The First and the Last, Alpha and Omega

On Thursday, Nov. 4, 2010, I attended the Russian premiere of "The Third and Final Testament" by Nikolay Obukhov (1892-1954). Obukhov was a Russian-born composer who emigrated to France. Though a contemporary of Prokofiev, his music was quite a bit more avant garde. Obukhov created his own system of giant harmonic clusters and worked with experimental instruments, most notably the "croix sonore" which is elsewhere described as a cousin of the Theremin. For those of you not up on your retro electronic instruments, the Theremin has an eerie sound suitable for science fiction soundtracks, and its mechanism is equally ghoulish...the player does not actually touch the instrument but moves his/her hands nearby and the instrument takes its pitch and volume from an electronic reading of the position of the hands.

If it is a great honor to attend the Russian premiere of a major work by an important Russian-born composer, it must be doubly impressive to have attended what will no doubt also turn out to be its final performance in St. Petersburg. The work features a full symphony orchestra, two pianists, an organ (here played by two players), the "croix sonore" (a theremin was employed) and five vocal soloists who intoned six pages of obtuse French text about the Last Judgment and the Resurrection of the Dead. They needn't have bothered. They could rarely be heard over the din. The music sounded much more like the soundtrack of a science-fiction animated feature about post-apocalyptic cell-fragments wandering through the nouveau-primordial ooze in search of organic matter to glom onto than souls making their final ascent heavenward. The sympathetic audience, inclined to give the work the benefit of the doubt, eventually slowly gave up trying to distinguish one section of big noise from another, and, one by one, began to filter out of the hall. I know not how many were left at the end, since somewhere in the middle of the second half, I joined their number. I feel relatively certain, as there had been little change in the work over the previous forty minutes, the last twenty would hold much the same. I admit that this is the reverse of the classic fallacy of judgment made by the Thanksgiving Turkey, who wrongly assumes that a certain Wednesday in November will be as delightful as all of the previous days of being gloriously fattened up.

But to continue the food metaphor, the "light" appetizer before this turgid bouillabaisse was Scriabin's Third Symphony, known as "The Divine Poem." This exciting work, brilliantly performed by the St. Petersburg Philharmonic energetically led by Aleksander Titov provided the inspiration seemingly missing from the (even) larger work. I am familiar only with Scriabin's piano music. This piece struck me (in my admitted ignorance) as the possible offspring of the unlikely marriage of César Franck and Anton Bruckner, and more interesting to me than most works by either of these composers. The audience gave the performance a lengthy ovation of rhythmic applause, uncharacteristic for the middle rather than the end of the concert. Alas, I have no idea if those who remained until Obukhov's resurrected souls had reached the heavenly heights were equally as enthusiastic.