Nadejda Vlaeva plays Bortkiewicz

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1 CD 

Κλασική Μουσική 

Hyperion

28 Ιουνίου 2016

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Serge Bortkiewicz:Fantasiestucke Op. 61Jugoslavische Suite, Op. 58Lyrica Nova, Op. 59Prelude, Op. 66, No. 1Prelude, Op. 66, No. 3Sonata No. 2 in C Sharp Minor Op. 60Suite for Violin and Piano, Op. 63: Espana, No. 4Three Mazurkas, Op. 64

Καλλιτέχνες

Nadejda Vlaeva (Piano)

Sergei Eduardovich Bortkiewicz was born in Kharkov (Ukraine) on 28 February 1877 and spent most of his childhood on the nearby family estate of Artiomowka. Bortkiewicz received his musical training from Anatol Liadov and Karel van Ark at the Imperial Conservatory of Music in St Petersburg. In 1900 he left St Petersburg and travelled to Leipzig, where he became a student of Salomon Jadassohn, Karl Piutti and Alfred Reisenauer, a pupil of Liszt. In July 1902 Bortkiewicz completed his studies at the Leipzig Conservatory and was awarded the Schumann Prize on graduation. In 1904 he married Elisabeth Geraklitowa, a friend of his sister, and then returned to Germany and settled in Berlin. While living in Berlin, Bortkiewicz spent his summers visiting family in Russia, or travelling around Europe, often on concert tours. For a year he also taught at the Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory, where he met the Dutch pianist Hugo van Dalen, who became a great admirer of his music and helped him financially throughout his life.

The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 changed Bortkiewicz’s life. Being a Russian he was initially placed under house arrest and later forced to leave Germany. He returned to Kharkov, where he established himself as a music teacher, whilst at the same time giving concerts. The end of the war saw the beginning of the Russian Revolution, and occupation by the Communists forced the composer and his family to flee their estate at Artiomowka. In June 1919 the Communists fled in the wake of the White Army, and Bortkiewicz was able to return to help run the family estate, which had been completely plundered. This, however, was short-lived and while on a trip to Yalta in the Crimea with his wife, the fall of Kharkov to the Red Army meant that his family could not return to Artiomowka. Bortkiewicz sought to escape from Yalta and on 22 November 1920 he obtained passage on the steamer Konstantin; two days later he and his wife Elisabeth arrived penniless in Constantinople.

Through the help of the court pianist to the Sultan, Ilen Ilegey, Bortkiewicz began to give concerts in Constantinople and started to teach again. He became well known throughout a number of embassies, and made acquaintance with Natalie Chaponitsch, the wife of the Yugoslavian ambassador. She organized musical gatherings for Bortkiewicz within the embassy. Despite the good living conditions in Constantinople, Bortkiewicz longed to live in central Europe. With the help of ambassador Chaponitsch, the composer and his wife were able to obtain a visa for Yugoslavia and from there travelled to Austria, where the composer and his wife arrived on 22 July 1922. With the help of his compatriot Paul de Conne, he obtained Austrian citizenship in 1925.

In 1929 Bortkiewicz returned to Berlin, but the economic crisis and the rise of the Nazi regime caused him severe problems. Although the performance of Russian music was not officially prohibited at that time, the opportunities to give concerts and to publish music were limited for composers of Russian origin. These restrictions forced Bortkiewicz and his wife to move in 1933 from Berlin to Vienna. The Bortkiewicz couple established residence at Blechturmgasse 1/5 in Vienna. Besides composing, piano teaching and giving concerts, Bortkiewicz tried to earn some money by translating the letters between Tchaikovsky and Nadezhda von Meck, which were published in 1938.

