Why did Balakirev go out of fashion?

[barney]

Lovely article from the Spectator today. I especially enjoyed the phrase, new to me, "emergency rubato". And what a character! Pity about the bigotry.

Damian Thompson
Why did Balakirev’s beautiful, inventive works go out of fashion?
Nicholas Walker's new six-CD cycle of the complete piano works of the eccentric Russian composer are a revelation
From magazine issue: 10 October 2020
Why did Balakirev's beautiful, inventive works go out of fashion?

Anyone who invited the Russian composer Mily Balakirev to dinner had to be jolly careful about the fish they served. How had it died? Balakirev — mentor of Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov and regarded as the founder of the Russian nationalist school of music — would want to know. If the fish had perished on a hook, then he wouldn’t touch it. But if it had been clubbed on the head, fine.

The many eccentricities of Balakirev (1837–1910) were regarded with amusement, horror and dismay by his contemporaries. Though, to be fair, the fish thing wasn’t a mad obsession of his own. Formerly an atheist, in his thirties he converted to an ultra-strict Russian Orthodox sect with firm views on the proper way to kill fish. Unfortunately this wasn’t the only subject on which it was inflexible. It was anti-Semitic even by the standards of Tsarist Russia, which is saying something. And Balakirev outdid even his own clergy with his ranting about ‘Christ-killers’. So, no Jews at the dinner party — or anyone the composer suspected of being Jewish simply because they disagreed with his musical opinions.

That last detail is significant. Balakirev suffered from paranoia exacerbated by a midlife nervous breakdown from which he never really recovered. It was a wretched blight on an astonishing career. He studied mathematics at university, not music, but eventually acquired such a mastery of musical theory that in 1881 he was offered the directorship of the Moscow Conservatory. He turned it down, preferring his own Free School where composers were encouraged to develop an ‘oriental’ style.

Balakirev loved the ‘savage tribes’ of the Caucasus and once spent five weeks there in a monastery of fire-worshippers. He was the first major Russian composer to borrow heavily from ethnic traditions and, in doing so, changed the course of his country’s musical history. Yet his own works, serenely beautiful as well as restlessly inventive, went out of fashion during his lifetime and are now mostly museum pieces. Why?

As a symphonist Balakirev can’t compete with Tchaikovsky, but that’s true of every other 19th-century Russian composer. Nor did he possess the freakish and fractured genius of Mussorgsky. He wasn’t a ‘master of orchestral colour’ like Rimsky-Korsakov, but I don’t hold that against him. Masters of orchestral colour can drive me up the wall with their showing off: I was glad to read Robert Layton describe Balakirev’s symphonic poem Tamara as ‘an infinitely more subtle piece than that familiar warhorse Scheherazade’.

That devastating mental breakdown, about which we don’t know much, did a lot of damage. Balakirev lost all interest in music, took a job as a railway clerk, and when he started composing again committed the same crime as one of my favourite composers, the prolific and bloody-minded English symphonist Havergal Brian. He ignored recent stylistic ‘advances’ and instead concentrated on saying fascinating things in the musical language he’d adopted decades earlier.

Balakirev was above all a composer for the piano, with a habit of incorporating finger-busting polyphonic complexities into pieces that, judged simply by their melodies, often carried a whiff of the salon. But they are rarely heard because there’s no point in attempting them without a transcendental technique.

All that survives in the mainstream repertoire is Balakirev’s glorious ‘oriental fantasy’ Islamey, often described as the most difficult piano piece ever written; even today, the chances of hearing a note-perfect live performance are pretty slim, unless the pianist indulges in what’s called ‘emergency rubato’. But it faces stiff competition from other Balakirev pieces. For example his giant Piano Sonata, bursting with melody, distributes polyrhythms not just between the hands but also between the fingers of one hand. Anybody attempting to record Balakirev’s complete piano music, taking up six CDs, will have to sweat blood for years. The American Alexander Paley attempted it and at times it sounds as if he’s clubbing a fish to death.

Enter Nicholas Walker, a self-effacing teacher at the Royal Academy of Music whose virtuosity and profound grasp of musical structure has been a mysteriously well-kept secret. He has just completed a Balakirev cycle for the Grand Piano label that has to be heard to be believed: I almost want to see video proof that there aren’t three hands on the keyboard in the Reminiscences of Glinka’s ‘A Life for the Tsar’. The set is more complete than Paley’s, infinitely better played and includes Walker’s own magical transcription of Tamara.

Balakirev isn’t everyone’s cup of tea and it’s startling to discover how insistently certain ‘experts’ on his piano music have disparaged it over the years. I was puzzled by the mismatch between their patronising verdicts and the revelations on these new recordings — and then I realised that, like the critics who sniggered at Brian’s symphonies on the basis of LPs featuring the Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra, they’d never heard a decent performance of the works they were judging.

Now they have no such excuse. That isn’t to say that Balakirev should suddenly be catapulted into a musical pantheon; his output is uneven, often nearly as difficult to grasp on first hearing as it is to perform, and it will take time to evaluate his stature. But there’s no doubt in my mind that Nicholas Walker has finally emerged as one of Britain’s greatest pianists.

[Rach3]

Many thanks, Barney, my first knowledge of this pianist.

Nicholas Walker plays the Chopin Op.10 Etudes complete,London,2019 video.Very impressive, loved his tempi, left hand, and lyricism. Several other videos are at YT , including works of Balakirev , which I’ll now explore.The Chopin Op.10 here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al5Y12Rfxj4

Balakirev’s transcription of Glinka’s overture “Kamarinskaya” ( my first hearing) live video 2010 London:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDQ2sdXs8mo

I have yet to hear a series of about 15 Balakirev works taken from Walker's Grand Piano cd’s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDQ2sdXs8mo

If interested, there are also Liszt B minor Sonata and Beethoven “Appassionata” Sonata videos at YT I've not heard yet.

