Gail Archer - A Russian Journey (2017) [Hi-Res]

In the summer of 2013, I traveled to Russia for the first time in my life in order to play five organ recitals in Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, Tomsk and Perm. My colleague, Daniel Zaretsky, organ professor at St. Petersburg Conservatory, obtained grant funding from the Russian government to bring organists from many countries to Russia that summer in anticipation of the Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014. I traveled from Moscow by plane to Irkusk and then traveled back to Moscow on the Trans-Siberian Railroad—a journey I will never forget, as I had the privilege of seeing the whole country from the window of the train. The concert organs, all built by German firms, are placed in small halls associated with the philharmonic orchestra in each city rather than in churches or university settings. The audience for every concert was full to overflowing and the devotion and respect for classical music in Russia is utterly remarkable. I visited Russia again in summer 2016, where I played in Kislovodsk and Essentuki, and had the same experience. My trips sparked an interest in the music for organ by Russian composers with which I was unfamiliar. The CD program includes 19th and 20th century composers, several of them members of the Russian Five or Might Handful, Cesar Cui and Modest Moussorgsky and their student, Sergei Ljapunow. Alexander Glasunov had an independent career as a symphonic composer with an international reputation while Sergei Slonimsky comes from a brilliant family of mathematicians and scholars. Alexander Shaversaschvili was a notable composer from Georgia.

In the late nineteenth century, a group of Russian composers, the Russian Five, sought to create a distinctive Russian idiom inspired by Russian poetry and literature, Russian Orthodox chant and folk melodies. Their objective was to distance themselves from Western European counterpoint and formal musical designs in order to create a unique Russian musical style. Mily Balakirev, Alexander Borodin, Cesar Cui, Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Modest Mussorgsky created a large body of symphonic, keyboard, opera, song, and chamber music literature celebrating Russian national culture, which had wide-ranging influence both in Russia and abroad.