Boris Tishchenko

Violin Concerto No.2 (Violin Symphony), Op. 84 (1981)1 I. Allegro moderato 14:22

2 II. Presto 14:08

3 III. Allegro 10:06

4 IV. Andante 13:31

Sergey Stadler, violin

Leningrad Philharmonic • Vasily Sinaysky, conductor

Organ Inventions, Op. 27 (1964)5 Invention No.3. Insistent Figuration 2:36

6 Invention No.6. Descending Variants 3:11

7 Invention No.7. Theme and Development 3:07

Nina Oksentyan, organ

Yuefu, three choir songs a capella on Chinese folk texts, Op. 14 (1959)8 Springtime in the Forest 2:03

9 The Sun Shone Brightly Over the Earth 1:37

10 Springtime in the Garden 1:08

Leningrad Chamber Choir • Valentin Nesterov, conductor

Total Playing Time: 66:12

Recorded by the Saint Petersburg (Leningrad) Recording Studio in the Leningrad Capella Concert Hall in

1975 (8-10), 1981 (5-7) and in 1987 (1-4)

Sound Engineers: Gerhard Tsess (1-4, 8-10) and Felix Gurdzhi (5-7)

Text: Northern Flowers; English text: Sergey Suslov

Design: Anastasia Yevmenova; Cover photo: "Leningrad" by Boris Smelov

The works of Boris Ivanovich Tishchenko (1939-2010) have a unique

position in the panorama of today’s art. We remember how difficult the

development of music in the 20th century was. The greatest trial was

the urge towards radical innovations, which often led to the nearly

complete loss of individual style. Tishchenko’s music has a rare quality

– it is instantaneously identifiable, by the first notes and bars. They

form a world setting out its own laws and demanding maximum

concentration. Integrity, the scale of artistic issues, and artist’s

responsibility – such are the key points of his personality.

The whole life of Boris Tishchenko was related to St. Petersburg; it was

there his genesis as a musician began. First of all, years of study at the

Rimsky-Korsakov School of Music, where Tishchenko studied piano

with V. Michelis and composition with G. Ustvolskaya. Her influence

proved to be powerful and fruitful, and can be amply heard even in his

early works (eg the piano Variations, with which Tishchenko entered

the Conservatory.) Apart from composition, Tishchenko studied piano

(with A. Logovinsky.) Composition classes were with V. Salmanov, V.

Voloshinov and O. Yevlakhov, and his postgraduate studies, with D.

Shostakovich.

The role of creative contacts with Shostakovich cannot be

overestimated. It was to him that Tishchenko dedicated his Third and

Fifth Symphonies (the latter written after the death of Shostakovich.)

Already in his student years, many works became known, especially as

some of them were performed for the first time by the author (First

Piano Concerto, Third Piano Sonata.) In 1965, Tishchenko started as

professor teaching at the St.Petersburg Conservatory, in particular

score reading and instrumentation, and from 1974, composition.

Tishchenko wrote in almost all genres, from super-symphonies to

songs a cappella. At the same time, certain genres enjoyed a special

position in his work, primarily, the symphony. Addressing it is a special

“plot” in the composer’s biography, from the early First written at the

age of 22 to the Eighth. Each symphony is unique, from the scoring of

instruments to the concept and drama. Extended solo meditations and

stunning tutti’s, acute and harsh contrasts keep the listener in tension

from start to finish. Strict economy of resources is also surprising, with

a brief motif generally used as the basis for the whole development.

This can also be said about the instrumental concertos: where the

soloist discloses his/her virtuoso abilities, usually giving way to a

strained monologue where the soloist and the orchestra make one

voice (understandably, the Second Violin Concerto was also titled

“Violin Symphony”).

Chamber music is a special sphere. For instance, symphonic drama

mightily shows itself in the Second and Third String Quartets, and in

piano sonatas. They may be rightly called symphonies for piano. The

author’s idea seems to be testing the limits of the instrument – by using

maximum dynamic range, or by combining transparent one-voice chant

and deafening clusters (in the Seventh Sonata, bells chime alongside the

piano.) The emotional gamut is extremely wide, recalling the style of

Ancient Russian frescoes, and lyrical sentimentality ( indicated in the

“Portraits” cycle for organ.) The range of artistic themes of the

composer’s vocal music is also broad. They include the vocal cycle “Sad

Songs” written in the year of graduation from the Conservatory, and the

parody grotesque of “Little Orange” cycle, to the piercing “The Race of

Time” to words by A. Akhmatova.

Interestingly, as regards musical theatre, Tishchenko preferred ballet

rather than opera. A very important line in Tishchenko’s creativity is

the history of Ancient Rus, full of stern fascination and proud greatness.

