The Poet’s Echo: Britten, Prokofiev, Shostakovich | Rubicon RCD1115

The Poet’s Echo: Britten, Prokofiev, Shostakovich

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Label: Rubicon

Cat No: RCD1115

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 1

Release Date: 31st March 2023

Contents

Artists

Gemma Summerfield (soprano)
Gareth Brynmor John (baritone)
Abi Hyde-Smith (cello)
Jocelyn Freeman (piano)

Works

Britten, Benjamin

The Poet's Echo, op.76 (arr. J Freeman, A Hyde-Smith)

Prokofiev, Sergei

Romances (3) after Pushkin, op.73

Shostakovich, Dmitri

Cello Sonata in D minor, op.40
Songs (4), op.46

Artists

Gemma Summerfield (soprano)
Gareth Brynmor John (baritone)
Abi Hyde-Smith (cello)
Jocelyn Freeman (piano)

About

Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) effectively founded Russian literature, elevating his mother tongue to match the wit and penetrating observation of the French, Spanish and English writers he admired. He was revered even through the Soviet years, the hundredth anniversary of his death being grandly commemorated in 1936 during Stalin’s reign.

It was for that occasion that the two sets of Pushkin songs by Russia’s leading composers of that time – Prokofiev and Shostakovich – were originally composed. In the actual lines set by Prokofiev, the poet reflects that both himself and his own life have changed a great deal in the past decade, yet it seems ‘just yesterday that I wandered in these groves.’ Was Prokofiev thinking of his own experience, having lived outside Russia for 18 or so years? The music itself is ambiguous, its chilly opening dissonances looking forward to the enigmatic style of his Eighth Piano Sonata (of 1944), which similarly looks back to an implicitly distant past.

There’s a strong connection with his Fifth Symphony in the first of Shostakovich’s Four Pushkin Romances. In ‘Renaissance’, Shostakovich clearly saw parallels between Pushkin’s words – ‘A barbarian artist with his sleepy paintbrush / Blackens the picture of a genius’ – and his own recent lambasting by the Stalinist apparatchiks following the Pravda editorial. Not only is Shostakovich’s setting of that opening phrase alluded to by the opening of the Fifth’s finale, but the piano part’s motif at the song’s final stanza is quoted directly in that symphonic movement before its final peroration.

In later life, Shostakovich became friends with the English composer, Benjamin Britten, who also befriended the cellist and pianist Mstislav Rostropovich (a sometime pupil of Shostakovich) and his wife the soprano Galina Vishnevskaya. It was specifically for the latter two artists that Britten in 1965 composed The Poet’s Echo. Though not a song cycle as such, it follows a theme, as Britten explained: ‘It is really a dialogue between the poet and the unresponsiveness of the natural world he describes.’ Given Rostropovich’s dual abilities as pianist and cellist, it seems appropriate that we hear the piano part in these songs arranged for these two instruments, the cello effectively a second ‘singing’ line that duets with the voice part originally written for his wife, Vishnevskaya.

‘This project was initially inspired by the prophetic nature of Shostakovich’s Four Pushkin Romances, op.46, which Gareth Brynmor John introduced me to in 2019. Not only was I struck by the profundity of how the poetry echoed messages of censorship and exile forward through time; but also by similarities to the cello sonata from two year prior, particularly the composer’s approach to rhythmic features, texture and tessitura. These two works are partnered on our disc by Prokofiev’s Three Pushkin Romances which also lyrically reference Pushkin’s exile; and Britten’s The Poet’s Echo, premiered by soprano Galina Visnevskaya and cellist and pianist Mstislav Rostropovich, a dedicatee of a several cello works by the aforementioned composers.

‘This final work was written during a composers’ retreat to Armenia in the company of Visnevskaya and Rostropovich, thus devising a cello part for Britten’s only Pushkin cycle felt like an opportunity too good to pass by. I am hugely indebted to Abi Hyde-Smith for her collaborative approach to this process, her patience exploring a broad variety of techniques and sound worlds which resulted in the arrangement recorded on this disc, and the creative input of Gemma Summerfield as she contributed to final drafts during initial rehearsals. We would also like to extend our heartfelt thanks to Britten Pears Arts, Faber Music and Colin Matthews for their support and permission to record this new version of The Poet’s Echo.’
– Jocelyn Freeman

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