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

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A GUILD HISTORICAL RELEASE • Master source: Records from the collection of Edward Johnson • Remastering from original LPs: <strong>Peter</strong> 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 ■ ■ ■ Guild GmbH, Moskau 314b, 8262 Ramsen, Switzerland Tel: +41 (0) 52 742 85 00 Fax: +41 (0) 52 742 85 09 (Head Office) Guild GmbH, PO Box 5092, Colchester, Essex CO1 1FN, Great Britain e-mail: info@guildmusic.com World WideWeb-Site: http://www.guildmusic.com WARNING: Copyright subsists in all recordings under this label. Any unauthorised broadcasting, public performance, copying or re-recording thereof in any manner whatsoever will constitute an infringement of such copyright. In the United Kingdom licences for the use of recordings for public performance may be obtained from Phonographic Performances Ltd., 1 Upper James Street, London W1F 9EE.
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 6 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 <strong>Peter</strong>sburg 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.’’ 3
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Nicolai RIMSKY-KORSAKOV (1844-1908) Peter TCHAIKOVSKY ...

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