The noble glory of warlike feats and sorrow for lost freedom, rejoicing

chimes of bells and ascetic, severe, sounds of sacred chant – these

images come to the mind in the ballet Yaroslavna and the films Suzdal

etc. The unique individuality of Tishchenko’s style is emphasized by its

relationship to very different cultures. On one hand, the music of past

ages, Renaissance and Baroque - passion for it has proved to be very

stable –eg works of Bach and Monteverdi (he created his own

orchestral version of The Coronation of Poppea.) They are also the

origins of the linear polyphonic type of thinking as the structural base

of Tishchenko’s music. It is this feature that gives an impression of

rationality and discipline, knowing nothing excessive and just

emphasizing the rich fantasy of the author. Another very important

source of creative discoveries was non-European cultures: India, China,

Japan etc., and folklore (he went to folklore expeditions as a student.)

Due to them he generated monodic types of melodies, infinite rhythmic

diversity and freedom, and finally the development technique itself,

where the whole grows out of a brief melodic “grain.”

And finally, we cannot avoid remembering the impact of the 20th

century music, and primarily Béla Bartók, Alban Berg, Sergei Prokofiev,

Igor Stravinsky, and of course the composer’s teachers Ustvolskaya and

Shostakovich. Probably the main thing connecting Tishchenko to them

is a conviction that any innovation as an end-in-itself is disastrous for

art. All discoveries of Boris Tishchenko in the sphere of rhythm,

melodic texture and orchestration, or drama, originate under the laws

of the art of music. The features of Tishchenko’s music generally tend to

support the musical utterance as a monologue. The author does not

reproduce a model of the surrounding world in his music, but rather

builds a separate enclosed world. The result is an utterance appealing

to the depth of human mentality, to individual consciousness. In this

respect, Tishchenko presents two polar modes of consciousness, the

state of ultimate self-absorption, introspective meditation – and images

of total destruction, where everything perishes in chaos only to be

reborn later.

T h e Second Concerto for Violin (1982, dedicated to his wife Irina

Tishchenko-Donskaya) is very typical for Tishchenko. The

monumentality (the concerto was titled “Violin Symphony”) going

beyond our usual concepts of the concerto, its uncommon difficulty for

the performer, the scope of questions raised, and sophisticated forms –

all that is the Tishchenko we know. It was dedicated to Sergey Stadler

(born 1962), a young man then. The virtuoso violinist won the first

prize at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1982, several other

prestigious international competitions, and used to give up to 150

concerts a year

the soloist. In over 50 minutes, the violinist has to overcome all

possible technical, ensemble, rhythmic and other challenges;

performance turns into an exhausting marathon requiring extreme

creative and physical strain from the soloist. At the premiere on

November 25, 1985 in the Grand Hall of Leningrad Philharmonic

(under Vasily Sinaysky), Sergey Stadler left the stage twice to replace

broken strings, somewhat bewildering the packed house. And it’s hard

to imagine other brilliant and skilled violinists willing to sacrifice

several months studying and performing such a difficult piece. But such

is Tishchenko – uncompromising in all his acts as composer, in his

relationships with colleagues, friends and relatives, and with society.

The concerto has four movements that follow without intermission.

The first (Allegro moderato) is a huge introduction, which also has

dramatic development, but its evident understatement and

incompleteness requires a further serious talk. It starts with a chorale

of French horns, a motif of great importance throughout the movement.

In the culmination, French horns will reappear in the forefront, but this

time with a mighty theme of heroic attitude. Grotesquery, irony,

scherzoso attitude, and some incoherence are characteristic of the

extended initial section – all these are typically Tishchenko’s narratives,

and as it often happens, musical motion rather unexpectedly acquires a

nature of steel. The ostinato rhythms, and gradual joining- in of the

orchestra’s percussion and brass lead to a quite powerful culmination,

after which the scattered motifs of the beginning return. The French

horns’ melodic formulas reappear, more muted this time; the musical

texture gradually dissolves in a high clear register with the soloist and

the orchestra.

T h e Presto of the second movement begins with a cadence by the

soloist. Convulsive virtuoso replies of violin create a feeling of search

for the theme, obsession, query. Little by little, other instruments of the

orchestra joint the soloist, until a dashing scherzo appears at last,

whose gaiety is deceptive: something satanic can be heard under

rampant bouncy rhythms and catchy determined intonations. After a

few pauses, the scherzo resumes running, gradually falling into a

controllable chaos of sounds. After a few failed attempts to regain, to

find the nearly lost scherzo, a violin cadence of a mega-huge scale and

mission begins. Probably it has no parallel in the world’s concert

repertoire: Tishchenko uses here all possible and impossible

techniques for strings. The cadence is followed by the third movement,

Allegro, which is also quick.

These are variations, in the most classical sense of the genre. More

exactly, they are even rondo variations, since the main theme, its first

powerful tutti chordal tune, is recurring almost unchanged. But the

musical material of the third movement is continuously varied,

appearing in whimsical instrumental and rhythmic combinations. The

head motif gets cluttered by second voices, details, and techniques (not

only in the solo part, but also with many orchestra soloists), and, as

often happens with Tishchenko, a sustained buildup of volume is going

on. The third movement breaks off when chanting the main theme,

whose varying metre vaguely resembles another episode in Russian

music, Stravinsky’s Danse Infernale from The Firebird.

