Tchaikovsky's Complete Songs: A Companion with Texts and Translations by Richard D. s> Sylvester (review)
2003; Maney Publishing; Volume: 81; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/see.2003.0197
ISSN2222-4327
Autores Tópico(s)Russian Literature and Bakhtin Studies
ResumoREVIEWS II9 as one of conscious sexual allure, could equally depict a woman haunted by her inability or her refusal to engage adequately with the rituals of imperialcourtlife. Valkenier'saccount culminateswith a reassessmentof Serov'sengagement with modernism, focusing on his reaction to Matisse, and offering a vital corrective to those Soviet accounts which mention only the pejorative comments which Serov made about Matisse'sart. Serov'sconsciousappropriation of modernistideas is illustratedwith a brilliantfinalanalysisof his iconic portraitof Ida Rubinshtein a portraitwhich stands as eloquent testimony to Valkenier'svision of Serov as a criticaltransitionalfigurebetween realism and the Russianavant-garde. Pembroke College, Cambridge RoSALIND P. BLAKESLEY Sylvester, Richard D. Tchaikovsky's Complete Songs.A Companion withTextsand Translations. Russian Music Studies. Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 2002. xvii + 349 pp. Bibliography. Discography .Indexes. CD. $59.95. THIS companion to Chaikovskii's 103 songs or romansy is clearly a labour of love to which much time and energy has been devoted. It gives the words of each song in the original (mostly Russian Cyrillic) together with the same words in a pragmatic rather than standardizedphonetic transliterationand an unrhymed translation into English. Twenty-two of the songs are also offeredin a recordedcompilation and thereis an extensiveindex of the singers and their recordingswhich includes a discography.Many of the songs are to words by minor poets and not infrequentlythey have been rearrangedby the composer to accommodate his musical aims;in such cases the originaltext of the poem and the modified text are both given. The book should attract a wide audience, but will probably be of most interest to singers seeking background information and a broader understandingof the songs; in time, and with luck, the range of Chaikovskiisongs in the performance repertoire shouldbe extended and the interpretationof individualsongsdeepened. Each group of songs is given an introductoryessay,placing it in the context of Chaikovskii's life and work, and each individual song has its own introduction. The poem is then given in its two Russian and one English versions,with a note on the text and its origins(aswell as changes made to it). An indication is provided, where appropriate,of earlier settings of the poem by other composers;where there have been many, as with 'Net tol'kotot, kto znal .', for instance, the principal ones only are mentioned individually. Also offeredis a descriptionof the poem's metre, althoughin at leastone place this is inaccurate: 'Ne ver', moi drug, ne ver', kogda v poryve goria . . .' is described as an iambic pentameter, although there are patently six feet of the lines includingthe firstone. The musical aspect of the song is presented as follows: by the date Chaikovskii'sversion was written, its opus number (repeatingthe heading of the song's section), its key, time signature,indication of tempo, and intended type of voice and range required. Where there is a dedication, some details I20 SEER, 8i, I, 2003 are given about the dedicatee; recordings are indicated by the names of the singers in them; and, finally, the singers in recordings of other composers' settingsmay alsobe given. Clearly, Richard Sylvester has a good understanding of the problems of settingwordsto music and a greataffectionfor these songs,which rangefrom the unknownto theverypopular.His shortintroductoryessayson each setting often highlight the difficultieswhich Chaikovskiimight have encountered, as well as questions of the songs'performance.They offersome untechnical but thoughtful analysisof the musical form and procedures of the song, drawing particularattentionto changes made to the textsby the composerandpossible reasons for them. Also raised are questions relating to the plain translations, for instance, the awkwardlybisexual word drug(in the transliterationhere, druk). There are many recordings of Chaikovskii'sromances on the market,but the twenty-two represented on the disc which accompanies this book have clearly been selected with care, mainly from outstanding recordings of the 1940S and I950S, including such gems as Leonid Sobinov's 'Sred'shumnogo bala', Nadezhda Obukhova's 'Ni slova, o drug moi' and best of all, Sergei Lemeshev's 'Korol'ki'. Many of these fascinating recordings are simply unavailable on commercial compact disc and represent collector's items in other formats. Their inclusion makes a very welcome bonus and reflectsthe care and finejudgment found in the book itself. ProfessorSylvesterhopes that his user-friendlycompanion 'will...
Referência(s)