Pancho Vladigerov (1899-1978)
Stage Music
Scandinavian Suite
Caesar and Cleopatra
The Chalk Circle
Happiness
A Legend about the Lake
Rumjana Valcheva Evrova (soprano); Pavel Gerdjikov (bass)
Bulgarian National Radio Choir
Bulgarian National Radio Symphony Orchestra/Alexander Vladigerov
rec. 1970-75, Balkanton, Sofia, Bulgaria
Capriccio C8067 [2 CDs: 163]
An elder statesman in his own right, Bulgarian composer Pancho Vladigerov is now receiving – post mortem – the sort of lavish treatment that he merits. He died twenty years after Vaughan Williams but his music now enjoys an approximately similar fate as that of the British composer – at least in recorded terms. I say approximately because the Bulgarian – or his Estate – has ended up being reliant on a far-sighted state arts decision in the 1970, when the Bulgarian government’s art infrastructure recorded Vladigerov’s music en bloc. It did so with the active engagement of the composer’s son Alexander, who conducted Bulgarian radio forces.
We have already had a total of fourteen stereo discs across six Vladigerov/Capriccio/Bulgaroton sets. Now here is the seventh which scythes a swathe through his music for theatre. The plays in question are largely cosmopolitan: Shakespeare, Shaw, Strindberg. You might have expected a snowstorm of short fragments and miniatures. While there is something of that, the second CD in particular has some extensive ‘poems’, ‘essays’ and ‘sound pictures’. These emerge in the context of movements of two beefy suites from an extensive ballet A Legend About the Lake.
The Scandinavian Suite scoops up six movements from music written for Strindberg’s Ett Drömspel. The Prologue is bathed in romantic light and glistens with silvery harp and bell sounds. Memories of the following epic exhausted Procession are swept aside by the next movement radiant in luxurious imperial display in the explosive manner of Massenet, Schmitt and Tomasi. The next two movements explore Swedish dance with an eye on Alfvén. It’s all in a pastoral, bucolic manner. The At the Fjord movement dispels the Griegian spell with silvery (cf tr. 1) cataracts cascading from a dizzying height. The Epilogue completes the return to contentment. This it accomplishes through a Delian eclogue in which a singing golden violin solo takes its place. Things then sink into an idealised sunset rich in pleasant helpings of schmaltz and Korngold.
From Strindberg to Three songs from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. The words to these are in the back of the booklet in sung German (not Bulgarian) and in English translation. Think of these songs in terms of those with orchestra by Delius. Rumjana Valcheva Evrova embellishes the effect with an affecting operatic throb. The latter two songs, taken by the animated bass of Pavel Gerdjikov, are warm-toned; his voice has a pleasing presence.
Before we leave the subject of this composer’s songs, we need to look forward to the Four Songs from the Chalk Circle by Klabund (1890-1928). This seems to be related to the same old Chinese tale as Berthold Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle. Vladigerov in his Lied der Jau leans on a national anthem manner with the massed crowds picture completed by a big choir. More intimate is Heitang’s Song with imaginative humming strings and flute and oboe lancing high above. The tune’s contours have an expansive operatic sweep. Chang Ling’s Song has a sorrowing edge to its melodic burden. Lastly Soldiers Song is sentimental: sweet and approachable.
The play Happiness by Orlin Vassilev (unknown to me and I guess to most Western audiences), is enhanced by Vladigerov’s polished, lachrymose nostalgia. Nothing is held back. After a brazen Overture that conjures sanguine chivalry (think in terms of Froissart) there are two yearning little Intermezzos. Then Red Poppy registers with a slightly warbly clarinet carousing above the orchestra and later a mixed chorus which enters loud and clear. The following Dramatic Episode begins glumly, then ascends to a very Tchaikovskian passion to which Vladigerov makes a return in Love Poetry. Memory is spun from the same silvery fruit of the loom as the Prologue of the Scandinavian Suite.
The four episodes of music from Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra are compressed into two tracks, split across the two brimming CDs. The Desert Nocturne operates as an explosive blowing away of any cobwebs left in festoons by the saccharine-folksy Chalk Circle songs. It’s a delightful piece of music-making which, with its harp and woodwind parts, recalls Patrick Hadley’s In Taxal Wood, Holst’s Rig Veda Hymns and Szymanowski’s misty highlands music. Romance and Cake Walk rejoices in and surges with passionate Rakastava-like, brooding. Strings and woodwind register pungently and a strut that then develops is a shadow of Kodaly’s Hary Janos. The sequence ends with the barking brass letting rip.
The three-act ballet, A Legend About the Lake – alongside the epic opera Tsar Kaloyan (yet to be heard) – is among the composer’s largest-scale productions. The first of two beefy Suites runs to three-quarters of an hour. Ambitious and immodest stuff, this comes down to a series of four tone poems in ground plan rather like Sibelius’s Lemminkainen Legends. The music ranges from images of a rocking sea (this is clearly an almost oceanic inland lake) to rolling and seething romantic strings. There’s a bit of Khachaturian in the mix as well as some brazen coups such as those at the end of the first movement which revels in martellato ‘high jinks’ and a resounding slam of the tam-tam. There are some familiar and very well done magical touches that recall The Presentation of the Rose from Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. This makes later appearances too. The third movement has some loud strutting stuff as well as a violin solo that descends into a glistening silence. The only strange, though not unpleasant, note is struck in the final movement of the suite: Games of the Rusalki (or mermaids) who, by this empirical evidence, are pretty muscular maidens whose triumphs are left in little doubt. This music is constructed from crashing romantic bolts of cloth with these pages evincing a taste for brooding and for Glazunov-style romps in the manner of the finales of that composer’s Sixth and Eighth symphonies.
The Second Suite is in three movements across half an hour. Here, Vlagiderov shuns descriptive titles and gives us instead mood and speed terminology. The twelve-minute Allegro indulges in a grand-standing display with more than a hint of Borodin’s Prince Igor about it. If forgiveness was called for, amends are made and sins redeemed by resorting to high romance. An orchestral piano asserts itself towards the end. The middle movement Lento rings the changes with a healing silkiness and a solo violin smiling its way. Relaxation is further found in a return to the hushed and shiny “Rosenkavalier” material and an ascent to peace. The finale Con Moto Moderato returns to some lush Hollywood moments in writing that recalls Respighi at his most overtly splendid and Bax at his densest and most extravagantly protesting.
The indispensable notes are in German by Christian Heindl and in an English translation by Aaron Epstein.
The long view on this set must reflect that the music is instantly captivating. This is, to date, the most desirable of the seven Vladigerov Capriccio volumes.
Rob Barnett
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Contents
CD 1
Scandinavian Suite, Op. 13 (1926)
Based on the incidental music to “Ett Drömspel” by August Strindberg (1869-1912)
Three Songs from “Twelfth Night”. Op. 26 play by William Shakespeare (1564-1616) (1931)
Suite from the Stage Music to “Happiness” Op. 50 – play by Orlin Vassilev (1904-1977) (1954)
Four Songs from “The Chalk Circle”, Op. 19 – play by Klabund (1890-1928)
Two Orchestral Pieces for “Caesar and Cleopatra” play by Bernhard Shaw (1856-1950) 1. Nocturne (1920)
CD 2
Romance and Cake-Walk (1953)
A Legend about the Lake, Op. 40, Ballet Music (1946): Orchestral Suites No. 1 and No. 2