The finale, Andante, is also variations, but now in the genre of

passacaglia, to an unchanged bass. Several famous passacaglias of

Shostakovich can be recalled, primarily from Violin Concerto No. 1. It

seems Tishchenko in his Second Violin Concerto remembered his

mentor by addressing the old-time polyphonic style.

The unison statement of the first theme sounding like an appeal, like a

trumpet challenge to single combat declared by the entire orchestra, is

followed by a reply full of tenderness and sorrow. Moreover, the

orchestra’s unison is announced three times, as if recalling Orpheus’s

conversation with the Furies. Next, 16 statements of an unchanged

theme in the bass follow in a passacaglia; the sound is gradually

enlarging. In the culmination, the first calling voice reappears, and once

again the answer is full of quietude and conciliation. The last pages of

the score bring the listener back to the material of the concerto’s first

movement. The music dissolves in the upper register, repeating the

ending of Allegro moderato, spanning a conceptual arc, drawing a

circle, in the centre of which there is room for drama, sarcasm, love,

and issues of existence, in short everything around us.

In 1963, 24-year-old Boris Tishchenko made acquaintance with the

outstanding Leningrad organist Isaiah A. Braudo. By Braudo’s

prompting, he orchestrated Monteverdi’s opera The Coronation of

Poppea. Braudo’s daughter Anastasia, also a brilliant organist, became

Tishchenko’s first wife. It was to her that he presented the cycle of

Organ inventions whose editor I. Braudo became, as a wedding gift.

Anyway, searching for new forms, genres, music epochs, and narratives

was a keystone of Tishchenko’s creative portrait. He likes professional

challenges, and the old polyphonic genre of invention (Latin Inventio,

meaning contrivance) gave the young composer room for new

techniques.

Tishchenko’s organ inventions are largely an experimental opus. The

author shows most profound understanding of the instrument’s

specifics; breaking from the prejudice of traditionalism, from old

schoolbook polyphony, he gives tribute both to the homophonic

harmonic contour and to the choral, monodic constitution. The

Inventions were recorded on the organ of the Leningrad Academic

Capella – one of the few good instruments that survived by the

1970/80s. They were performed by Nina Oksentyan, a student of Isaiah

Braudo, and professor of organ at the Leningrad (St.Petersburg)

Conservatory. This CD contains three of the twelve inventions included

in Opus 27.

Yuefu (literally “Music Bureau”) is a genre of traditional Chinese poetry

that emerged two centuries BC, folk songs collected and edited in the

said “Music Bureau,” an Old Chinese office for folklore songs and local

morals embodied in music. Several hundred Yuefu texts have survived,

but all their music was lost. The themes of Yuefu are love, brevity of life,

hardships in the people’s fate, and war. Young Tishchenko’s capability

in experimenting is astonishing. What prompted him to a kind of

musical reconstruction of old Chinese tradition? In 1959, the first book

on the “Music Bureau” was published in the USSR; it was “Yuefu. From

Ancient Chinese Songs,” in translations and with a vast introduction by

Boris Vakhtin, a prominent Leningrad sinologist and Oriental

researcher. Probably, the composer who was barely 20 years old

decided to recreate the lost ancient musical texts. He is incredibly

inventive working with the choral texture (brilliant schooling in the

class of Galina Ustvolskaya shows up ); voices are very mobile, with

subtle imitations and timbral oppositions everywhere. The author

seems to be armed with a neatly sharpened reed pen for drawing

hieroglyphs; the palette of these choirs is tender, and the semantic

accents are placed accurately. The composer also pays tribute to

traditional Chinese modes, that is, whole-tone scales; the Oriental style

is also emphasized by rhythmic variability, elusiveness, and no square

structure due to continuously changing numbers of beats to each bar.

Given below are the texts of the choruses. From the entire Yuefu, the

composer chose lyrical love messages. In a translation from Chinese

into Russian, and then into English, they lose some accuracy, but their

poetry, brevity, and imagery are enchanting.

– Northern Flowers

Springtime in the Forest

In the springtime forest, flowers blossom so lovely

Birds sing about love so sadly

The spring winds arouse such excitement

Blowing on me, and opening my attire.

The Sun Shone Brightly Over the Earth

The sun has blazed up over the earth, all around is ablaze in its beams

I would love to fly after my loved one like a faithful swallow

I wish him that all the forecasts come true

Let his life last long, for a full thousand years.

Springtime in the Garden

In the springtime garden, golden daisies are blooming

And water in the lakes is clear in early spring.

I’ll draw some wine, and fill my goblet for the first time

I’ll tune the strings, and play the springtime air.

Northern Flowers NF99149 5055354481468

℗&© 2021, Northern Flowers and Musical Concepts

Digital edition ℗ 2021, Musical Concepts

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