The Second World War brought Bortkiewicz and his wife to the edge of despair and ruin. The publication and performance of Russian music was prohibited in 1941, and most of Bortkiewicz’s printed compositions, which were held by his German publishers, were destroyed in the bombing of Leipzig on 4 December 1943, meaning he lost the income from the sale of his music. Despite the hardship of the war Bortkiewicz still composed for the piano, including many of the works on this album. In the autumn of 1945 Bortkiewicz was appointed head of an education programme at the Vienna City Conservatory, which helped to give the composer some much-needed financial security. After his retirement in 1947, the community of Vienna awarded him an honorary pension. Bortkiewicz died in Vienna on 25 October 1952, and his wife Elisabeth followed on 9 March 1960. The graves of Bortkiewicz and his wife are at Vienna’s Zentralfriedhof.

Bortkiewicz described himself as a romantic and a melodist, and he had an emphatic aversion for what he called modern, atonal and cacophonous music. Bortkiewicz’s work reflects little innovation compared to many of his contemporary composers. He covered no new ground, but built on the structures and sounds of Chopin and Liszt, with the unmistakable influences of early Scriabin and Rachmaninov. Like Medtner, the essential characteristics of his style were already present in his earliest compositions, from around 1906, although his later music is more personal, poetic and nostalgic. Melody, harmony and structure were essential building blocks for his musical creations. His training with van Ark, Liadov, Jadassohn, Piutti and Reisenauer ingrained a rigorous professionalism. His colourful and delicate imagination, his idiomatic piano-writing and sensitivity to his musical ideas, combined with his undisputed gift for melody, result in a style that is instantly recognizable, attractive and appealing to many listeners.

Most of Bortkiewicz’s piano music was published by Musikverlag Anton J Benjamin in Leipzig, who also owned the publishers Rahter and Simrock. On 10 November 1938 Musikverlag Benjamin was expropriated by the Nazis, the owners being forced to sell their company to Hans C Sikorski. After World War II Leipzig belonged to the Soviet Occupation Zone, and from 1949 to East Germany, and publishers required authorization to issue music scores. The publishing house of Sikorski/Benjamin never received such authorization, and was placed in receivership in 1951, which lasted until 1956 (only in 1992 was the company officially dissolved). In 1963 its archive was transferred to the Saxon State Archive. As a result, Bortkiewicz’s Opp 58, 60, 61 and 64 remained unpublished after the composer’s death. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the archive of Anton J Benjamin was formally returned to his heirs, and after the restitution was completely resolved in 2012 it was donated to the Saxon State Archive; the following year the treasures in the Sikorski/Benjamin archive began to be unlocked, and the proofs of Bortkiewicz’s Opp 58, 60, 61 and 64 were discovered in December 2013. With the exception of the Piano Sonata No 2, Op 60, which has already been recorded by Nadejda Vlaeva from the original manuscript of the score held by the Nederlands Muziek Instituut in The Hague, these works are here recorded for the first time.

The Jugoslavische Suite, Op 58 (1940, dedicated to Martin Porzky), was intended for publication by Sikorski in 1941, but it never appeared, although an orchestral version was published. This work probably recalls the composer’s journey through Yugoslavia in 1922, while he was escaping Russia, and was written with an educational purpose in mind. This musical tour begins with Im Walde, recalling the beautiful sites of Rogaška Slatina (in modern-day Slovenia), before travelling to Arandjelovac for a country dance and to Novi Sad for a waltz. The clear and bright piano-writing of Spiel der Wellen evokes the waters of the Danube and demands great control, rather like Liszt’s Un sospiro. The fifth piece is a nocturne, with a memorable and haunting melody, picturing the quiet and melancholy bay of Dubrovnik. The suite ends in Belgrade, on the busy Piazza Terazije, for a study in sheer virtuosity. The moto perpetuo triplets build in intensity through to the festive conclusion.

