Alexander Konstantinovich Glazunov
(1865 - 1936)
Raymonda, Op. 57
(Ballet in Three Acts)
Alexander Konstantinovich Glazunov has
not fared well at the hands of later critics. He enjoyed a remarkably
successful career in music, becoming Director of the St Petersburg Conservatory
in 1905 in the aftermath of the political disturbances of that year, and
retaining the position, latterly in absentia, for the next twenty-five years.
His earlier compositions were well received, but the very facility that had
attracted the attention and friendship of his teacher Rimsky-Korsakov was to be
held against him. A Russian critic could praise him for the reconciliation he
had apparently effected between the Russian music of his time and the music of
Western Europe, but for a considerable time the Soviet authorities regarded his
music as bourgeois, while one of the most eminent of writers in the West on
Russian music, Gerald Abraham, considered that it had fallen to Glazunov to
lead what he described as the comfortable decline of Russian music into
ignominious mediocrity. Recent critics have occasionally taken a more balanced
view of Glazunov's achievement. Due respect is paid to his success in bringing
about a synthesis of Russian and Western European music, the tradition of the
Five and that of Rubinstein. Boris Schwarz has summarised the composer's career
neatly, allowing him to have been a composer of imposing stature and a stabilising
influence in a time of transition and turmoil.
Born in St
Petersburg in 1865, the son of a publisher and
bookseller, as a child Glazunov showed considerable ability in music and in
1879 met Balakirev, who encouraged the boy to broaden his general musical
education, while taking lessons from Rimsky-Korsakov. By the age of sixteen he
had completed the first of his nine symphonies, a work that was performed in 1882
under the direction of Balakirev, and further compositions were welcomed by both
factions in Russian musical life, the nationalist and the so-called German.
Glazunov continued his association with
Rimsky-Korsakov until the latter's death in 1909. It was in his company that he
became a regular member of the circle of musicians under the patronage of Belyayev,
perceived by Balakirev as a rival to his own influence. Belyayev introduced Glazunov
to Liszt, whose support led to the spread of the young composer's reputation
abroad. The First Symphony was performed in Weimar in 1884, the Second directed by Glazunov at the 1889 Paris
Exhibition. The Fourth and Fifth Symphonies were introduced to the
London public in 1897. In 1899
Glazunov joined the staff of the Conservatory in St
Petersburg and in 1905, when peace was restored to
the institution after student demonstrations, he became Director, a position he
held, nominally at least, until 1930.
In 1928 Glazunov left Russia to fulfil concert engagements
abroad, finally, in 1932, making his home in Paris, where he died four years later. These last years took him to a
number of countries, where he conducted concerts of his own works. In England a reporter compared his appearance
to that of a prosperous retired tea-planter, with his gold watch-chain spread
across his starched white waistcoat, resembling, for all the world, a
well-to-do bank-manager. His views on modem music were often severe. He found
the Heldenleben of Richard Strauss disgusting and referred to the
composer as cet infame scribouilleur. Of Stravinsky he remarked that he
had irrefutable proof of the inadequacy of his ear. Nevertheless it was under
his direction that the Conservatory produced a number of very distinguished
musicians. While Prokofiev did little to endear himself to Glazunov,
Shostakovich received considerable encouragement and was unstinting in his
admiration of the older composer as a marked influence on all the students with
whom he had contact, to whom Glazunov was a living legend.
The music of Raymonda has proved
very much more satisfactory than the original ballet. In 1895 the minor
novelist and columnist Lydia Pashkova submitted her scenario to the director of
the Imperial Theatres, Ivan Vsevolozhsky. After revision this was sent to the
veteran choreographer of the Imperial ballet, Marius Petipa. The work was
eventually staged at the Marlinsky Theatre in St
Petersburg in January 1898, initially with a benefit
performance for Pierina Legnani, who danced the title role. Sergey Legat took
the premier danseur role of Jean de Brienne, with Pavel Gerdt in the character
role of Abderakhman. Sets were designed by Orest Allegri, Konstantin Ivanov and
Petr Lambru and costumes by Ekaterina Ofizerova and Ivan Kaffi.
The action of the ballet is set in
medieval Hungary. Raymonda is
betrothed to Jean de Brienne, a crusader, who is called away to the wars. She
is also the object of desire to the Saracen knight Abderakhman, who plans to
abduct her. The White Lady (Dame blanche), a guardian spirit of Raymonda's
noble family, appears and prevents the abduction, and Abderakhman is killed in
combat by Jean de Brienne. The principal action ends with the second act. The
third act honours the happy couple, Raymonda and Jean de Brienne, and is
sometimes offered now as a separate item in ballet programmes. It consists of a
series of divertissements, including the famous Pas classique hongrois.
There have been various re-stagings of Raymonda,
either in its original form, or with a revised scenario and adapted
choreography, with versions by Pavlova, Balanchin and Nureyev among others. Dyagilev
himself took from it a men's pas de quatre, with Nizhinsky, for his
opening season in Paris in
1909. However unsatisfactory the narrative and dramatic structure of the piece,
it remains, in the version of the eighty-year-old Marius Petipa, a classic of
choreography, while its music has its own lasting attractions. Glazunov shared
with Tchaikovsky an ability to handle the short forms that ballet demands,
within a coherent wider structure. His evocative score for Raymonda is
immensely colourful, whether in the varied set-pieces of the first act, with
its romance, its ghostly apparitions and dance of elves and goblins, or in the
character dances of the exotic second act or in the final celebrations of the
third.