[maestrob]

Fascinating article, Barney, thanks. Walker is a new artist for me as well. From a brief check on amazon, it looks like he has been recording Balakirev's piano output since 2016, issued on single discs. Some are available here for listening: I will explore them soon, as well as your youtubes, Rach3.

So sad about Balakirev's mental troubles. I imagine we could have had many more musical treasures from him if he had been more stable. Genius always seems to have a price, doesn't it?

[barney]

Many thanks, Barney, my first knowledge of this pianist.

Nicholas Walker plays the Chopin Op.10 Etudes complete,London,2019 video.Very impressive, loved his tempi, left hand, and lyricism. Several other videos are at YT , including works of Balakirev , which I’ll now explore.The Chopin Op.10 here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al5Y12Rfxj4

Balakirev’s transcription of Glinka’s overture “Kamarinskaya” ( my first hearing) live video 2010 London:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDQ2sdXs8mo

I have yet to hear a series of about 15 Balakirev works taken from Walker's Grand Piano cd’s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDQ2sdXs8mo

If interested, there are also Liszt B minor Sonata and Beethoven “Appassionata” Sonata videos at YT I've not heard yet.

Thank you for these links. I will certainly give them my attention. I was aware of Nicholas Walker but only as half of a CD of piano duets.

[barney]

Fascinating article, Barney, thanks. Walker is a new artist for me as well. From a brief check on amazon, it looks like he has been recording Balakirev's piano output since 2016, issued on single discs. Some are available here for listening: I will explore them soon, as well as your youtubes, Rach3.

So sad about Balakirev's mental troubles. I imagine we could have had many more musical treasures from him if he had been more stable. Genius always seems to have a price, doesn't it?

Isn't that the truth, Brian! I remember debating in an undergraduate philosophy class about whether the pain of the great composers/artists was worth it so we could enjoy their legacy. Unsurprisingly, no clear decision resulted.

[barney]

Many thanks, Barney, my first knowledge of this pianist.

Nicholas Walker plays the Chopin Op.10 Etudes complete,London,2019 video.Very impressive, loved his tempi, left hand, and lyricism. Several other videos are at YT , including works of Balakirev , which I’ll now explore.The Chopin Op.10 here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al5Y12Rfxj4

Balakirev’s transcription of Glinka’s overture “Kamarinskaya” ( my first hearing) live video 2010 London:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDQ2sdXs8mo

I have yet to hear a series of about 15 Balakirev works taken from Walker's Grand Piano cd’s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDQ2sdXs8mo

If interested, there are also Liszt B minor Sonata and Beethoven “Appassionata” Sonata videos at YT I've not heard yet.

Thank you for these links. I will certainly give them my attention. I was aware of Nicholas Walker but only as half of a CD of piano duets.

Actually, just checked. It's not piano duets but accompanying Lydia Mordkovitch in Russian violin sonatas.

[diegobueno]

So sad about Balakirev's mental troubles. I imagine we could have had many more musical treasures from him if he had been more stable. Genius always seems to have a price, doesn't it?

I, for one, have had quite enough of stable geniuses.

[maestrob]

So sad about Balakirev's mental troubles. I imagine we could have had many more musical treasures from him if he had been more stable. Genius always seems to have a price, doesn't it?

I, for one, have had quite enough of stable geniuses.

[barney]

How about very stable geniuses?

[THEHORN]

The music of Balakirev never "want out of fashion ". Outside of Russia,it has
never been performed with any regularity at all . The only exception might be his incredibly difficult piano piece "Islamey, based on Circassian folk music , which is truly amazing even though hardly anyone in the west is familiar with it .
Islamey has also been orchestrated by Russian composer Sergei Lyapunov and Alfredo Casella , and it's highly effective in orchestral form . Balakirev's first symphony , which took him many,many years to complete , it a marvelous symphony which is almost never performed outside of Russia but has been recorded by the likes of Beecham, Karajan, Svetlanov and Jarvi sr.
I've never been able to understand its neglect in the concert in the concert . And the orchestration IS highly colorful . If audiences could just get a chance to hear it live they would love it and wonder where it's been all their lives ! It's a beguiling mixture of themes of a traditional Russian style with oriental elements juxtaposed . If you haven't heard it and love music by Russian composers you owe it to yourself to get a recording by one of these conductors, which are probably still available .
I have the Naxos recording by a Russian conductor who is not nearly s well known , Igor Golovshcnin and one of the Moscow orchestras . Golovshchin was born in 1956 and was making a name for himself in Russia before his untimely death several years ago . The Naxos CD also includes the orchestration of Islamey by Lyapunov and the brooding symphonic poem "Tamara" , an evocation of the scandalous life of a legendary medieval Georgian queen who supposedly had her lovers murdered and their bodies thrown in the Aragvi river, which runs through Tbilisi .
Not too long ago, Kent Nagano programmed Tamara with his Montreal symphony and this can be seen on youtube .

[maestrob]

Thomas Beecham famously championed Balakirev's Symphony I and recorded it for EMI. I think I have it somewhere, but I haven't played it for a while. The recording I return to is Svetlanov, below, issued by MHS in the 1990's. I love Balakirev's use of orchestral color.....

[barney]

Checking whether I have it, I have only one account, Karajan and the Philharmonia 1949. Not sure I've ever played it. Have to listen this week.

[maestrob]

Checking whether I have it, I have only one account, Karajan and the Philharmonia 1949. Not sure I've ever played it. Have to listen this week.

Do try Beecham's recording, if you can get it.