{"id":648,"date":"2016-06-01T00:08:21","date_gmt":"2016-06-01T04:08:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=648"},"modified":"2016-06-01T00:08:21","modified_gmt":"2016-06-01T04:08:21","slug":"instead-of-alexander-nevsky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2016\/06\/instead-of-alexander-nevsky.html","title":{"rendered":"Instead of Alexander Nevsky"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Redes_500x500\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For every screening with live orchestra of Sergei Eisenstein\u2019s Alexander Nevsky<\/em> (music by Prokofiev), there should be at least a dozen screenings with live orchestra of Paul Strand\u2019s Redes<\/em> (music by Silvestre Revueltas).<\/p>\n

I supply three reasons:<\/p>\n

1.Revueltas\u2019s score is as great an achievement as Prokofiev\u2019s, yet remains virtually unknown.<\/p>\n

2.Unlike Nevsky<\/em>, which Prokofiev turned into a terrific cantata, Redes<\/em> does not readily yield a concert work; it requires pictures to make sense.<\/p>\n

3.Alexander<\/em> Nevsky<\/em> is a galvanizing cinematic experience. Redes<\/em> is only a galvanizing cinematic experience when the music is live. The original soundtrack, recorded in haste, is execrable.<\/p>\n

All this comprises the rationale for PostClassical Ensemble\u2019s latest in its series of Naxos DVDs featuring classic 1930s films with the soundtracks newly recorded. In fact, this same DVD is the world premiere recording of the complete Redes<\/em> score.<\/p>\n

A full-page article in last weekend\u2019s El<\/em> Pais<\/em> (Madrid), by the eminent Spanish novelist Antonio Munoz Molina, takes it all in as follows:<\/p>\n

\u201cRevueltas is one of those composers who for various accidental reasons — his disorderly life and premature death, the fact of his being Mexican \u2013 does not occupy the place that he should in a present-day musical culture that clings so tenaciously to the sclerotic. . . . His music, so powerful in itself, highlights the rich artistic crossroads of the thirties, the tensions between modernity and mass culture, between formal innovation and political activism.<\/p>\n

\u201cPostClassical Ensemble\u2019s . . . \u00a0latest great effort of rediscovery is the premiere recording of the complete score composed by Silvestre Revueltas for a legendary 1935 Mexican film, Redes<\/em>, in collaboration with the\u00a0 photographer Paul Strand and exiled Austrian filmmaker Fred Zinnemann. It is hard to imagine a more complete conjunction of talent. . . .<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 1935 the best films still preserved the purity and expressive visual sophistication of silent cinema. In Redes<\/em>, imagery and music combine so powerfully that the few spoken words are rather irrelevant. Revueltas\u2019s love of Stravinsky and of the folk music of Mexico inspire a fiercely corporeal rhythmic sensibility applied to the collective choreography of fishermen.\u00a0 Almost twenty years later, in Hollywood, Fred Zinnemann would direct High Noon<\/em>, in which we find a bedazzled white clarity of inflexible sunlight identical to Redes<\/em>. Now, with a restored print of Redes<\/em> and Revueltas\u2019 soundtrack newly recorded by PostClassical Ensemble, the beauty of image and of sound register as never before. As Joseph Horowitz says, it is like experiencing a masterpiece of painting cleaned of centuries of grime. The exhausted and disillusioned Silvestre Revueltas of his final years would never have imagined such posterity.”<\/p>\n

My English translation, abetted by google, does scant justice to this stellar example of what Americans call “arts journalism.” Especially pregnant is Munoz Molina\u2019s observation of the \u201cartistic crossroads of the thirties\u201d \u2013 of the \u201ctensions between modernity and mass culture, between formal innovation and political activism.\u201d This perspective nails Revueltas\u2019s high achievement. Prokofiev and Shostakovich excepted, has any other 1930s political composer\u00a0 \u2013 think of Hanns Eisler or Marc Blitzstein —\u00a0 so succeeded at mating originality, innovation, and popular appeal?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For every screening with live orchestra of Sergei Eisenstein\u2019s Alexander Nevsky (music by Prokofiev), there should be at least a dozen screenings with live orchestra of Paul Strand\u2019s Redes (music by Silvestre Revueltas). I supply three reasons: 1.Revueltas\u2019s score is as great an achievement as Prokofiev\u2019s, yet remains virtually unknown. 2.Unlike Nevsky, which Prokofiev turned […]<\/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-648","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-as","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648","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=648"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":650,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648\/revisions\/650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}