter letter he wrote to Mme von Meck in 1878 the year after this symphony was first heard. Admitting that Borodin had talent, “a very great talent,” he said that it had come to nothing for the want of teaching, “because blind fate has led him into the science laboratories instead of a vital musical existence.” The reference was to Borodin’s fame as a chemist at the Academy of Medicine. This was written when Tchaikovsky was accused of that atrocious crime, cosmopolitanism, by his fellow laborers in the Russian vineyard.
There are pages of splendid savagery in this symphony; there are a few wild, haunting melodies. No, the composer of the two symphonies, one at least of the string quartets, and a handful of exquisite songs is not to be flippantly dismissed.