Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra - Shchedrin: Carmen Suite & The Little Humpbacked Horse (2009)

Rodion Shchedrin's Ballet Theater is a bright, original phenomenon, deeply rooted in the theatrical past of Russia, and at the same time modern. "I believe adamantly," the composer writes, "choreography is able to express the full range of human feelings! To excite a person is one of the most important tasks of any art, including ballet." This statement of Shchedrin explains his choice of the plot of "Carmen", in which, along with high tragedies, the composer's lyrics become more emotionally open and expressive. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the Carmen Suite is rightfully one of the peaks of the world musical theater. Its premiere took place in 1967 on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater. The attempt to interpret Prosper Merime's novella "Carmen" using the means of the ballet theater is not new. Even 29 years before the premiere of Bizet's famous opera, in 1846 (just a year after the publication of the book), Merime's characters found stage life in the one-act ballet Carmen and the Bullfighter, staged by the young Marius Petipa at the Madrid Theater. Subsequently, the choreographers repeatedly turned to this plot, each time offering their interpretation of the literary source.
The music of Rodion Shchedrin's ballet is a suite composed of individual numbers of Bizet's opera of the same name, artfully adapted for orchestra without voice participation.
"The image of Carmen has become a household name thanks to the music of Georges Bizet. “Carmen” outside Bizet, will always carry some disappointment. Our memory is too firmly connected with the musical images of the immortal opera," Shchedrin said later. So the composer came up with the idea of creating a transcription. This genre of musical art, almost forgotten today, was once one of the most widespread. Sebastian Bach's transcriptions of Vivaldi's violin concertos, Liszt's and Schumann's transcriptions of Paganini's works, famous arrangements by Busoni, Kreisler, etc. are widely known.
Having chosen a genre, it was necessary to choose the tools. To decide which instruments of the symphony orchestra will be able to convincingly compensate for the absence of human voices and highlight the choreography of Bizet's music most vividly. In the first case, only stringed instruments could solve this problem, in the second — percussion. This is how the composition of the orchestra was formed.
According to Shchedrin, a ballet orchestra should always sound a few degrees "hotter" than an opera one. He had to "finish telling" much more than the opera orchestra; the "gesticulation" of music in ballet should be much sharper and more noticeable.
Shchedrin's Carmen Suite is a brilliant transcription in which the composer reveals new figurative and musical characteristics without distorting the original source at all. He manages to convey the genius spirit of the creator without literally imitating the original, without rewriting the text, mechanically replacing human voices with the instruments of the orchestra closest in timbre.
Rodion Shchedrin's score found worthy interpreters in the person of the orchestra of the Bolshoi Theater of the USSR under the direction of conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky. Performance of a string group and soloists on percussion instruments (A. Ogorodnikov, O. Budankov, L. Redkin, A. Antufyev, V. Fedin) is noted for virtuoso brilliance, temperament, excellent sense of the ensemble.
His first ballet "The Hunchback Horse" (to a libretto by V. R. Shchedrin began writing while still a 4th-year student, and in 1955, by the time he graduated from the conservatory, the ballet was almost completed. The ballet is based on the plot of P. Ershov's fairy tale about the adventures of the Russian young man Ivan and his devoted friend the Humpbacked Horse. The machinations of enemies more than once involve Ivan in trouble: the Tsar orders him to catch a Firebird, bring a Tsar maiden from across the sea, get her ring from the bottom of the ocean, bathe in a boiling cauldron... With the help of the Skate, Ivan remains unharmed. As a reward for his kindness and unselfishness, he gets the royal throne, and a beautiful Tsar maiden becomes his wife.
Shchedrin's penchant for coloristic sound recording, plastic expressiveness of musical images was manifested in the ballet. For the first time the ballet was staged on the stage of the State Academic Bolshoi Theater of the USSR by choreographer A. Radunsky. Even before the production in the theater, the music of the ballet became famous on the concert stage. On this disc, the suite from the ballet "The Hunchback Horse" is performed by the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra under the direction of Algis Juraitis.