Contemporary with the Jugoslavische Suite, the four pieces of Bortkiewicz’s Lyrica nova, Op 59 (1940), were published by Universal Edition in Vienna. These lyrical pieces are characterized by their colourful harmonies, dynamic flexibility and dreamy atmosphere. The first piece requires a crystal-clear cantabile sound, while the second strikes a darker tone. The Andantino third piece evokes early Scriabin, and the final piece, Con slancio, brings this cycle of reveries to a vibrant and energetic close.

The Piano Sonata No 2, Op 60 (1942, dedicated to Hans Ankwicz-Kleehoven), was premiered by Bortkiewicz in the Brahms-Saal of the Musikverein in Vienna on 29 November 1942. During the composer’s lifetime the sonata was played otherwise only by Hugo van Dalen, for the first time on 9 February 1944 in Amsterdam. It was a great success with both audience and critics. The score, however, was not published during or after Bortkiewicz’s lifetime. In this work Bortkiewicz seems to summarize his life in musical language: love for his homeland Russia, adversity, hope and perseverance. The themes are varied and Bortkiewicz’s writing is grandiloquent with rich textures and strong personality. The sonata’s first movement opens with an impassioned theme that sets the stage for a melancholy second theme, marked molto espressivo. The second movement is a capricious march. A polonaise-like central section provides contrast after which the opening march returns. The focal point of the sonata is the third movement, Andante misericordioso (‘merciful’), which initially offers a grim series of solemn chords, as if resigned to inevitable doom, after which blossoms a beautiful nocturnal melody so characteristic of Bortkiewicz. A series of soft chords marked religioso, reminiscent of a Russian Orthodox Church hymn, briefly interrupts this nocturne. To close the movement, Bortkiewicz repeats the solemn chords of the opening. The sonata’s finale is a short Agitato, briefly offset by a dance-like interlude. The sudden major-key modulation recalls the impassioned theme of the first movement, and is like a triumphant burst of will power in the face of life’s difficulties.

The Fantasiestücke, Op 61 (1942, dedicated to Egon Kokits) is a cycle of six pieces. The title page of the manuscript shows that the composer changed the order of the pieces, and his initial sequence ran: Sie tanzt, Humoreske, Serenade, Warum?, Ein Traum, ending with … und das Erwachen. Bortkiewicz’s revised order offers a very different emotional journey. The short and melancholy Warum? is followed by Ein Traum, a nocturne wrapped in fragrant harmonies and beautiful tone, and then by … und das Erwachen with various melodic episodes and a colourful accompaniment in double notes. Humoreske is a playful Allegretto, Sie tanzt an elegant and graceful waltz. The final Serenade is marked by liquid double notes and a singing left-hand melody in the tenor register.

The last piano works Bortkiewicz composed during the war years were his Three Mazurkas, Op 64 (1943, dedicated to Herrn und Frau Walter Zdrahal). Although these three pieces are strikingly different in character, each of them inhabits Bortkiewicz’s distinctive soundworld.

In 1946 Bortkiewicz composed his Six Preludes, Op 66, of which only Nos 1 and 3 have so far been located: the manuscripts of these two preludes were discovered in 2001 in the estate of this work’s dedicatee, the Dutch pianist Hélène Mulholland, who helped the composer after the war by sending much-needed food and clothing. In a letter of April 1947 to Mulholland, Bortkiewicz mentions that he had sent the score of his Preludes to an unnamed music publisher in New York, hoping that they could be issued there, as publication in Europe was unlikely owing to the economic situation and paper shortage. Publication never materialized and the current whereabouts of Preludes Nos 2, 4, 5 and 6 is unknown. The two Preludes that survive exude a sense of peaceful resignation.

To celebrate the composer’s seventieth birthday in 1947, Hans Ankwicz-Kleehoven founded the Bortkiewicz Society, whose objective was to encourage the performance and dissemination of the composer’s works. To celebrate this event Bortkiewicz’s Four pieces for violin and piano, Op 63, were published by Kliment in Vienna. España, Op 63 No 4, was reworked for solo piano by the composer.

Wouter Kalkman © 2016