Nicolai RIMSKY-KORSAKOV (1844-1908) Peter TCHAIKOVSKY ...

Guild GmbH
Switzerland
GHCD 2391
2012 Guild GmbH
© 2012 Guild GmbH
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Nicolai RIMSKY-KORSAKOV (1844-1908)
Procession of the Nobles from ‘Mlada’ 5:02
Mikhail GLINKA (1804-1857) – Valse-Fantasie 7:55
Peter TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893)
‘Marche Miniature’ from Suite No. 1 in D 2:08
THE ROYAL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA
HMV Stereo LP SXLP 30101 – Recorded: Abbey Road Studios, London, 10 November 1958
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Alexander BORODIN (1833-1887)
‘Notturno’ from String Quartet No. 2 in D orchestrated by Nikolai Tcherepnin 9:30
Peter TCHAIKOVSKY – Waltz from ‘Swan Lake’ 7:04
Alexander GLAZUNOV (1865-1936)
Concert Waltz No. 1 in D major, Op.47 8:42
Sergei PROKOFIEV (1891-1953)
‘Lieutenant Kijé’ Suite – excerpts
Kijé’s Wedding 2:46
Troika 2:36
Burial of Kijé 6:00
Alexander GLAZUNOV
Stenka Razin – Symphonic Poem on ‘The Volga Boat Song’ 16:14
THE PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA
HMV Stereo LP SXLP 30119 – Recorded: Kingsway Hall, London, 1 March 1956,
27 July 1956 & 14 March 1957

A GUILD HISTORICAL RELEASE
• Master source: Records from the collection of Edward Johnson
• Remastering from original LPs: Peter Reynolds
• Final master preparation: Reynolds Mastering, Colchester, England
• Design: Paul Brooks, Design and Print, Oxford
• Photo of Anatole Fistoulari courtesy of the Tully Potter Collection
• Art direction: Guild GmbH
• Executive co-ordination: Guild GmbH
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and, truth to tell, thoughtless or unprepared performances, the playing of this immortal music is
one of the highlights of this collection. Fistoulari here brings a lifetime’s experience as a conductor
of his compatriot’s music (from the age of seven, be it remembered) and of ballets in the theatre.
The conductor’s pacing and shaping of the music constitute an object-lesson to later conductors as
to how this music should be performed.
Alexander Glazunov’s Concert Waltz No 1 (in D major, Opus 47, 1893) is the first of two
works in this collection by this rather neglected composer (1865-1936). It is another masterly
interpretation by Fistoulari – recorded at the same sessions as the Tchaikovsky Waltz – receiving
arguably the finest account it has ever enjoyed on disc. Glazunov’s Second Concert Waltz in F major
followed a year later, but is even less frequently heard than its predecessor. The Philharmonia play the
First Concert Waltz superbly well, as they do in just three movements from Prokofiev’s ‘Lieutenant
Kijé’ Suite of 1934, taken from film music. The story goes that the character of Lieutenant Kijé was
invented to placate a mistaken Russian ruler: at the end of the story, of course, the character has to
be killed off by the courtiers – hence the concluding ‘Burial of Kijé’ – and Prokofiev’s score, quoting
echt-Russian folk music and brilliantly orchestrated, has become a perennial concert favourite.
Finally, the largest work in the programme is Glazunov’s symphonic poem ‘Stenka Razin’ – also
full of familiar Russian folk tunes (familiar perhaps from their use by other Russian composers)
– which was written in 1885 (when Glazunov was just 20, yet already a fully accomplished and
established composer). The scope of this work reveals Fistoulari’s mastery at controlling larger
musical canvases; the work is based on the life of a genuine Russian hero of the 17th-century
(hence the folk-music element) and is a splendid evocation of both dramatic and lyrical expression,
making a fitting end with the Philharmonia at their finest in this tribute to an outstanding Russian
conductor.
© Robert Matthew-Walker, 2012
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It is with pleasure that Guild presents this programme of Russian Concert Favourites conducted
by Anatole Fistoulari, the Russian-born, naturalised British conductor who was one of the most
recorded and widely-admired masters of the baton in the decades following World War II, yet
whose reputation, since his death in 1995 at the age of 88, has tended to become overlooked.
Fistoulari was born in Kiev, where his father (who was a pupil both of Rimsky-Korsakov and of
Anton Rubinstein) was a noted conductor. It was evident from a very young age that Anatole had
inherited his father’s qualities, for the boy conducted his first orchestra at the astonishingly early age
of seven – in Tchaikovsky’s ‘Pathètique’ Symphony. One must remember that this work had been
heard for the first time just 23 years previously, conducted by the composer, and that orchestral
recordings (which would have made it easier for any conductor – particularly a child, as Fistoulari
was at the time – to have memorised the score) were, in 1914, in their infancy: certainly, the boy had
to learn the work from the published score.
From that concert, it would seem that Fistoulari’s lifetime’s career was settled. Following the
1917 Revolution (at that time, he was still just ten years old), just three years later he found himself
doubtless the youngest member of the growing émigré Russian musical colony in Paris, coming into
contact with Stravinsky, Serge Koussevitzky, Alexander Tcherepnin, Serge Prokofiev and others,
as well as having – at the age of 13, and on George Enescu’s recommendation – conducted Saint-
Saëns’s opera ‘Samson et Dalilah’ in Bucharest.
