Nikolay Karetnikov’s Swan Song. Following the Second Chamber Symphony World Premiere Footsteps

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Alexander Ya. Selitsky

Abstract

The Second Chamber Symphony by Nikolai Karetnikov (1930–1994) did not receive its world premiere until June 2021 and aroused great interest in musical community. The composition, which remained unfinished, was prepared for the performance premiere by the well-known conductor Igor Blazhkov, who had creative and personal friendship with the composer over the years. The founder of the genre was A. Schoenberg, who in his First Chamber Symphony (1906) radically shortened the performing staff and the duration of the music. The Moscow master, who until his death remained a staunch follower of the New Vienna school, the composition 12-tone method, also took after this Schoenberg tradition. Being a chamber symphony, the work is essentially a symphony in the full sense of the word, as it is evidenced by the depth of artistic generalization, a bright ideological concept, dynamism and purposefulness of developing. The dramaturgy of the work is a cutely conflicting. Analogies with theatrical scores by Karetnikov, first of all, with the ballet “Kroshka Tsakhes” help to concretize the content of the opposing images. In general, the central conflict may be interpreted as a confrontation between unfreedom and freedom, and this is one of the main ideas of Karetnikovʼs entire creative work. The conflict unfolds throughout the form and is resolved by the victory of positive forces in the very last bars.
The purpose of the article is to comprehend the composition in several aspects: theoretical and analytical (in the view of thematics, form, dramaturgy); historical – against the background of the genre history, in a number of other genres of Karetnikovʼs heritage, in the context of the authorʼs late creative work.


Keywords: Chamber symphony, genre, orchestral composition, conflict dramaturgy, dodecaphony, Schoenberg, Webern, Blazhkov.

Article Details

How to Cite
Selitsky А. Я. (2023). Nikolay Karetnikov’s Swan Song. Following the Second Chamber Symphony World Premiere Footsteps. Music Scholarship / Problemy Muzykal’noj Nauki, 50(1), 85–96. Retrieved from https://musicscholar.ru/index.php/PMN/article/view/1429
Section
From the History of Domestic Musical Culture
Author Biography

Alexander Ya. Selitsky, Rostov State S.V. Rachmaninov Conservatory, Rostov-on-Don, Russia

DrSci (Arts), Professor at the Music History Department