{"id":3120,"date":"2024-06-14T23:26:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-15T03:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=3120"},"modified":"2024-06-14T23:35:10","modified_gmt":"2024-06-15T03:35:10","slug":"a-validation-overwhelming-and-unprecedented-babayan-and-trifonov-perform-rachmaninoff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2024\/06\/a-validation-overwhelming-and-unprecedented-babayan-and-trifonov-perform-rachmaninoff.html","title":{"rendered":"“A Validation Overwhelming and Unprecedented” — Babayan and Trifonov Perform Rachmaninoff"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Today\u2019s on-line \u201cThe American Scholar\u201d includes something of mine on a magnificent new recording<\/a> <\/strong>of Sergei Rachmaninoff\u2019s “Symphonic Dances” \u2013 and why it matters. You can read the whole thing\u00a0<\/a>here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/strong><\/a>. An extract follows:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rachmaninoff left two versions of the Symphonic Dances<\/em>: one for orchestra, the other for two pianos. He premiered the latter, privately, with Vladimir Horowitz. What that sounded like we can only guess. But he also inadvertently left a third version \u2013 which eventually became the biggest classical music find of recent decades. And now we have another find: a seminal new DG recording, by Sergei Babayan and Danill Trifonov, that realizes in full the magnitude of Rachmaninoff\u2019s musical leave-taking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because Rachmaninoff refused to permit broadcasting or recording of his live performances, we only have his RCA recordings: studio jobs. But on December 21, 1940, the conductor Eugene Ormandy privately recorded Rachmaninoff playing through the Symphonic Dances<\/em> in preparation for the Philadelphia Orchestra\u2019s premiere performance the following month. This \u201cthird version\u201d was released in 2018 as part of a three-CD Marston Records set titled \u201cRachmaninoff Plays Symphonic Dances.\u201d As I wrote in a review<\/strong><\/a> for The Wall Street Journal<\/em>: \u201cThe result is one of the most searing listening experiences in the history of recorded sound. . . As privately imparted to Ormandy, Rachmaninoff\u2019s impromptu solo-piano rendering . . . documents roaring cataracts of sound, massive chording, and pounding accents powered by a demonic thrust the likes of which no studio environment has ever fostered.\u201d It equally registers a trembling undertow of memories faraway and yet omnipresent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This unprepared, off-the-cuff 26-minute rendition of a 35-minute composition is also necessarily hit and miss, and full of gaps. It sets a towering bar; it documents a lost world. But it is incomplete. The new Babayan\/Trifonov recording is in no way a replica. . . . Authentically rendered by Babayan and Trifonov, however, are Rachmaninoff\u2019s magisterial fluidity of tempo and pulse, the heroic range of dynamics, the convulsive ebb and flow, seething and poignant, of an epic confessional. It is a validation overwhelming and unprecedented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also write:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1952,<\/strong> the Central Intelligence Agency covertly supported an unprecedented international arts festival lavish in cost and purpose: \u201cMasterpieces of the Twentieth Century.\u201d It took place in Paris over the course of a full month. The mastermind was Nicolas Nabokov, Secretary General of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, then the major instrument of American Cold War cultural propaganda. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nabokov\u2019s premise was that the United States had displaced Europe and Russia as the reigning home for the Western arts. And the twentieth century\u2019s presiding genius, for Nabokov, was his friend Igor Stravinsky, resident in Los Angeles (and like Nabokov living in self-imposed exile from his Russian homeland). Stravinsky dominated the repertoire for Nabokov\u2019s myriad Paris festival performances. Nabokov\u2019s concept was to celebrate \u201cfree artists\u201d \u2013 cosmopolites liberated from parochial national schools and from the oppressive Soviet yoke. His larger claim \u2013 that only \u201cfree societies\u201d produce great art, was the fundamental cultural premise of the CIA, State Department, and White House. (In my book The Propaganda of Freedom<\/a><\/em><\/strong>: JFK,<\/em> Shostakovich, Stravinsky and the Cultural Cold War<\/em>, I dub this counter-factual Cold War doctrine the \u201cpropaganda of freedom.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nabokov\u2019s favorite case in point was Dmitri Shostakovich. As a widely acknowledged expert on Soviet culture, he influentially denigrated Shostakovich as a Soviet stooge (and named Vittorio Rieti and William Schuman composers of greater consequence). Of the hundreds of compositions programed in Paris in 1952 (by the leading opera companies of Vienna and London, by the New York City Ballet, and by orchestras from Boston, West Berlin, Paris, Geneva, and Rome), Shostakovich was represented by a single piece: a suite from his opera Lady Macbeth. <\/em> Nabokov chose it because this, notoriously, was the subversive \u201cmuddle\u201d that enraged Stalin and provoked a musical crackdown. Wholly unnoticed was that another Russian composer of consequence, like Stravinsky living in the US, was not played at all. This, of course, was the late Sergei Rachmaninoff, written off as a hopeless anachronism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, Nabokov is the anachronism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To read my \u201cAmerican Scholar\u201d review of a recent Rachmaninoff biography, click here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To read my \u201cAmerican Scholar\u201d essay on \u201cripeness\u201d in musical performance, click here<\/a><\/strong>. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To read my previous blogs about Sergei Babayan, click here<\/a><\/strong> and here<\/a><\/strong>. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s on-line \u201cThe American Scholar\u201d includes something of mine on a magnificent new recording of Sergei Rachmaninoff\u2019s “Symphonic Dances” \u2013 and why it matters. You can read the whole thing\u00a0here.. An extract follows:\u00a0 Rachmaninoff left two versions of the Symphonic Dances: one for orchestra, the other for two pianos. He premiered the latter, privately, with Vladimir […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3120","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-Ok","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3120"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3128,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3120\/revisions\/3128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}