Another famous Russian with whom Fistoulari worked later in Paris was the great bass Feodor
Chaliapin, who considered the conductor (then in his early- to mid-20s) to be an admirable partner;
doubtless Chaliapin’s endorsement notably advanced Fistoulari’s reputation as a musician with an
uncanny ability to follow a soloist – vocal or instrumental. Nor was this confined to performing
musicians: the Russian connection in Paris did Fistoulari no harm at all. He soon carved out a name
for himself as a much-admired conductor of ballet, fulfilling the report and prediction of a leading
St Petersburg critic, who wrote, after one of Fistoulari’s boyhood concerts, that he possessed an
‘’Uncanny memory, extraordinary rhythmic sense and overpowering will, unknown in a child of his
age, [which] make him an entire master of the orchestra - these are the qualities that give a promise
of this child becoming a truly great master.’’
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Fistoulari conducted the Ballets Russes in Paris and on tour (including one to the United
States) and he appeared in symphonic concerts in Germany and in Holland. But when World
War II broke out in September 1939 Fistoulari volunteered for the French Army; following the
capitulation after the German invasion in 1940 he escaped to England, where he met and, in 1942,
married Anna Mahler, the only surviving daughter of Gustav Mahler (by whom he had a daughter,
Marina, in 1943). That same year, 1943, Fistoulari was appointed principal conductor of the London
Philharmonic Orchestra with a contract for 120 concerts - an average of one concert every three
days.
The pressure proved too much for conductor and orchestra, but after the war ended in 1945
Fistoulari’s recording career expanded greatly over the following twenty years or so, which saw
him making many records for EMI and Decca especially, perhaps most notably of ballet music.
Although he was a much-admired accompanist in concerto recordings and of singers, he never
recorded a complete opera, although he conducted several in New York.
Fistoulari’s technique and knowledge of the Russian repertoire especially were legendary;
in 1956 he conducted the London Philharmonic on a tour of the USSR, but he never obtained a
permanent post with a major orchestra after World War II. None the less, his memory remained
prodigious, even into old age, and although he never mastered a full command of the English
language, he was always able to make himself understood, as the present writer remembers vividly,
on producing what proved to be Fistoulari’s last recordings in 1978.
These were of Violin Concertos by Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn and Bruch, with the Philharmonia
Orchestra accompanying the fine Japanese violinist Takayoshi Wanami. Fistoulari was particularly
solicitous towards the soloist, who was born blind in 1945. These recordings, made for the Japanese
Trio label, were first issued in Japan on two 12” LPs. It is a matter of no little regret that Fistoulari
never recorded the one Russian work which, above all, he wished to commit to posterity through
his interpretation: Rachmaninoff ’s Second Symphony, but we may judge in the collection of Russian
pieces on this CD his mastery in the music which, above all, meant the most to him.
Nor are the pieces in this collection entirely those which one might first think of in terms of
‘Russian Concert Favourites’ today – although for Russian audiences all of this music would be
familiar. None the less, we open with a simply magnificent performance of the ‘Procession of the
Nobles’ from Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera ‘Mlada’ (the opera dating from 1890; the story concerned
with the coming of civilisation to relatively primitive Slavic regions). The music under Fistoulari
is quite thrilling, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (still, at the time this recording was made,
appearing under Sir Thomas Beecham, the Orchestra’s founder). The instrumental playing here
is beyond reproach, but what is so consistently impressive is the tempo at which Fistoulari begins
and maintains this unforgettable music – stately and inherently noble, as befits the character of
the processional. The RPO is also featured in the rarely heard (for our time) Valse-Fantasie by
Glinka – a work that exists in several versions (originally composed for piano in 1839), but here
performed in the later version for full orchestra. It is a fascinating precursor of the immortal waltzes
of Tchaikovsky (of which more anon), but again we can appreciate Fistoulari’s approach – content
to let the music speak at its own pace, without underlining that which is already italicised. The first
genuine piece by Tchaikovsky in this collection is another rarity: the Miniature March from his First
Suite for Orchestra Opus 43, dating from 1879, a most attractive little piece in D minor, so expertly
played by the Royal Philharmonic.
The remaining music on this CD is played by the Philharmonia Orchestra, and again the music,
with just one exception perhaps, is not so often heard in the versions Fistoulari had chosen. The
first of the Philharmonia items is the ‘Nocturne’ movement from Borodin’s Second String Quartet
(1881). This music is often heard in the string orchestra arrangement by Sir Malcolm Sargent but
here we have what is believed to be the world premiere recording of the version for full orchestra by
Nikolai Tcherepnin (1873-1945), father of the previously-mentioned Alexander Tcherepnin. There
is no doubt that Fistoulari knew father and son in Paris (to where the family had moved in the early
1920s) and his inclusion of Nikolai’s rarely-heard orchestration of the famous Nocturne was made
in tribute to his colleague’s father.
The most famous work in this collection is undoubtedly the Waltz from Tchaikovsky’s great
four-act ballet ‘Swan Lake’, which appeared in 1875 following a commission from Vladimir
Petrovich Begichev, who was then intendant of the Russian Imperial Theatres in Moscow. Although
the waltz is one of those world-famous pieces which has suffered from multifarious arrangements
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