Month: January 2014
Serge Gainsbourg – V Lesu Prifrontovom (In the Forest Near the Frontline)
Russia celebrated the lift of Leningrad’s blockade on January 27th, while elsewhere in the world they celebrated the liberation of the prisoners of Auschwitz camp. There is not a single family that had been left unscathed by the World War Two. Soviet films about the Great Patriotic War have been gradually coming to the Western audiences, but the songs are still likely to be relatively unknown, apart from the famous Katyusha.
I have just discovered a recording which I didn’t know existed: Serge Gainsbourg sings a wartime Russian waltz, In the Forest Near the Frontline, in Russian. In his own words, he used to hear it from his mother, but as he didn’t know any Russian, he had his relative write him a phonetic version of the song, and this is what you hear in the recording. A very touching song tells a story of soldiers staying in the autumn forest and recalling the peaceful time with their beloved. Gainsbourg very skillfully conveyed the sadness of soldiers who could quite likely perish at war, and his heavy French accent only strengthens the forlorn feelings of those who wanted to live and love and yet were denied the chance of happiness… The performance dates back to 1974 and will turn 40 years in July this year.
An Olympic Train on the Moscow Underground
Robert Burns – The Jolly Beggars. A Cantata (In Russian)
Several years ago I was presented with a CD containins all albums by the VIA Pesnyary. I shared their song Oh early on Ivan’s Day in my early blogging days. However, the tracks from Birch-tree Juice contained a true gem: the entire Jolly Beggars Cantata by Robert Burns translated into Russian by Samuil Marshak and set to music by Igor Polivoda. To mark Burns’s birthday this year, I uploaded the Cantata in full to Soundcloud. Don’t lose time to listen to this brilliant work!
RobertBurns.org tells us that
‘The Jolly Beggars’ presents difficulties in staging, because each of the characters has only one song to sing. Arrangements popular in their day were those of Sir Henry Bishop (1786 — 1855) and John More Smieton (1857 — 1904), but by far the most successful realisation is probably the stylised arrangement for four voices and chamber instrumental ensemble which Cedric Thorpe Davie made for the Scottish Festival at Braemar in 1953, and which was subsequently staged at the Edinburgh International Festival, televised, broadcast, recorded and performed in local halls throughout Scotland by the Saltire Singers and others.
I don’t know if the Russian version has ever been staged but the score ranges from a rock’n’roll tune to a ballade through some recitativos. A penultimate song is not, in fact, from the Cantata but a shortened version of Is There For Honest Poverty poem. The Cantata was originally called “Love and Liberty“, and although the mentioned website lists any number of possible inspiration sources, the lower social strata had increasingly begun to surface in the 18th c., with The Beggar’s Opera appearing in English as early as in 1728. I mentioned it before; it later became the basis for Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera. It seems quite likely that John Gay who wrote The Beggar’s Opera helped to popularise the use of the word “beggar” in the title: Merry Beggars and The Happy Beggars were also the source of inspiration for Robert Burns and no doubt influenced the choice of the name.
The tracks in the playlist follow one after another in the same order as in the English Cantata, the final track preceded by the extract from Is There For Honest Poverty.
Robert Burns – The Jolly Beggars autograph, page 1 (Courtesy of Burns Scotland) |
Saturday Music: Michel Polnareff – Hey You Woman
St. Tatiana Day in Russia (Celebrated with a Jazz Improvisation)
Every year 25th of January marks the Day of St. Tatiana, acknowledged throughout Russia as a Students’ Day. On this day in 1755 the Moscow State University was founded, the date being symbolical for Tatiana was the name of an aunt of Ivan Shuvalov, one of father-founders of the University. Russian students successfully emulated their European predecessors, the vaganti, by getting drunk on this day whereby a saying has been going since: “On Tatiana’s Day all students are merry“.
At the Moscow State University they usually hold a traditional event on this day, with medovukha (a honey-based alcoholic beverage) poured to students by the Rector himself. This is continued with a special concert dedicated to the student brother- and sisterhood and singing the hymn of the University, Gaudeamus igitur.
Last year I attended a clarinet concert at the Rakhmaninov Hall of the Moscow State Conservatoire. Several beautiful musical pieces were offered to the audience, but many of us were especially taken by this jazz improvisation… which turned out to be named “Tatiana” after a composer’s wife. I hope you enjoy it.
My Songs By Dionne Warwick
Annie Lennox posted on her Facebook page a video of Dionne Warwick’s song Walk On By, composed by Burt Bacharach. As she says,
“I’ve always been drawn to the alchemy of Bert Bacharach’s music. Dionne Warwick must have been his perfect vocal muse, with the most amazing voice to express and interpret his songs. I think it would be hard to find another singer who could do them justice apart from Dusty Springfield.”
I’ve discovered Dionne Warwick, when already in the UK, but as a singer of Heartbreaker that Bee Gees wrote for her. I like Barry Gibb’s version of this song, too, but Dionne Warwick has infused it with a pure female emotion. When back in England I sometimes sang to karaoke and recorded it, Heartbreaker in Warwick’s interpretation was one of the songs I tried to master more times than any other one.
And since we mentioned Bee Gees, here’s their version, too.
On My Bookshelf: James Joyce, Dubliners
One of My Favourite Poems (‘IF’ by R. Kipling)
Original post from 26/01/2007
The first time I read this poem, I was at school, and I remember well we were preparing to either a quiz or a matinee, so we had to learn an English poem by heart. I believe this was about 13-14 years ago. I also remember that at first I took it simply as a poem by Rudyard Kipling, and only much later – when I was already a student at the University – did I begin to realise that this poem means much more to me. Effectively, with another couple of poems and a few quotations, these lines summarise my approach to things in life.
I shall also give a link to the Russian translation of this poem, by Mikhail Lozinsky. As far as I am concerned, Lozinsky was one of the best ever Russian translators. At the turn of 1930-40s, battling a deadly illness, he had been working on the Russian translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Among his other translations, one of my favourite is definitely Shakespeare’s Hamlet. And, of course, Kipling’s If.
So, enjoy the poem, and if you have got any thoughts or memories about it, do post a comment about these. 🙂
(For Russian translation (“Заповедь”), please follow the link. The text comes after a poem by Coleridge).
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master,
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!