RUDOLF SCHOCK SINGS BALAKIREW & RIMSKY-KORSAKOW

Nederlands: https://tenorschock.blogspot.com/2011/03/rudolf-schock-zingt-mili-balakirew & nikolai rimsky-korsakow.html

Deutsch: https://tenorschock.blogspot.com/2011/03/rudolf-schock-singt-mili-balakirew & nikolai rimsky-korsakow.html  

In 1985, Acanta (Fonoteam GmbH, Hamburg) produced a large number of LP premieres from the period 1946 - 1956 for Rudolf Schock's 70th birthday under the title 'Collection Rudolf Schock'. These were operas, operettas and eight Russian songs.

The songs fill the last record side of the double LP 'Russian Opern, Lieder und Romanzen' (Acanta 40.23.550), whereupon Rudolf Schock sings music by Mussorgsky, Tschaikowsky, Dargomyschski, Rimsky-Korsakow, Glinka and BALAKIREW.

Mily Alexejewitsch Balakirew (1837-1910) and a little earlier - Alexander Dargomyschski (1813-1869) were discovered for the music by Mikhail Glinka (1804-1857), the first Russian composer who succeeded in creating a national, young Russian musical culture.

Mily A. Balakirew (1837-1910)

In its spirit, around 1865, the energetic Balakirew gathered a group of composers who tried to combine western (operatic) influences from Italy and France with their own folk music. This group, which calls itself 'Les Cinq (The Five)' and is ironically referred to by contemporaries as a 'mighty bunch', consists of:

Above from left to right and then bottom left and right:
Mussorgsky (1839-1881), Borodin (1833-1887), Rimsky-Korsakow
(1844-1908), Balakirew and Cui (1835-1918).
The lady, Comtesse de Mercy-Argenteau, is the sponsor of the group.

The double LP 'Russische Opern, Lieder und Romanzen' (1985) is interesting because it features five of the Russian composers shown above. Only Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893), from whom Schock also sings work on the LPs, (in some cases) took a different path artistically.

The recordings also document the Berlin cultural climate in the first post-war years and political developments afterwards. For example, Russian composers who have seldom or never been played can all at once and freely be performed everywhere.

At the same time, the then 31-year-old Rudolf Schock - more or less at the last moment - has the opportunity to build a politically neutral singing career in West AND East.

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakow (1844-1908)

In 1947 * in East Berlin Schock appeared in the Russian opera 'Sadko' by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakow. He sings the 'Hindu song' from that opera so beautifully that the Soviets urgently ask him to perform in their East Berlin radio studio ("You have the soul in your voice that we Russians love so much", Schock proudly records in his biography).

(* April 10, 1947: German-singing premiere of 'Sadko' von Rimsy-Korsakow, conductor Johannes Schüler, staged by Ernst Legal. With Margarethe Klose, Erna Berger, Anneliese Müller, Ludwig Suthaus, Jaro Prohasko, Willy Pollow, RUDOLF SCHOCK, Paul Brauer, Walter Stoll and GERD RICK (Rudolf Schock's brother)

Rudolf Schock records different genres of music in East Berlin. Including Russian songs, scenes from operas by Glinka and Tchaikovsky, the role of Hermann in a abridged recording of Tchaikovsky's 'Queen of Spades (Pique Dame)' and the role of Juri in the Russian Operetta 'Die Brautschau (The Bride show)' by Yuri Sergejewitsch Miljutin.

Rudolf Schock sings 'Grusinian Song' by Mily Balakirew.

The 'Grusinian Song' (Grusinian = Georgian) is a wistful song about the nagging longing for a youth in the distant homeland: 'O, let your singing, beautiful maiden/Your Grusinian song full of sad lamentations arouses longing in me/To distant land and beautiful days ... '.

Sometime between 1858 and 1860 Mily Balakirew set the effective verse to music. It is believed that they come from the poet Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837). The poetry of Pushkin inspired Tchaikovsky to compose his operas 'Eugen Onegin' and 'Pique Dame'.

Rudolf Schock recorded Balakirew's 'Volkslied' in 1948 in front of an East Berlin radio microphone. The performance is of timeless beauty. Schock is accompanied on the piano by Erhard Michel. The song slumbered in the radio archives of the former DDR for almost 40 years. In 1985 it awoke on LP. Later also on CD.

Krijn de Lege, 4.9.2021